All the successful traders I know made it without ever blowing a 5 k account. It sounds like you just don't have "it".
How much do you have in your account right now? and more importantly how MANY contracts are you entering in one trade? If your account is anywhere below $25K and you are playing with more than 2 contracts, you will soon be dust, Again! Trading is a probability game that is the most important thing you need to understand. There is a 50/50 shot that price either goes in your favor or it doesn't once you enter. In order for you to have more winning trades than not, you need an EDGE, be it technical or fundamental, now if you don't know what an EDGE is then you don't have one. Once the price starts to move either for you or against you, make sure you have a strict money management plan: use a conservative trailing stop and a practical profit target. If you haven't worked on Psychology I suggest you read Mark Douglas' "Trading in the Zone." Good trading to you!
Answer to your first question: there are different secrets at different stages. Which one do you want? Answer to your second question: it sounds like a bad idea, but it may work out just fine and you may make a lot of money. Answer to your last question: 5 years. Make sure you have enough money to cover 5 years' losses. Do you have inheritance from your grandfather/mother? Home equity loans? Credit cards? Savings? You need every penny you have to learn this business. If you run out of money before you figure it out, all your lost money will be wasted.
trading futures for a beginner is like for a small fish swiming with sharks ! get out of futures and start trading stocks without leverage !!!!! when u get some more knowledge of how financial markets are moving, maybe you ll consider tading more complex instruments. and if ur dream is guetting 2 millions out of 5000$ in a few month, start to think about another dream !
1. You are trading noise. 2. You do not have a plan to determine signal from noise. 3. You are overleveraged. Don't worry tho,Professionals do it too. Some of them even went out of business.
Well if i would have been up i guess it would have been luck right? So were you making money right away from your first account? I did start out with stocks, but did not have enough to daytrade and thats what attracted me to futures. Started with the ES and kept getting stopped out like crazy and my account basically blew out without me even realizing it until the screen popped up saying i was a risk factor and my balance was too low to trade, lol. I tried laughing it off, but it was a very sick feeling seeing only 470 dollars left in my account and it stayed like that for a while. Now i have a 10k account (below 8 now) and im falling into doing the same stupid trades. I dont wait for my setups and it seems like i cant go 5 minutes without making a trade...thats the main problem. Do i just stare at the screen for hours doing nothing and just wait? At this point ive already put so much time into it giving up isn't really an option. Everything always seems so simple and as soon as i put out my trade my heart starts racing and cant think clearly, how do i change that?
My man watch the videos below its an interview with Mark Douglas and read "Trading in the Zone" by him. If I were you, I'd only paper trade for a while finding and edge and developing patience and discipline. Trading is the easiest way to lose lots of money in exchange for a bit of Adrenaline. There are seven videos, its an hour, watch it or don't: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypCjoH1EsQ4
what are these stages? 5 years?! :eek: I cant survive that...all the money im using is from savings and worked hard for it. I dont think it should take that long, within 6 months i shoud be pulling in 20 es points a week with no problems right? 15 minimum, then at that point ill just keep adding more contracts instead of worrying about how many more points. Thanks for all the advice guys, Im going to call the top and go all in tuesday and hopefuly by friday ill be crusing in my brand new gallardo spyder down pch wooohoooo!
Hmmmm, sounds like you were born with a defect. Trading should be boring, your heart beat should not change at all. Its simple, push buy/sell and then buy/sell again and move to the next trade.
Perhaps you are joking, or only know one or two successful traders. I assure you that there is a HUGE percentage of successful traders (when I say successful I mean 7 figures a year) that have blown MULTIPLE accounts well over 5k. Past performance doesn't dictate future results.