Commissions adds up in the long run

After doing 5-10 rounds trips a day on the ES (or another future contract) as a small retail day trader paying retail commission, I realised commission was breaking my account.

Say you pay $4.5 RT on ES as a small retail trader.
You have a $10,000 account and trade only 1 lot per clip.

10 RTs per day at $4.5/RT are $45/day, almost 4 ticks or 1 ES point. It takes very good trading skills to make over 4 ticks per day on average just to cover the commission, hence I changed my trading style, I do only 1 trade a day now and my profit after comission improved.

I used to pay $45/day * approx 230 days I trade in a year = $10,350 !!!

i.e. I needed to double my money on a year just to break even, that was ludicrous.

Still with 1 trade a day, it costs me just over 10% of my trading account over a year, that's still a very significant percentage of the account but can be done more easily.

What percentage of your trading account do you pay in commsission in a year? If you're a retail day trader, most would pay 10-100%. Do you find it easy to beat the commission?
 
Quote from shortbleu:

After doing 5-10 rounds trips a day on the ES (or another future contract) as a small retail day trader paying retail commission, I realised commission was breaking my account.

Say you pay $4.5 RT on ES as a small retail trader.
You have a $10,000 account and trade only 1 lot per clip.

10 RTs per day at $4.5/RT are $45/day, almost 4 ticks or 1 ES point. It takes very good trading skills to make over 4 ticks per day on average just to cover the commission, hence I changed my trading style, I do only 1 trade a day now and my profit after comission improved.

I used to pay $45/day * approx 230 days I trade in a year = $10,350 !!!

i.e. I needed to double my money on a year just to break even, that was ludicrous.

Still with 1 trade a day, it costs me just over 10% of my trading account over a year, that's still a very significant percentage of the account but can be done more easily.

What percentage of your trading account do you pay in commsission in a year? If you're a retail day trader, most would pay 10-100%. Do you find it easy to beat the commission?
 
you should never be afraid of entering a profitable trade because of the commission cost. why avoid an expected return of 10$ to save 4$? i'm a professional and have a roundtrip cost of 32 cents/contract of treasury futures and average somewhere around 1/3%/day in transaction costs.
 
the smartest folks in the room are watching YOU trade and charging you the commission.

you just figured this out?
 
Quote from shortbleu:

After doing 5-10 rounds trips a day on the ES (or another future contract) as a small retail day trader paying retail commission, I realised commission was breaking my account.

Say you pay $4.5 RT on ES as a small retail trader.
You have a $10,000 account and trade only 1 lot per clip.

10 RTs per day at $4.5/RT are $45/day, almost 4 ticks or 1 ES point. It takes very good trading skills to make over 4 ticks per day on average just to cover the commission, hence I changed my trading style, I do only 1 trade a day now and my profit after comission improved.

I used to pay $45/day * approx 230 days I trade in a year = $10,350 !!!

i.e. I needed to double my money on a year just to break even, that was ludicrous.

Still with 1 trade a day, it costs me just over 10% of my trading account over a year, that's still a very significant percentage of the account but can be done more easily.

What percentage of your trading account do you pay in commsission in a year? If you're a retail day trader, most would pay 10-100%. Do you find it easy to beat the commission?

If you were given a choice, based on your analysis, would you be a trader or would you be a broker?
 
Quote from shortbleu:

After doing 5-10 rounds trips a day on the ES (or another future contract) as a small retail day trader paying retail commission, I realised commission was breaking my account.

Say you pay $4.5 RT on ES as a small retail trader.
You have a $10,000 account and trade only 1 lot per clip.

10 RTs per day at $4.5/RT are $45/day, almost 4 ticks or 1 ES point. It takes very good trading skills to make over 4 ticks per day on average just to cover the commission, hence I changed my trading style, I do only 1 trade a day now and my profit after comission improved.

I used to pay $45/day * approx 230 days I trade in a year = $10,350 !!!

i.e. I needed to double my money on a year just to break even, that was ludicrous.

Still with 1 trade a day, it costs me just over 10% of my trading account over a year, that's still a very significant percentage of the account but can be done more easily.

What percentage of your trading account do you pay in commsission in a year? If you're a retail day trader, most would pay 10-100%. Do you find it easy to beat the commission?

Trade ZN. $1.43 at IB per.
 
Quote from shortbleu:

After doing 5-10 rounds trips a day on the ES (or another future contract) as a small retail day trader paying retail commission, I realised commission was breaking my account.

Say you pay $4.5 RT on ES as a small retail trader.
You have a $10,000 account and trade only 1 lot per clip.

10 RTs per day at $4.5/RT are $45/day, almost 4 ticks or 1 ES point. It takes very good trading skills to make over 4 ticks per day on average just to cover the commission, hence I changed my trading style, I do only 1 trade a day now and my profit after comission improved.

I used to pay $45/day * approx 230 days I trade in a year = $10,350 !!!

i.e. I needed to double my money on a year just to break even, that was ludicrous.

Still with 1 trade a day, it costs me just over 10% of my trading account over a year, that's still a very significant percentage of the account but can be done more easily.

What percentage of your trading account do you pay in commsission in a year? If you're a retail day trader, most would pay 10-100%. Do you find it easy to beat the commission?

You need to complete your analysis: add the bid-ask spread?

Please do it, and report the results. Good work!
 
Back
Top