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I didn't technically blow it. I started a $5k account, and within 4 weeks had reduced it to $2k. That was enough for me to learn my lesson. I'm now back in SIM, doing a combine, working on myself. May I suggest you do the same? Turn off the live account. Withdraw your money. Go back to SIM. The money isn't the important thing here. Money can be replaced. You are killing your mental capital, and digging yourself a true hole that might be inescapable. The more you fail, the more you kill your confidence, then that makes you fail more, down....hill.....spiralllllll. It won't just get better.
I have almost no real knowledge when it comes to trading, yet. But I have learned what I typed above. You may be just like me though. No matter how many times you read this, you have to learn for yourself. That's fine too. Much harder route though.
I thought I was jumping the gun a little, but 5 weeks? You crazy. With regards
From the advice I heard above from a pro trader, it's ok to start with a 5k account provided it was trading on mini-contracts of some other instrument or small shares on the SPX. Starting $5k trading regular ES contracts may have been too risky imo.
So it's all good, 3 months of sim and researching and learning than trying live again. Futures cost a lot more to learn to trade than forex, so losing $2.5k every 8 months (3 months in between and say 5 months of practicing trading live small amounts) is far better and preferable than most newcomers who rushed into futures daytrading.
What if I told you it doesn't matter what number is in your account now (3 weeks into the game), but what is your account 50 weeks later?
Congrats on your early successes (if you had them). Word of advice, if the number you have is substantially greater than $2000, IMO, you would have taken on too much risk and are susceptible to a blow up sooner or later.
For me, if I were to have started with a $1500 account, I would be extremely pleased with an account from $1400 to $1700 after 3 weeks (assume active trading on a daily basis). At least I know that my risk is actively managed and I can do this day in day out consistently.
Nevertheless, I always leave the possibility that you are god's gift to trading and perhaps you have grown the account substantially whilst mitigating the risks involved in trading. Afterall, we traders are never able to predict the market, and we always leave the possibility for a black swan, no matter how small.
As strikebackfast mentioned, it all depends on how far you overextended your appropriate risk level- and how fortunate (lucky) you were that the overextension didn't come back and "bite you in the a$$" at this early stage in your trading. If you assume the generic acceptable per trade risk level of 1-2% of your account per trade (which with your account initial balance of $1,500 would put your maximum per trade acceptable risk level of $15-$30... or in other words, a one or two tick stop loss on a single contract trade), then you are Damn Lucky if you didn't get stopped out every single time (assuming you followed sensible risk management- which by the fact of you trading the ES on a $1,500 account would make that a Highly Improbable assumption). Being that the harmonic rotation of the ES calls for a stop loss of somewhere between 2.5-3.0 Points, and If you did use an acceptably adequate stop loss (lest's say 2.5 point for the sake of this discussion), that means you ran a risk level of almost 10% per trade on a single contract trade..... which is by any measure an unacceptably high risk level to run. So, to be serious (as you asked), what you made is irrelevant. What you are doing by trading the ES on a $1,500 account IS relevant, and highly unadvisable (to put it nicely). But good luck with your quest...even the Powerball Lottery is won by someone, hopefully you carry that kind of luck as well.
And... JP Morgan called to discuss the purchase of the algo they just cant beat.
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
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