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I am new and I have also been struggling. I'm also Paper trading on Thinkorswim.
I have studied a lot of materials, but none of the materials were as helpful and concise as Ameritrade's Education Center, which is free to Ameritrade customers.
If you take the Technical Analysis Course, you will identify breakout patterns better. There are also many other useful courses and webcasts available for free.
If you improve your entry and exit points, you will go green, as I am now on Paper Trading.
The time you trade is also of the greatest importance. I prefer trading the last 30 minutes before close. Most traders suggest the first hour of open, but I found myself trading all day and racking up losses more quickly than gains. The momentum, volume, and liquidity of the last 30 minutes before close is enough to quickly fulfill a trade.
Another thing is to set a target of 4 points and 4 points stop. Use an OCO bracket. If it reaches one order, the entire OCO bracket will cancel. I got this suggestion from Barry Taylor's E-mini guide. I don't know if that applies to MES, but I'm sure you'll figure it out. Play around with a couple of different stops and targets for the OCO bracket.
I found letting the 4 point target, 4 point stop do the work is infinitely better than me interfering by prematurely ending trades. Many times I ended the trade early because I didn't want to see small earnings erased, only to see the target be eventually reached. Try not to watch the movements. The OCO bracket will take the stress and guesswork out. Manually scalping also leads to racking up of commissions.
Don’t kid yourself, what ever strategy you build, or adopt, you will have losses. To me, the secret is keep losses small and MES is as good as any or run in SIM .
Perhaps consider a funding company if you need capital such as Leeloo.
Yes I have collected data and statistics and that made me think in going live, basically becuase I had something that is working but I needed the live "feelings" to have whole picture. Over the time I developed a risk management rules to keep the losses in check. At first of course was only focused on profits and the level of gambling was high, but looking back now I can see that I did some good changes, so the next step is going live, see what I mean?
Awesome, congrats! Agree about not using E-mini in the 25k account
To be honest I can´t decide yet what to do. Give another try but only with micros or fund an account to also trade only micros.
On that statment the truth is that I don´t have too much capital (how much is too much?) Anyways I could put let´s say no more than 1k on a micro account and trade no more than 2 micros, that would give enough room to have a reasonable losing trades and not just like one correction movement and I´m out. And what you mention about that if you can´t be profitable within 15 days why open an account with no limits at all. I have a good point there and that was basically my though and that´s why I jumped into the gaunlet.
Thanks and I wish you the best. I see a big difference when I´m focused and let the feeling aside. My entries are where supposed to be and probably I need to work more about the exiting earlier than I should which can be solved with the OCO´s and leave them alone or putting a trailing stop an honor it. I recognize that since the gauntlet has that damn trailing draw-down I say dangerous not taking profits and have the probability of the prices turns back, erase the unrealized profit but moved the trailing draw-down. That was definitely a conflicting factor for me.
I totally get where you are at. When I first started trading futures I started on the micros when they first came out. I barely had any money, I would fund a $250 account, blow it up save then do it all over again. Eventually I got a second job and saved 500 and tried again and it stuck, made some money then got taken on my Helios when the MG first came out. So don’t feel bad, I feel like most traders are where you’re at. If I were in your situation, I would 1. Sim trade under the same rules and the MG, if you can pass using micros then try again. Prove to yourself that you can do it first.
2. While you do that save more money. Realistically if this is your first attempt trading live, you’ll burn through a good chunk of that before you get you trade plan to stick. That just how it is, and you account has to be large enough to take let’s just say a 50% hit while still having enough to trade.
3. Of you plan to skip the MG and go live, then don’t! Save more, 1k can work out but, you’ll be pretty rocked when you take hits, which will happen as apart of this business.
4. Live trade and see if you can make enough to cover the cost of an MG. Then use that money to trade an MG.
When you are boot strapped like you are you have to take guard your mental and physical capital while maximizing the best possible outcome.
5. Trade live but REALLY be careful, and if you take a 50% account hit, cut it, reevaluate and go from there.
Very good points indeed! Thank you for your time and response. About point number 3 that´s why I decided to go to the MG in the first place. I preffered to loose 100 and not 1000 taking in mind that I never been live and with the fact that you´re enforced to do some risk managment.
Also on Barry Taylor's E-mini guide, he discourages using Trailing stops. I wondered why, of course. So I actually tested it and he is right. Trailing stops are counter-productive. They only capture small gains during retracements. It's better to leave a wide target and stop do its work.
Granted, the target-stop loss isn't going to work all the time, but manual scalping and overtrading will lead to even bigger losses. At least this creates some discipline.
Let the target exit the trade. It takes time getting used to, but soon you'll see its beauty.
It's also the reason why passive investing yields better results overall for most people than daytrading. It takes out self-sabotaging human emotions out of the trade as much as possible.
Live trading is much more risk based so just minimize your risk. Shouldn't even be taking a $500 hit use five $100 stop losses and be done. Going down to MES would allow you to maximize that risk factors percentage of success. Giving you a larger window for a green trade which is all you really need... Low risk and a high winning percentage!
If your stats are saying 40% or more of the times you have winning trades than you can go with a reward to risk ratio of 1.5:1. Place just 3 trades a day and not risk more than $160 per trade, with a daily max loss of about $450. It's just an example with e-mini's NOT micros. But if your winning trade % is above 40% you should risk manage accordingly to where the probabilities are in your favor. Cut your losses quick knowing that eventually your gonna get your winning trade and profit. If you place 3 consecutive losing trades, your not trading your plan or your plan is not working for the current market environment. Get used to or focus on preserving capital and not so much on making money. If you keep your money and risk manage it well, your eventually going to make money.