Which trading goal is best and why?

A 2 pt. (net) ES daily goal, per contract, or a 40 pt. (net) monthly goal, per contract (assuming 20 trading days)?

 

uh, 40 pts per day? that sounds best!

 

This is a serious question. I'm looking for feedback from some of the profitable traders here on ET. In other words which is best a daily or monthly trading goal and why?

 

Neither.

"Goals" force a trader into trading. That is to say, if a daily or monthly goal is set, and one is short of that goal, it will result in forced trades in order to accomplish the goal. That leads to disaster.

Now, on the other hand, if your targets have been developed as a result of understanding your "threshold," that's another story. If you recognize that once you've hit a certain profit level, your emotions tend to overrun your discipline, you should consider stopping.

 

Go for 2 pts per day, then when you can do that consistently.. go for 3, 4, 6, 8 etc etc.. The goal must be to be better trader tomorrow than today.

 

I would say 40 a month but if it is daily what do you stop trading when you hit 2pts? ( you will have some loosing days ...).
Perso i think you should go by month or maybe week and target a % of UP days VS down Days ( maybe tried to be 5-6 pts up on green days and 2-3 PTS down in the black and aim for a 1 to1 ratio up vs down days).
2 pts a day looks real easy but...

 

All my trades are backtested and designed to return a percentage of the account per trade -- 1/4%, 1/2%, or as high as 1% per trade.

When the account has reached a determined percentage increase, then I will increase each trades position sizing accordingly. Usually every 5% increase in account size will have the trades I use slightly grow position size, to have each trades percentage goal align with the new account size.

 

Your comments are very similar to what I've been thinking. Especially since I'm on vacation most of this week and will be unable to trade; therefore I'm not meeting my daily goal. Up until now I've been a 2 pt. a day, per contract, kind of guy, because of my initial training. I'm begnning to wonder if daily goals are becoming more psychologically damaging to me over the long run, because after a bad day immediately I begin to think about how long it will take me at 2 pts. per day to make it up.

 

The best and only goal is to take what the market offers. Sometimes it's huge, sometimes it's poor.

 

Indeed spike,
The market gives different things to different people.

Corrolary:
It only gives losses to most. (They pay for the presents to the above ones)