I personally think that 2 months of studying stocks is not a lot of time. Your original post reminds me of myself a few years ago. I went live after about 2 months and ended up loosing 2500 in 2 days. It takes a long while to have been through the ups, downs and sudden craziness the futures markets can go through. Even now I still get shocked by price action from time to time.

Do yourself a favor and get a "real" feel for the market. I know the idea is that you will be profitable right out of the gate, but what if you happen to enter a long at the exact time the U.S. gets downgraded by the ratings agencies (just a hypothetical). In that situation your stop will most likely get slipped and your $5000 will all of a sudden be $1000 less. Then your below the initial margin level and you'll not be allowed to make any more trades in ES. In fact come to think of it, do you know about initial margin, margin calls, automatic position liquidation etc......? There's a lot to learn. Are you prepared for a computer crash or ISP outage..... the list goes on.

I think Mike's idea about Forex or other markets is a good one. Start of trading things with less risk and sim trading futures. I promise that you will see why this made good sense in a few months. Or you can learn the hard way..... I suppose that is effective teaching also, but its a nasty experience to put your self through.

Whatever path you take.... I wish you good luck!

Ravanous 

Thanks, Big Mike and the rest of you for your advice. I wouldn't have guessed a forum of ruthless day-traders would be so generous :P I'm a big fan of back testing for practice... Going to the beginning, far in the past, and slowly moving the chart forward, marking when you'd buy and being able to quickly see the result. My trades end up being pretty simple and are based oftenly on 3 indications only: Trends (market direction, trendlines, divergence), Stochastics, and MACD for a second opinion. I have back tested many intraday charts of the e-mini just to find when the best, least likely to fail trades occur and have found several patterns that repeat daily: patterns that yield great returns. The main thing I feel like I need to change about myself at this beginning stage is my neediness for results causing me to take a 1-3 tick profit, which is easy to do in sim trading, but harder to consistently do in live. If I were to describe my trading style in two words they'd probably be: patient and technical. If you have any suggestions for me on where to direct myself based on the above, I am very interested to hear your experienced advice!

There are many dangers and pitfalls to backtesting and there's a great deal of experience that comes with time and lessons learned about what types and methods of backtesting are more accurate, and what types are less accurate.

I know when I first started backtesting, I would get incredibly excited about a performance report or an equity curve...only to realize the backtest was positively biased for any number of factors/parameters.

Conversely, there's probably a lot of strategies I trashed in the beginning because they didn't immediately look attractive enough.

As with most traders, you're caught between "divulging" your ingenious trading ideas and edge and at the same time, you want to have a second set of eyes scrutinize your approach to give you ideas, tips, tricks, to ensure you're not overlooking something.

I've even had to choose between masking my ideas while asking for professional consultant help in coding certain aspects of a strategy.

So between the secrecy (rather than being on open book) and the lack of experience, the only way you can really get to be a crafty backtester is through seat/monitor time.

Just know, if something looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Be wary of strategies that you backtest, as the real results live may be close, slightly off or in some cases, completely opposite.

Sentenza 

I personally think that 2 months of studying stocks is not a lot of time. Your original post reminds me of myself a few years ago. I went live after about 2 months and ended up loosing 2500 in 2 days. It takes a long while to have been through the ups, downs and sudden craziness the futures markets can go through. Even now I still get shocked by price action from time to time. Do yourself a favor and get a "real" feel for the market. I know the idea is that you will be profitable right out of the gate, but what if you happen to enter a long at the exact time the U.S. gets downgraded by the ratings agencies (just a hypothetical). In that situation your stop will most likely get slipped and your $5000 will all of a sudden be $1000 less. Then your below the initial margin level and you'll not be allowed to make any more trades in ES. In fact come to think of it, do you know about initial margin, margin calls, automatic position liquidation etc......? There's a lot to learn. Are you prepared for a computer crash or ISP outage..... the list goes on. I think Mike's idea about Forex or other markets is a good one. Start of trading things with less risk and sim trading futures. I promise that you will see why this made good sense in a few months. Or you can learn the hard way..... I suppose that is effective teaching also, but its a nasty experience to put your self through. Whatever path you take.... I wish you good luck!

Good advice - Thank you. My heart goes out to the e-mini, but if the consensus is that $5k ain't enough, then might I ask, do you have any suggestions for another future? What about the 6E? Or is forex really the way to go with a small account? Unfortunately, I've been putting in all my study hours on futures and know jackcrap about forex. I'll look into them though, based on the advice of those whom have posted in this thread for my behalf - a sentiment I do entirely appreciate

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Ravanous 

Good advice - Thank you. My heart goes out to the e-mini, but if the consensus is that $5k ain't enough, then might I ask, do you have any suggestions for another future? What about the 6E? Or is forex really the way to go with a small account? Unfortunately, I've been putting in all my study hours on futures and know jackcrap about forex. I'll look into them though, based on the advice of those whom have posted in this thread for my behalf - a sentiment I do entirely appreciate

You can still use NinjaTrader or whatever with a forex broker like MB Trading. The 6E (futures) and EUR/USD (forex) are virtually identical tick-for-tick for all intents and purposes of the normal retail trader. The main reasons to avoid forex are dishonest brokers who take the other side of your trade or purposely give you bad fills. You can avoid these pitfalls by selecting a top notch broker. In the futures world, you don't have to worry so much about this because it is highly regulated.

I personally trade both futures and forex. Futures for my normal intraday trading, and Forex for my 'experimental' trades or longer term trades. I enjoy both, and they both serve their purpose.

Mike

Big Mike 

Yes I agree futures are preferred for tax reasons, more here: The Tax Thread I thought we could use a thread devoted to Taxes. This is all things taxes regarding trading. One example, Advantages/disadvantages for different situations (equities, futures, forex, etc) as well as benefits of filing sole-proprietor vs LLC or as a … But my concern here is not how to lower his taxable gains, but to make sure he actually has gains to begin with Mike

My point wasn't to tout trading of any sort, but just to pass on what I know about a question he asked. He's going to get plenty of trading advice, maybe some from me but since he brought up the tax angle and there were no other responses, I thought I'd address that.

Big Mike 

The main reasons to avoid futures are dishonest brokers who take the other side of your trade or purposely give you bad fills. Mike

Did you mean, "The main reasons to avoid forex are dishonest brokers who take the other side of your trade or purposely give you bad fills."?

jstnbrg 

Did you mean, "The main reasons to avoid forex are dishonest brokers who take the other side of your trade or purposely give you bad fills."?

Yes, my bad. Post edited.

Mike

So the consensus for me is to start out with a trading venture that ha scaled-down bank investment requirements like Forex, where you can have $0.10-$1 pips? Are there any futures that anyone would recommend that one could, with good bankroll management, trade with a $5,000 account?

I've been trading 1 contract of ES and 6E with a degree of success (meaning, if I'm being serious, I usually come out in the green), but I've noticed that the 6E especially can really make or lose a ton of money in about a 10 second period even with 1 contract. One time I lost $800 in about 15 seconds and I spent the rest of the day bringing that up to -$500 by making serious trades. Are most futures like this? Or do any resemble forex, where each tick isn't so devastating?

It's me. How about you? How much of that 5k is gone? If you are like me, you will lose a crap load of cash before you figure out what the secret is. I can tell you right now. It is how you respond under stress. The emotion of trading is where this is at. If you get caught up in all the sales crap, meaning, buy this system or this indicator or this chart candy, if you get caught up in that, you will only lose. If instead you do the uncommon thing, which is, learn to read your emotion while in a trade, you may make it. My best indicator is "me".