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Read a quote many years ago from a guy from Texas.
A grandson was proudly telling his Grandfather what his chosen career was going to be.
"Grandpa, I'm going to be a commodity trader" Grandfather replies " Of all the way to lose money, why would you choose the fastest?"
I know I'm new to the ES, having only sim traded for about 2 months now, but looking at my rules, my goal is to get 3-4 ticks per trade. If I'm paying $4 per r/t and making 2-4 trades a day on the ES alone, my profit on 1 contract over 2 trades is $67 and on 4 trades is $134, which would be almost 7 ticks. If I get 2 points on the ES per contract, I'm out for the day. No need to be greedy.
Is 2 points do-able? Yes. Possible, most likely. Repeatable? Not likely. My goal is 1-2 points per day on the ES. I've upped the contracts twice and as soon as the trade went in the money I got out of it. Pressure was pretty big, even for a sim trade. Hopefully, my system is repeatable and has a solid foundation. From comments received, it is a good system i have.
Right now I am in sim mode, so there is definitely alot less pressure than trading live but through continued application of rules and positive sim results like today, I hope to reduce pressure as much as possible.
Broker: Advantage, Trading Technologies, OptionsCity, IQ Feed
Trading: CL, NG
Posts: 1,038 since Jul 2010
Thanks Given: 1,713
Thanks Received: 3,863
2 points/day on the ES is very possible for a well seasoned trader. The ES is also the market of choice for some of the world's best traders because of the liquidity, etc. and can be an absolute meat grinder for newer traders. It's notorious for trapping newbies in a position and running their stops. Just know when intra-day trading the ES, you're competing against the best.
I don't want to discourage anyone from trading a particular market but intraday trading the ES can be very challenging even though it appears subdued. Many newer traders suffer the death of a thousand cuts with constant stop outs. There are other markets that one can start out with and still learn to make $100/contract/day. But as always, you need to find the market that best suits your trading style with respect to your risk tolerance, etc.
I trade one setup only, and it usually happens 1-4 times a day on the ES. My minimum expectancy for my one setup is 12 ticks, so I try my hardest to hang in there for my target. Lately I've settled into a bad habit of scaling out after +4 / +5 / +6, depending on my mood. Sure enough though, it almost always reaches target, so I'm working on kicking the habit.
Is it probable? That depends on a number of considerations. Education and Training, experience, capitalization, discipline....etc.
The other thing I've noticed is how awful a lot of traders are at somewhat obscure accounting concepts.
The concept that you would ever quote a return rate, without a drawdown seems foolish to me.
The concept that you would ever quote a return rate, without specifying "over given period of x" is also a headshaker.
A strategy that loses 100 "points" in it's first 50 trading days, then profits 500 points over the next 50 trading days and then loses another 100 points in the final 50 trading days yields a 2 point/day average.
Would it be a worthy trading system? Probably not. Unless you're willing and capable of drawing down 100 points worth of capital.
Drawdown is quite frankly, the most misunderstood and applied accounting principle in trading.
What if I told you that a strategy that yields 2 points a day, but has a full contract's worth of drawdown, will yield less money in even a few weeks than a strategy that yields .25 points a day, but has half the drawdown?
Why? Compounding.
Consistency (in terms of low equity volitility and drawdown) is just as important, if not more important than raw yield.
There are sooo many things to discuss here.
If you're backtesting a system that yields "2 points/day" in simulation, but it takes 100 trades a day to do so, chances are, you're going to see a very large variance from simulation results to live results.
Others have covered one of the largest reasons why and that's "traps" employed by larger traders.
However, if you're able to make larger moves, and withstand bigger dips and climbs....then you start to eliminate yourself of a victim of both platform inconsistency, fill order que issues, slippage, commission, etc.
But alas, thus we see the clever and inherently self correcting feature of nature once again. Only larger accounts can weather such storms and create such consistency.
So again, i say....is it possible? Sure. Is it feasible? Maybe. Is it likely? No.
Would it be better than a system that's less ambitious and had less volitility (thus allowing to maximize compounding) Probably not.
That shouldn't be discouraging though, just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's foolish to pursue. Wisdom is knowing the difference between challenges and impossibilities.
"A dumb man never learns. A smart man learns from his own failure and success. But a wise man learns from the failure and success of others."
RM99, I'm a bit confused. On one hand your saying, "Of course it's possible..." and on the other you are saying, "Is it likely? No."
Which is it?
Remember the original post is from a single working mother, I believe...
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." --- "Therefore, I Believe it and I will see it. And every day and in every way, I am healthier, wealthier, and wiser."