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Fellas,
it's very interesting how you was capitalized after you became consistently profitable?
I'm trading 3y by now and it seems I started to be consistently profitable on my small retail account. But I'm undercapitalized and I don't want to risk more than 2% of my capital per trade in order to earn more.
Please share how did you get a capital when you was undercapitalized or any ways you see for a consistently profitable trader to get more capital.
Thanks.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals, U308 and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,059 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,410
Thanks Received: 10,226
Could be an interesting subject, not sure I'd day it's "off-topic" seems very on-topic to me. Maybe @Big Mike can move it to Traders Hideout.
In my case I'm trading entirely my own capital. I worked on institutional/big energy trading desks and was paid well enough to go out on my own several years ago. Since then I've made more than I take out of the account, so my account has grown steadily.
Very interested to here everybody else's responses.
I would strongly advice to stick to the 2% rule, depending on your strategy or skils, that might still be a bit high.
depends on your success-factor and the target/stops.
There is no short-cut in trading, as you seem to be on the good path, continue
there are sources to obtain external capital, but your style might not be compatible with their requirement
as you seem to have something that works, keep going...
Depending on how is the model, you might want to automate some of it, or semi-automate it
so you can do more instruments, even if it's just the alarm to know where the bucks can be made
I converted an old 401K account from a previous employer to a self-directed IRA account and use it to trade futures.
It is not advisable to trade futures from your retirement account, but I do it for the following reasons
1) This account is less that 10% of my retirement accounts
2) Defer tax complications
If you are consistently profitable, your account will grow in no time. As you grow your account the 2% rule will afford you to incrementally trade more contracts.
I started with a small account, lost it a few times, and eventually it started to grow. I think with smaller accounts it is hard to risk 2% or less and really get anywhere. I know I did not, and could not, do that. I risked a lot more. It worked for me, but I don;t necessarily recommend it for everyone...
Thanks! Good advise.
Yes, I want to stick to that rule, 2% in my best trades. I'd not say it's too much basing on the win rate and avg win/loss factors, I just enter into my best setups and skip bad and so-so setups.
Yes, I already automated many checks - basically I managed to write my own custom filters to scan through US stock universe to find specific patterns(which were back-tested to get positive expectations) in stocks in play. So when my filters fire - I just look at the context of a particular pattern and make a decision to enter/skip the trade. I found that this is the best way to be profitable for me - it's like to take best from both systematic and discretionary trading.
How do you manage to withdraw the funds from IRA when you are in profit and what are penalties? Could you share more details about it ? One of my friend asked to me.
Yes, that's why I started this topic) I try to avoid that. My point is if you have established a habit - it's much harder not to fall into that habitual behavior pattern later. And later that could be costly.
I do not withdraw funds, I reallocate them to other investments. It is like any other 401K or IRA account, you choose where to keep your money, stocks, MF's etc. With self-directed IRA, Futures / Forex etc is an additional option and you can distribute your funds among them as you wish.