From Micros to Millions: 2% per day

[DevBru]

sstheo, dont worry too much about the commissions. If you keep up your work, trading high volume in a consistent way, you will be able too netotiate completly different rates with your broker, especially once you move from the micros to the minis. And when you make the switch to the minis, it will make total sense to lease a CME seat. With commission rates dropping and the discount on the exchange fees, you will cut your cost per trade by something like 50%, which makes a huge difference when you pay something like 10,000 USD per month to your broker. More change for girls and black jack !

Even when you are paying $1500/month in commissions and you only need an IOM seat it is worth leasing one, leasing prices on those are only $200-$300 per month but it would give almost $600 in commissions savings per month. (Assuming the commission round turn is $3.7, like it is at AMP).

 

[sstheo]

Im calling BS on the OP already, no way a beginner 1 lot micro trader can make 131 points in 4 days, by making 200 trades.

$650 dollars yes for sure. Net 13 pts by trading 1 emini after taking losses. But not 131 points in four days.

If i could net just 13 pts every week in the ES, i would be a very rich man. I would quickly scale to 100+ lots, and make over $65,000 a week.

15 years now, this month. $100k+ lost to the big boys. Top 50 on ZuluTrade. Top 13 of 1400 in CME micro challenge. 6 funded accounts with OneUp and Leeloo in last 2 years.

I may still trade like a newbie, but I have been around the block a few times.

 

[sstheo]

Per contract, he extracts anywhere from 62 to 82 percent of the daily linear H/L range (depending if he trades 24 hours or RTH).

Oh wait... he explicitly states his figures are NET....
His actual "take" per contract is 76 to 107 percent of the daily linear H/L range!!
(using .40c per side/.80c per round-trip as an estimate)

He is a natural, a natural novice!

My wife still thinks so, that is for sure... (hopefully the expert will emerge soon)

 

[sstheo]

better to aim for the stars and fall short, but it still needs to be grounded in reality.

the guy's doing on avg MES 50 trades/day with around $3 profit/trade which means he's scalping around 3 ticks on avg.

1. he's doing this with the micros which means the % of his profits sacrificed to commissions is going to be very high already. doing this while scalping for 3 ticks avg is even more inefficient. his trading style is already conducive to negative alpha.

2. he's scalping for a 3 tick avg during a time when index futures volume is dominated by hft + algos. you're literally competing against machines developed by some of the smartest minds with phds from caltech and mit that eroded much of the edge that existed previously with manual scalpers.

ever wondered why the cme index futures (esp. nq/es) are so prone to fakeouts, liquidity sweeps, fades, etc.? b/c among all cme products, the es and esp the nq have the highest % of retail volume. from the perspective of the hft algos, it's the best market for extracting and absorbing all that retail liquidity during low timeframes.

3. not to mention, we're in a relatively high volatility period which means a) he's forsaking taking advantage of profiting off of volatile swings and b) he's much more liable to getting run over and his stops triggered.

4. your 3%/day goal is equal to a 176800% annual return (calculated from assuming 253 trading days per year). it's not impossible, but it's pretty much impossible. the way you achieve 176800% returns is by going yo-fucking-lo and going long gamma on a highly otm and short-dated individual stock options. not by scalping 3 ticks on highly leveraged index futures.

5. lastly, you seem desperate for money. you mentioned here that $4k/month would be "life-changing money." i've followed your previous threads where you'd suddenly quit mid-journal b/c you had to withdraw funds from your brokerage account to put bread on the family table. you've written before about how the real-estate market was sluggish and you weren't getting as many real estate deals as before. i hope i'm wrong but the impression i got after following you for a long time now was that you were in a financial crunch.

maybe that's why you've wasted so much time and money on those funding companies b/c you were desperately clinging on to hope to make it big and that's exactly what those funding companies provide: false hope.

you thought that since you can make $100+/day with the micros, $1000+/day with the eminis through these funding companies should be no big deal right?

i'm glad your funding evaluation bubble has popped but you've substituted that with an even greater pipedream. i don't know your personal situation but if you're being overly hopeful to overcome an adverse financial situation, i commend you for persevering. but latching onto hope when that hope amounts to a mere pipedream is no way to dig yourself out of your financial hole.

you realize instead of a 3%/day pipedream, a 3%/week target will take your $6000 to over $2.8 million after only 4 years right? there's no magic in the financial world but the closest thing to it would be compound growth. you'll soon realize even 3%/week consistently over many years is incredibly difficult.

on a sidenote,

there was another guy on some earn2trade journal here recently (https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...funded-account-with-earn2trade.347506/page-25) where he was close to going homeless but he had spent years and tens of thousands of dollars on these funding evaluations, all driven by some insane hope that he'd be able to make it all back and become the best trader ever. goes to show how misplaced some people's priorities can be when they're driven against the wall by financial difficulties.

hope is great and all but you can see how it can also serve as a vector through which certain entities (in this case, funding companies) can influence people to make extremely irrational decisions.

@canoe Thanks for taking the time to review and contribute.

1. I should be on the mini's soon.

2. Not sure what to say on the topic of "scalping is futile," except I will try anyway. I have 446 trades in 9 days with an 89.4% win rate. I think I have provided ample evidence here that there still may be some inefficiencies in the market to profit from.

3. I propose that "base hits" are the thing to do in volatile periods (and all periods), and not looking for homeruns.

4. Yes, the projected annual ROI is astronomical. So let's just look at today. 3% I can do. BUT IF NOT... My current average is 2.2%. But if I only do 1% a day or less, but my account is growing, I will still be happy. You wrote "You realize instead of a 3%/day pipedream, a 3%/week target will take your $6000 to over $2.8 million after only 4 years right? there's no magic in the financial world but the closest thing to it would be compound growth. you'll soon realize even 3%/week consistently over many years is incredibly difficult." 3% per week would be acceptable too. And the consistency you talk about is what this whole journal journey is about.

5. My personal finances have been a challenge, yes. And had I truly known it would take me 15 years to reach this point I would have never started. Real estate has been good overall except for this Covid-19 year. But real estate is also inconsistent because of the seasons and overall market cycles. Trading is to supplement that income.

 

[sstheo]

Most people would not believe that no matter what, even some have traded for years or decades and have quite impressive success; but those making money almost every single day don't have the slight incentive to show the proof, why bother?
Endless argument is futile.

@jl1575 hopefully I am being transparent enough for you with my daily AMP report.

 

[sstheo]

Then why isnt this guy rich already, why he is he a piker with 6K.

You can get rich trading pretty quick if you can average just 10 pts a week with the ES.

Just 10 ES pts a week is all you need to make to get rich!

Thats $10,000 a week when trading 20 lots, or $25,000 a week with 50 lots.

Not many traders can come close to even this 'modest' amount, (10 pts per week in the ES).

Yet the OP claims he can make 15 times that per week.

I am indeed a piker (one who only makes small bets). And I know this violates the asymmetrical bet theory that so many here adhere to. But I will be increasing the size of my contracts very soon. And perhaps in the long term I will only make 10 ES points per week and crank up the contracts. But for now I am aiming for consistency as a foundation to long-term success. I am two weeks in and doing okay. Let's see where I can go.

 

[trdes]

OP claims to have made 131 ES points in 4 days.

Had he been trading 100 ES lots instead of 1 micro lot, he would have made $650K in just four days

OP could be one of the best traders in the world

Maybe I've missed it and if so I apologize, but I haven't seen you address the size thing from a mental stand point yet.

It's different for each person and maybe some people are immune or handle it a lot better, but every time you increase in position sizing it has the potential to alter how you're handling, viewing and taking the trades.

So, are you saying if someone can trade 1 SPY share and catch the equivalent of 10 points a day consistently, that you'd be willing to back them financially enough to trade future contracts? I find that difficult to believe, but unless I am misunderstanding that's very akin to the logic of your post regarding how simple it should be to scale up.

 

[jl1575]

@jl1575 hopefully I am being transparent enough for you with my daily AMP report.

You are a very sincere and honest gentleman, I believe and trust you.
You are doing great and don't warry about others. There are always doubters, but what matters is you can be steadily making progress and reaching your goals.

 

[sstheo]

sstheo, Swifty Lazar's people called. They want you to take a lunch with Swifty to discuss representation opportunities. "Call Us" she said.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Paul_Lazar

HAHA. Good one. I have already been told to start writing my book too. I don't want the attention, and I don't like stirring controversy. In fact, I probably shouldn't even be on ET but just do my trading quietly in the corner. I already mentioned that one of my mentors can't believe I am on ET.

But there are enough supportive guys here that see some value in my work, and sometimes I see great tips, so I keep coming back. Fortunately, I don't get bent out of shape too much and can keep going in the face of some pretty pointed comments. Since I know there is room on ET for all kinds of traders, let's see where this trader goes in the next 3 months...

REGROUPING

And again, my main motivation here on ET is to demonstrate the risk control measures I have in place, NOT the scalping: I propose that most traders FAIL because of risky and sometimes emotional trading, not because of bad systems. They are shooting for too much per day and they refuse to take their stops. This is a universal problem that all traders face. Most fail. A few wake up and humble themselves and overcome.

I want to be part of that group.

 

[sstheo]

One of the best part of this thread IMO is the concept that one can literally get rich off ten es pts a week....OP can probably do what he is saying 90% of the time, the other 10% of the time he blows up. The skill in trading is to not have huge tilt days. Like flying an airplane, one can never crash the plane. I knew a guy that averaged one point a day in es, 20 contracts and is what inspired me to start trading.

Yep, the "blowing up" part is the part I am overcoming here.