$500+ a day trading index futures, possible?

Certainly its possible if we are along the right direction of the market movement and use the lot size according to the capital money which we have to reach the desired amount of profits.
 
Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

The edge from the rare great setups is so fat and skewed, that it is almost insane to trade more marginal trades. Just do nothing most of the time, wait for slam dunks, then bet a meaningful but not crazy amount on them. A good daytrade setup like a big gap & crap move after an extended one-way trend, can offer a 75%+ win rate and a 5:1 risk/reward, which is highly profitable. Even just 1 of those every month, bet at a very conservative risk of 1% of capital per trade, will make on average 72.5% return per annum. Juice the risk to a still safe 3% per trade and you get a diabolical 666% per annum, yet your risk of a >10% drawdown is only about 1 in 50 - *assuming* you are right about the trade odds.
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GoC

Can you possibly elaborate on how the odds and R multiple of the gap-and-crap setup translate into a 72.5% pa return?

Thx.
 
I made $420/day trading ES
once I hit $420 I shut down for the day
3 contract min
9 contract max
max daily loss $1200

I could get it 4 out of 5 days

so one losing day would wipe out 3 winning days

worse streak was 13 losers in a row

best winning streak was 30 in a row

not sure what was special about $420, but I had a lot of superstitious quirks back then
 
Quote from oldtime:

I made $420/day trading ES
once I hit $420 I shut down for the day
3 contract min
9 contract max
max daily loss $1200

I could get it 4 out of 5 days

so one losing day would wipe out 3 winning days

worse streak was 13 losers in a row

best winning streak was 30 in a row

not sure what was special about $420, but I had a lot of superstitious quirks back then
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then there were times when I would get stuck with 7 contracts down $700 on the close

I would try to unload them one at a time overnight

those were sleepless nights

but then a couple of times I hit the gap on the open, and realized that is how you make money
 
Quote from bone:

I have some clients who spread trade the index futures against each other for a living. I would not label them "day traders" but rather swing or position traders.

One client here in Chicago and two clients in Singapore are particularly good at it in fact.

On the ES vs. NQ spread for example, the CME gives you a 92 % intitial margin credit to carry the position overnight. So, on a one lot spread, the initial overnight margin is $416 to carry an ES vs. NQ spread.

The CME margin credit to carry the mini- Dow Jones versus the ES is 90 %.

Same type of scenarios with the European and Asian stock index spreads.

So, point being, you can carry spreads overnight for really really cheap capitalization.

Just a thought.
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yes, if I was starting all over, that is exactly what I would do

I fooled around with that es vs ym for a few days

I like it because you don't get shaken out on a 100 point day

but then I started getting naked and all the old bad memories started coming back

otherwise, If you like money managing those index spreads are really good
 
but I can tell you this

I don't know how to post charts

but if you are betting on reversion to the mean

you may be sadly burned

there is one where ym stayed above es for over a year
 
$500 per day is very good amount of money for people like me who are small retail traders who are happy with few couple hundreds of dollars and this much on daily basis is amazing.
 
Quote from Pipflow:

$500 per day is very good amount of money for people like me who are small retail traders who are happy with few couple hundreds of dollars and this much on daily basis is amazing.
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if you can trade, why not join some firms that can for few 1oos $, get you funded. If you can't trade , then you have no business trading real money-no matter how small the live account. If the idea of joining a firm is not interesting to you, then with compounding , some leverage and a bit of luck and some patience, you can increase your account to make this on average.
 
most possible results is you will lose $500/day.

I will not discourage you. that is the fact. technically and theoretically it is realistic and doable. but hard facts will tell you it is not doable if you are a single hand small retail trader.

why?
1. make money is not a trading idea
2. when you think about this additional money you will get in each day, you will be very excited to conclude: better than an ordninary 9-5 job, you will be eager to put a trade on and make this $500 bucks. emtionally/intelligently you will be clouded by this $500money.
3. a day is short, when you did not make the $500 how about the morning, or you lost $500 because you did not notice something unusal, then you may hurry up in the afternoon, try to catch up,... or what ever strange thoughts will drive you to do some "does not make any sense" trades for the sake of "make $500". if you mess a day, maybe ok. no bog deal, but you mess two days or weeks,....since each trading session is short!

to me, I will not put myself into a coerced situation, if that happens, I often stumble. since in a coerced situation, all judgements are emtional or not trading related.

make $500 a day in trade is a hassle. it forces you to take you trades you may not judge clearly. no one can judge the market correctly each day. I trade the indexs using a very simple method, get in the opening, then out at closing. I do not use stop loss. just like gamble. I just bet three results: red bar, green or no-red/green bar.

in a up trend market, I buy morning dip, sell at 3:30 or vice versa.
even in a nicely trending market, there is 30%-40% time of red-bars sandwiched with the strong bull market. plus some red-bar are big. average speaking, make some gains. but I can not declare I can borrow in each day $500. that is a day dream.

so I forget about day trading and do overnight swing trades.
 
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