Quote from tycoonman:
I know this isn't velocity future's board and there is no scoreboard, but, do any of you avg. 5-10k per day? And how long have you sustained those rates? What do you trade?
Most who have started in recent years and trade the Emini's probably unaware of Big S&P 500 futures contract used to trade at $500 a full point and traded in nickels at $25 each, daily ranges seldom were over four points. Depending on volatility, margins were anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 for first contract and my comm at the time were $12 bucks roundturn. So when one worked up to a three to five lot back then and nailed two points, damn good money in 80's and 90's.
Back then, huge psychological problems going from one lot to two lot, no matter what your account size was, NOW with ES Emini trading at 1/10th the size of old, traders still have same psychological problems cause many are way too under-capitalized, trading scared. And account size has NOTHING to do with how many contracts you should trade. And traders of present should be doing better than back then cause of computers and software are abundant now and data much easier to get and cheap. Much more information is present now then before and cause the guy who has two grand and opens an account, reads a book over the weekend and thinks he can compete against those who trade like a monkey, they lose much more now, and I luv it. People today have so much less patience, makes it better for me.
So to trade like days of old, min must do 30-50 contracts, I trade more than that now and average down on all my trades, but the fun part is the daily ranges seldom are four points.

You do anything long enough, you will get good at it, so long as you don't lose your mind and ability to keep saving up money.
But it still comes down to years of experience, screen time up the wazoo, thousands of trades, ability not to fall asleep if there are no trades for a few hours and NOT to take trades cause I am bored (lost the most early on), learning all the small nuances of ES that occur most days at certain hours, learning what to expect on report days, see where on the chart the small traders are going to get hurt the hardest, but unless inexperienced stop jumping around to different markets, indicators, chart patterns, timeframes, ticks etc etc etc, profiting will be a dream.
That famous line "Cut your losses short and let your profits run" had to be for long or longer term trading, cause I have been doing this so long, and I could never consistently get several point trades. I am just a scalper.