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Hi fellow traders. I have been trading futures since May 2022. I am showing potive expectancy in my trade, and overall I am positive. And I have been slowly increasing my size. My broker has been ToS. And I recenly learn about the NinjaTrader and their margins. Now I am considering switchging to NT. However, I haver (maybe a strange) question. Please can anyone here let me know if anyone trading at NT with the size of 20-30 contracts in NQ or/and ES? Is there any issues that I must be aware...does anyone scalp futures here? Where can I find relevant threads..? thanks guys and girls!
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I have not had issues scalping with good fills with size larger than that. Hopefully I will see what the upper limit is sometime soon! Sometimes, but rarely, the market moves quickly through your entry and the order doesnt completely fill. But the nice thing about Ninjatrader is it will immediately cancel whatever is remaining in your original order once your target is hit. Prevents the remaining contracts getting filled after your target is hit and market starts to move against you.
What is your current size sir? and do you also scalp futures? Do you have a strategy, rules set for yourself? thanks! Please do comment on my short rules if they make sense to you.
Rules: I try to take only 3 trades per day. I try to pick a point of entry when the breakout from certain price level is about to happen. I use 25 contract size in ES. and my goal is to score 3 per day then I stop for the day. On the downside, I try to keep my losses at 2 points max. If I hit my max size drawdown, I also stop trading for the day. If there are juicy opportunities, high volat, then I give myself 2 more trades to execute then I am done.
Sometimes, I also trade NQ and there my goa is to score 5-7 point move on a scalp. then I am done.
What do you think?
I have been using TD and I am putting up lots of margin, as for NQ it's $18,150 for just 1 contract while at NT it's just 1K per contract.
You say you have been trading futures since May 2022 and you're already profitable and up to 25 contracts! Very impressive.
Never looked at TD Ameritrade but from the margin price you quote for the NQ it appears they require full CME margin, currently $10,000 or so for an ES contract so that would be a quarter of a million just in margin requirements.
Safe to say you haven't got the frequent beginner problem of being over leveraged due to trading a too small account
Having marked yourself as "advanced" for experience and obviously doing so well so quickly I presume you must have other trading related experience before you recently started futures trading.
Any of that experience you can share that has helped you would be very interesting to read if you have the time?
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
Yeah I can share here bro. I have been actually been trading, sometimes activey sometimes not since Jan 2013. I had many accounts and all busted due to different factors mainly being stubborn, greedy and emotiona al etc. All the stuff that we traders face every f day. I have moved to futs because, I like their fast pace and I decided that I need to spend more time with the family and I am not Buffett. so what I decided is to work on my startegy. So I spent about an year to hone my exact demands from my approach. So What I do is I just wait for intraday breakout/breakdown points then I take 10-15 c sizes to catch 2-3 or 5-10 point moves in ES and NQ respectively. Max 3 trades per day. Then if I catch or not catch I stop. Just shut down everything and go about my life. And the main thing here is that I enter OCO orders when I enter a trade I enter my stop and my TP prices and if I hit SL then that's it. I still shut down the monitors and close everything and wait for the next day.
This approach solves a number of issues:
1. I tended to overtrade. So just having 3 shots limit my number of trades and I focus and I try to take high quality trades only.
2. Greed: I focus on the number of trades and I enter with the defined OCO order so I don't have monetary goal for the day, I just work hard to identify the best possible trades and execute them.
3. I don't have issues with not cutting losses: I enter OCO order so I know what my max loss is on each trade and if I add up SL loss amounts from all 3 trades then it still comes to my daily max loss amount which is predetermined and predefined.
4. I know I am not smart like other dudes/gals from IG and Twitter where people show P/Ls in 5 digits on a daily basis. (frankly if you are really makin 5 digit gains on a daily basis what the hell are u wasting your time on IG and Twitter fo have freakin fun and do fund stuff). so I don't focus on making something. I just focus on executing my system which is what I described above.
5. As traders our advantage (like casinos advantage) is not in our entry points, patterns etc, no it's US. Our approach to markets, to trading and to our philosophy is our advantage. So stop looking at others or wasting money and time on paying others to trach you entries. Just make up rules for your self and jsut observe chart on a daily basis and see what time kind of movements work and see what kind of moves your could have caught. I personally see about 5-8 nice moves and I only take 3 max per day so I limit myself but still record all of them and study each possible and executed trades then study them on a daily basis.
Pro-level write up!! Nice approach, well defined - reasonable, repeatable & the power of knowing one's emotional/psychological tendencies and WORKING towards your strengths.
