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With your SL of 20 ticks you should looking to TP of 40 ticks. When was the last time you saw an 8 points move on ES that you can grab??? dreams don't make money. Wake up. Have a 2:1 ration, win 2 point, lose 1 point and be happy.
From what I can tell, many brokers would not allow a trader with a $25K account to get into a 10 ct position in ES, since the initial margin requirement for ES as set by the CME is currently $4,620 per ct.
So with $25K, the most you could enter the position for would be 5 cts. That requires only $23,100.
I agree with the others...1ct with 25K is very doable. Try sticking with that until you can double your initial account balance. Then stick with it some more on 1ct and double the original amount again. When at 75K, try 2ct? A bit conservative, yes. *shrugs*
Truly however, the decision on when to start exposing your account to more risk is something only you yourself can determine.
Wrong again. Wide stops are common among professional traders. This leaves room to scale in if necessary. Scalpers, depending on what they're doing, sometimes depend on wide stops by necessity even though their profit targets are small. I trade the Nikkei 225 Mini (Osaka), and I use wide stops and scaling in techniques and mostly scalp. Typically, my initial stops are several times my initial profit target. And I'm profitable. These stops are in place in case of a catastrophe like power outage, and rarely are hit.
You claim that someone using 5 points as a stop has no idea what they are doing... but honestly, you don't seem to have much experience with managing risk and understanding probability between high risk/low reward setups and low risk/high reward setups. I would urge you not to try and convince people that $25K is a lot of capital to trade 10 contracts with.
Your scale in "Technic" called double down. You add to your losing position at a "better price". Learn what happened to the martingale traders... For 5 points stops you should have 10 points profit. Good luck for a new trader to get it....
That margin I talked about was initial margin as set by the CME, in order to actually enter a position...not the overnight. The overnight on ES as of this timestamp is $4,200 per ct. Initial margin is 110% of overnight, so $4,200+$420=$4,650 = Initial.
Whether or not a particular broker decides to pass on the initial margin requirement to it's customers is apparently up to them, but the overnight seems to be a hard fast rule that brokers follow at a minimum from what I can tell.
When Brexit reared it's ugly head, I recall some brokers increasing their daytrade margins, and overnight margins went through the roof. Ninjatrader Brokerage was up to 3X the CME standard for overnight...? That's heavy.
Anyhoo, Izhakhaim, I am currently keeping an open 1ct position in MGC overnight in my live account, as we speak. I am a "new trader". It is for testing my trading plan. Am I gambling? Or am I investing in a potentially very small loss in my studies to assure I don't make bigger mistakes in the future? Every business has up days and down days. Profit and loss. Investing a bit of money in your business and learning how to be profitable in it over the long-term is never gambling, it is education to help you assure that longer-term success that every business seeks.
Get an elite membership-> find the elite Es spoonalysis thread. I and others do this just about every day and post our trades in real time. 8 pts is just a beginning, many days we take the range for 20+ although lately it's been smaller as the ADR has contracted. Live, on the thread with entries and exits posted- I, and others grabbed 10+ pts yesterday and today as an example. So there you have it- Now that you can see you are talking to someone who knows what they are doing and can back it up I will tell you that you have a lot to learn and that your posts read very ingnorant. A stop loss of less than the normal intraday noise ( say 20-30% of the ADR average daily range) is grounds for disaster for a day trader! Scalpers, on the other hand, use different criteria but will never see the type of trades you mentioned as unattainable.
To answer the original posters question- I belive a 25k starting balance to trade 1-2 contracts is very rational. When you learn about fading in and scaling out, you will find that trading more than one contract can dramatically improve your results ( and no- fading is not in any way martingale technique when properly done)
This question has been mulled over time and time again. The amount of money really doesn't matter. What matters is knowing your system's draw down potential and how many trades you're willing to lose with your money before determining that you need to change what you're doing or stop.
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