Not wasting my time on that. I am only interested in what I can make.
Am I Wasting My Time?
- Thread starter Tall Mike
- Start date
Not wasting my time on that. I am only interested in what I can make.
It's good to know exceptional traders. The ones I know that make a living trade much bigger accounts. Hopefully your acquaintance's are willing to share.
I heard about unicorns on the internet, same place I hear about traders. I just googled them.
Oh, you can make a lot with risking less amounts of monies. Of course, I trade options aside from stocks. MRNA 204.29%, NVAX 388.37%, SIX -100%, NAT -95.38%, INO 374.68%, NIO 213.08%, picked the most extreme ones, other times smaller gains or smaller losses. These are from buying call options. You can get good results from stocks as well, VXRT 304.09% over 3 days holding, NIO 69.21%. This is from swing trading which I got from my trading journal. With options or stocks, you do not need a lot of monies to make substantial amounts. You do have to pick enough of the right stocks to make it worth your while. Nothing comes free, you have to work for it.
Ever since the MF Global and PFG Best debacles I tell my clients to NOT keep more than $50K in their trading accounts. If the FCM requires more margin or if you want to trade more size or more positions you can wire funds in 15 minutes.
I used to keep T-Bills in my account but FCMs aren’t so keen on the practice these days.
I used to keep T-Bills in my account but FCMs aren’t so keen on the practice these days.
And they do it day in day out and year in year out for 30 years? You need to if you are trading full time for a living with $100K.
Personally I found the opposite to be true. I was never able to profit trading index options.
A very liquid instrument like SPY has lots of players, tends to be very efficient and very difficult for an amateur retail to establish an edge. MM do not have to use wide spread to protect themselves from "knowledge traders"
A thinly traded instrument on the other hand has few price discovery and tends to be inefficient. The inefficiency is reflected in wide bid/ask. It is easier for an amateur retail to exploit.
It could be I don't have any edge?
Make the following simulation in Excel:
- Account: $50,000.
- Margin ES per contract: $5,000.
- Net profit per trading day: 1 points ES (per contract).
- Still deduct the commission from the 1 point profit.
- Trading period: 12 months.
- Take end of each month $5,000 from your account for living expenses.
- Reinvest the remaining money.
Questions:
- Is this possible?
- Will you are account still grow?
- How much money will there be in your account after 12 months?
Specifically - what is the opposite?
And since you found the 'opposite to be true' - does it follow from that that you found something which was easier? If so, what then?
What does efficient mean? In practical terms?
ES/SPY moves substantially on a daily basis, yes?
Does not a wider spread make it even more difficult for the amateur? In practical terms - how is it 'easier' for an amateur to 'exploit' an illiquid stock?
When I was just starting out I found out after the fact that I had just entered a listed, but very illiquid stock that had days where it barely transacted. I was just lucky to get out.
It's possible. I wouldn't know.
Day trading - I only ever traded the ES seriously. I dabbled in CL for a few months - a market I assume should be considered less efficient than ES, but found it to be too wild and unpredictable to me.
ES is a technical market and predictable to a certain degree. Just observe where the morning HOD was printed and later on the current HOD. These are not random levels. Just from my general statistics I know with a 90 % certainty that ES put in the HOD already today.
At 1 point per day, I only got a profit of around $13k in total.
Seems like its not at all possible on a 50k account.
1 point a day is chickenshit but even that is out of reach until you roll up your sleeves and get to work. Jerking around on these threads all day won't get it.