1-2 ES points a day

Quote from esnewbie:

Fearless,

I am trying to find the right medium between high expectancy and reality. While most of the successful ES guys trade fulltime, I am at work during work hours. So I need to enter my bracket orders basically before market opens. I plan to enter a limit where I want to enter with 2 point exit and stoploss. I will enter a second order in opposite direction at the stoploss to recover some of the loss. So while I would like to have no losing days, since I am basically batting once a day, the odds are I will be wrong sometimes. I just want to minimize the damage on those days to live to fight another day.
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Hello esnewbie,

I appreciate your circumstances and therefore your reply.

Knowing what I know now after 10 years apprenticeship in the markets, I would not employ your approach.

I would not put money on it and I would not even bother to paper trade it.

I would either change my circumstances and follow the ES morning session or I would find something that I could follow in the evenings to get me started.

Incidentally, I intend to be a market apprentice for life. The day I say that I have mastered the markets is the day that I quit ... that is a part of my edge.
 
Quote from fearless9:

Hello esnewbie,

I appreciate your circumstances and therefore your reply.

Knowing what I know now after 10 years apprenticeship in the markets, I would not employ your approach.

I would not put money on it and I would not even bother to paper trade it.

I would either change my circumstances and follow the ES morning session or I would find something that I could follow in the evenings to get me started.

Incidentally, I intend to be a market apprentice for life. The day I say that I have mastered the markets is the day that I quit ... that is a part of my edge.
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Fearless,

I appreciate your honesty. Since these are the constraints I can trade under, I will pursue them and let you all know how I fare. Thanks again for all your feedback.
 
Quote from esnewbie:

Fearless,

I appreciate your honesty. Since these are the constraints I can trade under, I will pursue them and let you all know how I fare. Thanks again for all your feedback.
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Goodluck in your adventure esnewbie.

If you only have weekends/evenings available, then maybe you might consider charting software with a playback facility to practice upon.

I still use this and always will as I set the playback speed to a higher number (currently 10x) and pause the action every time I spot an exit/entry... keeps me sharp and also tricks my reflexes into thinking that realtime is slow.

Actually, trading realtime consistently is somewhat easy if you have set yourself up correctly and stay with the plan.
But it is very very difficult ( seemingly impossible at times) to reach this point where it is co seemingly easy.

Once there, you must stay there, hence the perpetual apprentice.
 
To the ESNewbie and anyone else that can offer thoughts...VERY SERIOUS:

you said you work all day and will program trades...I.e. enter at night or in the early morning...bracket and enter and close out trade etc...that is VERY risky...let me explain...what if you enter and than your stop is "gapped" over etc...you will have a huge loss...I'd really look at this and consider it..TO THE ES PROS:please explain to the ESNEwbie all the "risks with entering orders and not monitoring" etc...VERY serious...please reply ESnewbie and explain to him...thanks...
 
I haven't read the entire thread, so please excuse this if already covered.

It's fine to say one can make a living off a consistent 1 - 2 ES pts/day, but the discussion's incomplete if the # of roundtrips and commissions is not included.

If a roundtrip costs you $5.00/contract and it takes 10 roundtrips to get that 1 pt. or 20 roundtrips to get 2 pts., well then, you're just breaking even. Exaggerated, yes, but entirely possible.
 
Quote from esnewbie:

This is based on backtesting. Once it goes in 1 direction a certain number of ticks..the momo is likely to continue at least enough to allow you to reduce ur loss. The point then is not to make a profit but just reduce loss size.
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Then why not skip the 1st trade altogether? Your loss-reduce would be a winner then.

If you have a significant probability in your backtests that, as you said "Once it goes in 1 direction a certain number of ticks..the momo is likely to continue at least enough to allow you to reduce ur loss" then you have a winning setup.
If not, you're just as likely to lose more instead of reduce losses. Every trade is a new one, remember?

Ursa..
 
Quote from increasenow:

the thought is to make 1-2 ES points in ONE roundtrip...not 20 roundtrips for one-two little points...
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Then you're stating that a newbie will have a 100% win rate every day. Is this correct?

It doesn't work that way.
 
Quote from MajorUrsa:

Then why not skip the 1st trade altogether? Your loss-reduce would be a winner then.

If you have a significant probability in your backtests that, as you said "Once it goes in 1 direction a certain number of ticks..the momo is likely to continue at least enough to allow you to reduce ur loss" then you have a winning setup.
If not, you're just as likely to lose more instead of reduce losses. Every trade is a new one, remember?

Ursa..
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Ursa,

How will I know if a given setup will workout or not unless I take each one with goal of meeting the 2point target. The normal volatility is not high enough to take the inverse of my trades and be profitable. However, if blows through my stoploss,historically it tends to continue in that direction for a little while longer. So once the setup has not worked out, my goal is to merely reduce the loss at that point...not try to make a profit.
 
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