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Thanks mike for providing this avenue, i do believe it will be helpful in making the transition from dabbler to committed.
First let me start with my story, plenty of technical background, technology and finance. Educated at a business school, owned a business until the economy said, oops sorry small business man you need lots of money to keep on trucking.
So how did i wind up here? Last march i received a call from a broker asking me was i interested in a free demo of their platform, hey it was free so what the heck. I learned quickly, this is not a video game so i did what we all have done, scoured the internet for all the information and "direction" i could find. Spent some money on "unique" education and indicators, all with money back guarantees, mom didnt raise a sucker, opened an account and tried my hand at live trading.
Had the trading part down but not the technical system. Lost my first $1100 when i received a call from the broker at 4:02 pm telling me i had to close out my position. What position i said, and they said the staggered one you entered this AM for three contracts long, i did not i said. Well it turned out i did, because i had no idea what i was doing. Of course it was a down day for the market, so much for following the trend.
So here i am a year later trying to get over the mental barriers of execution. I have finally decided on my strategies and the tools that will be used to execute, NT7 with three moving averages, trend bars and a couple different MACD setups for color. I use murrey math for support and resistance. I check the economic calendar every morning to define news times turn on my stereo for some good blues music and watch the charts. Every now and then especially around news events ill check the TV talking heads to get there opinion on what i should do next, lol. I will not trade before 9:40am, 8 minutes before or after news and after 3:30pm. Break for lunch at 11:15 and will rarely trade between 11:15 and 1pm.
I use an ATM strategy to set my initial stops and targets on the trade. My target is at 8 ticks and my stop is at 6 ticks. Once in the trade i manage by watching price action and my static and dynamic support/resistance points. Once the price has reached 4 ticks in my favor, stop is moved to +1, I don’t believe in breakeven since its really not breakeven when you have to pay the broker.
I use two T&S's on the desktop, one filtered at 4 contracts and another at 250 contracts. I use a 6475 volume and 2654 volume chart along with a 555 tick and ten minute chart for visual confirmations
Have established a threshold account base and am using a fixed ratio money management technique. Have established 9% as my gain trigger for increasing contract size (need to increase my threshold account base by 9% and sustain for 5 trading sessions prior to moving on to the next level). The threshold account base will be increased by the 9% increase at each level. So if the threshold account size is $4000. I will trade one contract until i reach $4360 and sustain that for 5 trading sessions. At that point, contract size will increase to two and the threshold account size will increase to $4360 and the process repeats. Once i have graduated to 4 contracts on the ES, i will officially be making a living as a futures trader.
After hitting the 4 contract target, i will consider moving into currency futures, 6E and use the same routine for increasing contracts.
The following 8 users say Thank You to trader1512 for this post:
Well I did it. Some minor distractions, wifes medical procedure bought us to 9:30, roofers then at 9:45. Got focused pretty quick though. Minor loss for the day. The market really did not have any strong swings and that was the problem. Volume was anemic. Once it hit 1194 it stagnated and weakly went between 1191 and 1195. Took a trade at 10:54 at 1194 and it tried but just never moved up and i stopped out. Psychology kicked in and I became real uncomfortable with commitment to another trade. Money management rules further restricted the opportunity for a second trade and could not find a band that I was comfortable with to maximize profit without slipping below my 1.25 rule for losses. I have set a daily target for losses and gains and will not trade outside of 1.25 of that target. Well here’s to tomorrow.
Come join me in my journey! 
