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See that's scary to me, the discrepancy between his total profits and total $ value of stock traded. You have to have a certain mindset to be able to deal with that high risk all the time.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I dont think this calculation is right . There's something called drawdown so 9K isn't nearly enough to trade the FDAX , if your stop is 40 points away , then just a handful of losses will make your account down by 200 points = 5K ! And you cant move from 1 contract to 2 contracts until you double your money ...
You cite a post of 2012...
So you haven't read the thread to the end. If so you could see the weekly progress which shows how many
trades were positive and how many negative. There was never a series of many negative trades in a row.
Every year counting start at 0 at the beginning.
Just read the thread to the end.
Then you will be aware that the stops are 30 points away.
I will not comment here about consistency.
And btw today the margin for one Dax is > 12K...
I know its 12K now and i know your stop is 30 , getting a few consecutive losses is not far fetched while trading the FDAX , so being down 150-200 points - 3750 to 5000 euros - is not out of the question which means big drawdowns if you are trading with just 12k euros ... you need more than that to trade 1 contract you cant just rely on initial margin requirements . Thats why it was a pure hypothetical calculation that cant be realized in real life environment .
That was meant a hypothetical max. gain.
My journal is for comparison reason fixed on one contract.
Every trade is announced at taking time together with the exit time.
That does not mean that we start every day at the margin limit.
If you take one trade a day risking .38% of your account, and you lose every time, it'll take about an entire year before you go broke.
Considering you have a 50% accuracy and 1:2 r:r you should make about 100% in one year if you don't compound. After taxes, commission, and slippage you should be around 50% modestly. Considering 50% at 1:2 is pretty hard to achieve day in and out, I'd say you should be in the ball park of 20-30% realistically speaking. 15-25 thousand a year is reasonable after all other costs, a few year learning curve, if you trade only two hours a day, and have another job.
The good part is that if you can keep that up for a few years or more you can probably start compounding some of it and have access to trading larger accounts. That's my two cent ball park answer for most people. Considering the amount of variables involved it's hard to say anything is reasonable in trading.
R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
This is my last reply to @Surprise here in this thread:
Of course it needs a cushion for the start - as one can not be at the margin limit
and hope to have the next few trades with positive outcome.
I encourage you to open your own journal(s) here on futures.io.
Journal every trade here and explain why you will take it in the intro.
If you have the guts to publish your trade BEFORE you take it with
entry, exit, SL, direction and you report your gains over a year of
journaling - THEN I am again here to discuss the OP's title of the
thread "what is a reasonable return".
I already have a live journal in another forum , but i trade cfds , i may open a thread here why not will see . That being said i am here to discuss " what is a reasonable return " and your hypothetical example wasn't reasonable at all ....
Survival matters the most : any positive return with a drawdown capped at 15%. Ideally, matched to a yearly return on investment 2 to 3 times worth the heat (MaxDD).
Trading deleveraged needs to be consistent in order to reach long-term stability (both at and outside the field!)