I'm willing to accept the very small risk that in such a situation I would be bankrupted - ie. if CL slipped > 1000 ticks (basically an empty book). I'd be FAR from the only one.
A bit off topic, but I've been curious for some time whether anyone (Mav?) knows what the largest "liquidity hole" was in CL over the past 5 years. I've seen 300-tick moves on a chart in the space of a minute during the overnight session and I've seen 50-tick gaps on the CL inventory report in real time, and I've wondered what the largest real-time gap ever was over the past 5 years (not the gap between Friday night and Sunday afternoon).
What kind of obligations are eating up 12k a month take home ? With only 13k saved to trade ? No equity in your house ? No 401k?
Yeah I wondered the same thing. If I had that kind of take home pay from a regular job, I'd put away $6K a month while testing my "edge" in a demo account and if I demonstrated the discipline to execute it and proved solid after 6 months of trading, then I'd go live with it. In the meantime, you still have a job, and now you have $50K to trade with. If trading CL and ES, that's more than enough!
As mentioned in the OP, allocating more money from other sources over the next year is an option. I don't just have piles of cash sitting around under mattresses, but over time I can certainly free some up from income and other activities. My expenses are not particularly excessive (roughly $3500 monthly nut).
Not sure how much of this was a gap but I remember this day well. Cleaned out a lot of trading accounts that day I'm sure. http://www.cnbc.com/id/26841020
Trade it yourself w/your own capital. Don't quit your day job, like the other peeps said. Anything else just wouldn't make a lot of sense.
I agree with this, you are 30 yrs old, you make 200k a year but only have 13k to put towards trading? something is seriously wrong with that picture. I just turned 27, only make 75k a year, have 100k liquid, no loans, worked myself through college, and absolutely zero family money. Oh and I should also mention I live in the SF peninsula which is one of the most expensive places on the planet. For anyone starting a business you have to have passion about it. you obviously aren't passionate enough if you make 200k a year and have only managed to get 13k liquid available to undertake your new business venture. Get your personal life in check first then consider doing something as risky as trading for a living.
I'm not sure what would be wrong with the picture. Up until this, I had nothing that justified a large commitment of capital to trading. So it's all been allocated to other things. As noted in the OP, some of that could be redirected over the next year. My salary also hasn't always been this high - It's ramped up steeply from about 80K over the last 3 years. And unfortunately I've run into some out of pocket family medical expenses along the way. If you're suggesting I'm frivolously lighting money on fire elsewhere in my life, you're wrong.
Can you explain again why there are only 53 trades in this sample? Given the short term nature of these trades, why can't you get a much larger sample? If these 53 trades are over the course of a few days, they are meaningless, as market dynamics change often. Even if these trades are over the course of a year, they are of limited predictive value.