I will be very comfortable with 1 percent per week. 2 percent per week would be phenomenal. Doubling an account each week is just an arrogant statement!
I disagree. A gambler would have the majority of his net worth in his trading account. A serious trader only a fraction.
I traveled down this road once with a person that simply would not believe i and many other people can make 100% on there trading account each and every month of the year. When we finished the conversation i showed him where his misunderstanding was on the subject. Many think you are compounding as you make monthly profits, thats the fallacy. The truth is simply to sweep profits at the end of each month and set them aside as "FINISHED" Put THAT money away for the rainy days. Spend some as a reward to yourself or wife and kids if you are in that situation. Assume a person has a 50k futures account and has margin requirement of intraday $500 a car. Do the math. Why would it be such a stretch to make 50k a month and sweep the account and on the first of next month start over with 50k? Agree that constantly compounding winnings to assume you could make the same % of winnings each and every month compounded is not for pikers. I know i am very comfy in my world and do not need to try and make a killing. PS: Where are all the losers on ET? A hard lesson on the road to making money in the game of trading is to learn HOW to lose first. A line from a movie "we do not expect you to win the war, Only to do what your conscience commands and your courage allows" (something like that) OK, back to my Blue ray movie
ES500 margin is $500 per contract, you make one point a day $50 profit {10%}. After ten days you do 2 contracts. Now you make 2 points a day. After 5 days you now can do 3 contratcs a day....etc Compound that and it becomes huge money quickly. Could anyone continue that pace?
Agreed. There are wide differences in what some view as proper money management. It wouldn't be worth the time for me to make a few percent a week, whereas others might not be able to handle losing 7% of their bankoll on a trade either. In any event, everyone should take out your profits each time you double, doesn't make much sense to do it otherwise. You'll have the reserves to post back up when you have a significant drawdown, and you'll keep adding real cash to your bank account. Back to watching the game.
% on account...i don't keep track of that anymore. it's of no use to me, and varies so much. if i started with 30k in all my accounts, i could double that. if i started with 3mm in my accounts, it would take me an incredibly long time to double that. so why focus on %? that doesn't really matter for an individual trader, only someone who has to maintain against a benchmark for clients. at several times, i thought of leaving my trading and getting another job. AT THAT TIME, i was still killing the s&p. but i had such a low amount of money in my account, the % was great, but the actual $ brought home wasn't where i wanted it to be. bighog - i did that with my accounts for a long time. as i made more money, i'd start to raise my "sweeping" point. gave me confidence and a nice feeling about taking money out...pay off loans, etc.
What kind of bullshit is that? I can claim the same thing by that standard in accumulating money in a passbook saving account every year. clueless trader/saver: "duh I doubled my savings every year for 10 yrs , oh well yeah cept what I took out and spent guess i didn't double that huh?"
exactly, bighog and sicktrader you beat me to it......... the amount in your trading account is relevant only to the amount of margin. Say a es scalper has 60k in his trading account, but 500k (or whatever, a good cushion) in his bank account. On $500 margin and a scalping strategy, you could easily throw around 40 or 50 cars with no heat on your margin which would give you those high number returns based on your trading account size. However, it is much smaller when compared to total net worth. The key is very strict money management and the cushion to not trade scared. <b>Your net worth is what matters, not trading account size!</b> On a different note, I never understood why people question the scaling ability on the es (unless you get scared) until you reach a very, very large size? Trading 1 car is no different than 100, or 200, or 300 in terms of liquidity. back to the game, go az cats!
The currency is irrelevant to the question - USD/EUR. But, I can see based on how you answered/misdirected both questions to see what you are trying to say. You are trying to say that most people don't want do do work for a living, and try and trade whatever meager savings they have into a small fortune while living off of it. But then again, if you want to say that, why not just come out and say it?