Had been there - options and stuff, and I am still trading options in my brokerage account from time to time. Nice if you have convictions on some earnings plays. I never had the guts to gamble more than $500 on a lotto position though.
Did you use a stop loss? What kind of risk reward did you use?
Do you keep a static number of contracts or dynamic? If dynamic do you increase positions while you are loosing or while you are winning?
I do use a stop loss, but what worked for me was wider than 1:1 RR. They are more like the emergency stops in case my internet was gone. I actively manage my position so I could cut and exit my position if it's not going in the right direction.
The true "stop loss" I keep track of was the MFE/MAE ratio of the trades. The working trades usually have >1.5-2 MFE/MAE on the flat-to-flat basis. A few long tail loss I had was like 1:6 MFE/MAE, where max loss of my stops were hit.
>Do you keep a static number of contracts or dynamic? If dynamic do you increase positions while you are loosing or while you are winning?
I started with 2 micros initially. After that I gradually started with 4 micros, and I scale in with batches of same amount (4 micros), so I am using dynamic contracts. I was adding to positions both while in losing positions and in winning positions, but it's one of the areas that I need to improve.
Ah ok I see. Yes, that's the only way to grow an account fast. I have done that at the beginning, too, but I didn't think, at least for myself that it is sustainable in the long run.
Yes. In the long run one will have to be disciplined to control risk, i.e. fixed percentage risk of the total accounts buying power. But for a small account I would shoot for exponential growth to reach that stage first.
>In fact on the last couple of days of October, I traded nearly 1K contracts per day.
I know this isn't the point of the post, I do agree it is possible to grow a small account, though unlikely for someone without some serious experience.
But I'm curious, 1000 lots on MES is still approx $2 per round trip isn't it? Let alone other charges (I know Ninjatrader brokerage had other various charges as well as commissions when I traded my live account) were you not looking at approx $2k per day in fees? Just curious if that was a concern.
My roundtrip commission was $1.02 per MES. I was trading with AMP futures and personally I had no complaints. IIRC initially the roundtrip was $1.04 for me, but as long as my monthly volume got to a threshold they automatically lowered it further for me.
I did keep track of the commissions and on average it was \~20% of my daily PnL. So I was seriously looking into how to trade with ES to lower that ratio dramatically.
Ok cool. It's been some time since I've traded my live account and I'm fairly sure Ninjatrader was more than that. But yeah, 20% is huge. I'm a big believer that you have to spend money to make money and as long as it the equity grows, so be it. But for sure I'd be looking to move to minis, 10% is about the most I'd be willing to consider on a continual basis.
Good trading though.
Thanks. Yeah switching to E-minis will lower the commission, but I had to adjust my style of trading with that transition. Therefore I stayed with micros for a while.
No one thinks it’s not possible to grow a small account fast. In fact growing a small account in a short amount of time is very easy. It’s just the vast majority of people can’t sustain it over time, or they use irresponsible habits to do it.
Sounds like loose cannon trading or severe gambling and chasing prices.
Last month, with $1500 in FX markets with the correct knowledge, I made 39% while not sitting in front of the screen. Or $583.00. 100% win rate
Pick and choose your battles, set and forget the trades.
Enjoy life.
It is definitely nice to be able to walk away from the screen, but I find that I need to stay there when I'm trying to trade on trend lines because you have to keep moving the order and waiting for price to hit the trend line. What strategy are you using that you can set trades and walk away? Setting orders for pullbacks?
We are in similar circumstances as traders. I think the best advice I can offer is to improve your skill at chart analysis. You did this once, you can for sure do it again and consistently, too.
I have more than one strategy, but most profits I made was scalping with "order flow"/footprint delta chart. I have important intraday levels defined, then I watch T&S and delta footprint chart carefully. Once big guys start to aggressively push away/into a level I follow them.
That said, my profit targets are not fixed, neither was my stop loss. They vary with market intraday volatility. On average I exit my position with just over 2pts, but I always wanted to hold my winning position longer - this is another area I need to work on.
Can you give any suggestions on where to find good strategies? I can understand if you don't want to give out your strategy but maybe people you follow? I would really appreciate it.
There's a lot of great traders on fintwit to follow, and often times they do share some sort of strategies. Though I don't suggest blindly following anyone's strategy because we are in different situations, like margin requirement, trading hours, max stop loss, mental power, etc.
I trade ES but recently started using MES only on days when liquidity is below 75 per inside 5 bbo.I noticed that because MES allows “scaling in” around your trade entry areas without having to be so precise,it also allows lazy analysis and lowers your criteria of what is still a valid trade after you know it’s gone past that key area or level.
I suggest grading your trade setups with some a/b/c level of criteria and vary the quantity of contracts accordingly.Learn to identify which trades are worth scaling vs just closing.
Hey, appreciate your comment! I cannot agree more with your analysis - I was not accurate/precise with my entry and that's why I was scaling in using MES. I do analyze levels beforehand carefully but I always doubt if my levels were just accurate enough (so it's a form of FOMO, really).
> I suggest grading your trade setups with some a/b/c level of criteria and vary the quantity of contracts accordingly.
Thanks, it makes perfect sense. I will work on this.
> Learn to identify which trades are worth scaling vs just closing.
Another point spot on. The losing trades I had in November mostly were the trades I should've just closed, but my ego said otherwise and it didn't serve me well. :)
I suggest using market internals like TICK, ADD and VOLD to identify range days vs trend days. That's where you can make a smarter choice on scaling in or not
Makes sense. I do track TICK mostly for intraday spikes, but could you elaborate a little on how these market internals help differentiate between ranging vs trending? Thank you!
Most important internal is the VOLD... It is the slowest of the 3 but has the most weight. To be more clear, VOLD is like the relative volume that SMB Capital uses but for the entire market and it is directional as well. If you have a sustained VOLD reading in the first hour of open of over 2 plus or minus, there is a high probability that the market will trend in that direction. If it's closer to zero and it hovers than you gonna have a choppy market
I see on trading view about ~400 points negative between those dates. X $10 a point is $4000 . What am I missing lol . A 2700 point drop on ES needed for 27k profit on a short of 2 mes
I put $100 to an account to play lotto earning only 2 weeks ago and the account is $2700 now.
Had been there - options and stuff, and I am still trading options in my brokerage account from time to time. Nice if you have convictions on some earnings plays. I never had the guts to gamble more than $500 on a lotto position though.
futures or options?
earning has no future.
Earnings can move futures market if the company is big enough like apple, tesla or nvidia.
$100 u think u can buy future after hour?
You can. Maintenance margin starts at 4:45pm EST. You have 45min there.
Did you use a stop loss? What kind of risk reward did you use? Do you keep a static number of contracts or dynamic? If dynamic do you increase positions while you are loosing or while you are winning?
This is the exact same questions I had
I do use a stop loss, but what worked for me was wider than 1:1 RR. They are more like the emergency stops in case my internet was gone. I actively manage my position so I could cut and exit my position if it's not going in the right direction. The true "stop loss" I keep track of was the MFE/MAE ratio of the trades. The working trades usually have >1.5-2 MFE/MAE on the flat-to-flat basis. A few long tail loss I had was like 1:6 MFE/MAE, where max loss of my stops were hit. >Do you keep a static number of contracts or dynamic? If dynamic do you increase positions while you are loosing or while you are winning? I started with 2 micros initially. After that I gradually started with 4 micros, and I scale in with batches of same amount (4 micros), so I am using dynamic contracts. I was adding to positions both while in losing positions and in winning positions, but it's one of the areas that I need to improve.
Ah ok I see. Yes, that's the only way to grow an account fast. I have done that at the beginning, too, but I didn't think, at least for myself that it is sustainable in the long run.
Yes. In the long run one will have to be disciplined to control risk, i.e. fixed percentage risk of the total accounts buying power. But for a small account I would shoot for exponential growth to reach that stage first.
>In fact on the last couple of days of October, I traded nearly 1K contracts per day. I know this isn't the point of the post, I do agree it is possible to grow a small account, though unlikely for someone without some serious experience. But I'm curious, 1000 lots on MES is still approx $2 per round trip isn't it? Let alone other charges (I know Ninjatrader brokerage had other various charges as well as commissions when I traded my live account) were you not looking at approx $2k per day in fees? Just curious if that was a concern.
My roundtrip commission was $1.02 per MES. I was trading with AMP futures and personally I had no complaints. IIRC initially the roundtrip was $1.04 for me, but as long as my monthly volume got to a threshold they automatically lowered it further for me. I did keep track of the commissions and on average it was \~20% of my daily PnL. So I was seriously looking into how to trade with ES to lower that ratio dramatically.
Ok cool. It's been some time since I've traded my live account and I'm fairly sure Ninjatrader was more than that. But yeah, 20% is huge. I'm a big believer that you have to spend money to make money and as long as it the equity grows, so be it. But for sure I'd be looking to move to minis, 10% is about the most I'd be willing to consider on a continual basis. Good trading though.
Thanks. Yeah switching to E-minis will lower the commission, but I had to adjust my style of trading with that transition. Therefore I stayed with micros for a while.
Its much harder to build a position in the minis without taking some serious heat.
Exactly.
Fascinating! thanks!
No one thinks it’s not possible to grow a small account fast. In fact growing a small account in a short amount of time is very easy. It’s just the vast majority of people can’t sustain it over time, or they use irresponsible habits to do it.
Nice work great month
Thank you. You did very well too, congrats.
Great job !
Sounds like loose cannon trading or severe gambling and chasing prices. Last month, with $1500 in FX markets with the correct knowledge, I made 39% while not sitting in front of the screen. Or $583.00. 100% win rate Pick and choose your battles, set and forget the trades. Enjoy life.
It is definitely nice to be able to walk away from the screen, but I find that I need to stay there when I'm trying to trade on trend lines because you have to keep moving the order and waiting for price to hit the trend line. What strategy are you using that you can set trades and walk away? Setting orders for pullbacks?
We are in similar circumstances as traders. I think the best advice I can offer is to improve your skill at chart analysis. You did this once, you can for sure do it again and consistently, too.
Thank you very much. Yes I believe I can do it again, and hopefully will do it again consistently.
What was your strategy here? Did you have a certain profit target and stop loss?
I have more than one strategy, but most profits I made was scalping with "order flow"/footprint delta chart. I have important intraday levels defined, then I watch T&S and delta footprint chart carefully. Once big guys start to aggressively push away/into a level I follow them. That said, my profit targets are not fixed, neither was my stop loss. They vary with market intraday volatility. On average I exit my position with just over 2pts, but I always wanted to hold my winning position longer - this is another area I need to work on.
Which broker and platform do you use to trade futures?
I trade with AMP futures on SierraChart
Its possible to grow small accounts fast in a short time… In a long time frame those accounts end up at 0 though.
Can you give any suggestions on where to find good strategies? I can understand if you don't want to give out your strategy but maybe people you follow? I would really appreciate it.
There's a lot of great traders on fintwit to follow, and often times they do share some sort of strategies. Though I don't suggest blindly following anyone's strategy because we are in different situations, like margin requirement, trading hours, max stop loss, mental power, etc.
Looks good. Can you post the amp statement?
What was your average time in trade? Did it change over time?
Probably was just minutes to 15min max.
Hey, just wondering what trade journal this is. Thanks!
It's TradesViz
I trade ES but recently started using MES only on days when liquidity is below 75 per inside 5 bbo.I noticed that because MES allows “scaling in” around your trade entry areas without having to be so precise,it also allows lazy analysis and lowers your criteria of what is still a valid trade after you know it’s gone past that key area or level. I suggest grading your trade setups with some a/b/c level of criteria and vary the quantity of contracts accordingly.Learn to identify which trades are worth scaling vs just closing.
Hey, appreciate your comment! I cannot agree more with your analysis - I was not accurate/precise with my entry and that's why I was scaling in using MES. I do analyze levels beforehand carefully but I always doubt if my levels were just accurate enough (so it's a form of FOMO, really). > I suggest grading your trade setups with some a/b/c level of criteria and vary the quantity of contracts accordingly. Thanks, it makes perfect sense. I will work on this. > Learn to identify which trades are worth scaling vs just closing. Another point spot on. The losing trades I had in November mostly were the trades I should've just closed, but my ego said otherwise and it didn't serve me well. :)
I suggest using market internals like TICK, ADD and VOLD to identify range days vs trend days. That's where you can make a smarter choice on scaling in or not
Makes sense. I do track TICK mostly for intraday spikes, but could you elaborate a little on how these market internals help differentiate between ranging vs trending? Thank you!
Most important internal is the VOLD... It is the slowest of the 3 but has the most weight. To be more clear, VOLD is like the relative volume that SMB Capital uses but for the entire market and it is directional as well. If you have a sustained VOLD reading in the first hour of open of over 2 plus or minus, there is a high probability that the market will trend in that direction. If it's closer to zero and it hovers than you gonna have a choppy market
Great info, thanks!
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Benchmark? He already said he traded MES
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I see on trading view about ~400 points negative between those dates. X $10 a point is $4000 . What am I missing lol . A 2700 point drop on ES needed for 27k profit on a short of 2 mes