Hiring a day trader

[J_Smith]

...Talk about having 'a pot to piss in'.
"Sir Larry Wildman. Like all Brits, he thinks he was born with a better pot to piss in"

You should be ok with taking a minute or two to piss. -- if you are moved or shaken by that timeframe...then you should have a greater picture viewpoint.

“There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.”

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1180927-blink-the-power-of-thinking-without-thinking

 

[J_Smith]

or you can take the laptop/tablet into the bathroom.
Trading ES, a MS Surface Pro 4 is sufficient.

Funny you should say that. Back in the dot com era, a couple were so successful at trading (they thought they could actually trade) they had monitors with live data feeds installed in the 3 bathrooms of the big mansion they bought. All of their friends were very impressed, and they of course were the couple to look up to

THEN, the bubble burst!

They lost every penny they had, weren't even smart enough to keep the house

As mentioned previously, what goes round, comes round, and people eventually get exactly what they deserve, just the way life works out!

Next time I go for a piss, I will make sure that price is in the middle of range, that way I will have at least a min or two to empty the bladder

J_S

 

[i am nobody]

You're absolutely right, but in a way, your more detailed explanation proves my hunch some more. You see, you come here saying how you're such hot shit cause you have an 80% win rate and earn on average 5 points and lose only 1 point. I know averages mean nothing and it all comes down to distribution, but why not make this more clear instead of the stat you did initially say which makes it sound much better than it is.

Second, if you're saying that some of your trades reach a MAE of 3 points before they get going, well, sorry to be so rude, but you're not such a hot shit trader after all. 3 points represents the average range in the ES of 30% on some days. I'm not saying that trades don't sometimes need this, but this means that your trading abilities aren't as rock solid as you make them out to be. If your trade goes 3 points against you, you clearly didn't get in at the right time, if there is even such a thing except in hindsight.

Third, with you letting a trade go 3 points against you, this also means that you're not limited by the ES liquidity. If you were getting in at a level that was about to take off, since you magically found an exact bottom, and you only got filled on 20 contracts lets say instead of the 100 that you wanted, but then this trade goes 2 or 3 ticks against you, then isn't this just an opportunity to pick up more contracts even cheaper? If your trade is 1 point against you, and you are still in and still believe that it is going up since you're not getting out, you can load up on more contracts... correct? And these extra contracts would even let you use a tighter stop since they were bought cheaper.. correct? The only way I would believe that you are limited in the ES is if price always shoots up after your entry for a long and never comes back to the same level or lower so you can load up some more on the same or cheaper price.

Your further explanations about how changes in price affect profit and losses do make sense, but what this shows is that as you explain further about how you trade, this isn't exactly in the same light as the way you talk about it which is saying you know what price is going to do and when and almost always get it right and are limited by the liquidity in ES and could make more money if somehow there was more volume. You're limited by the risk parameters of your system and with not knowing what will happen next on each of your trades, not by the liquidity of the ES.

I am not interested in what others think of me. I gave a little bit of information because giving all would cause people to bash you. But for you this small amount of information was already enough to start.

About your second point: I tested a big amount of trades to find the optimal stop. Again you make one mistake after another. Between may, 18 2015 and today there was NOT A SINGLE day that the difference between the high and the low was 3 points or less in RTH. So that statement from you is pure nonsense again. In this 247 days period the average difference between high and low was 23.25 points. The lowest was 3.75 points and the highest was 119.75 points.

The fact that you repeat all the time that I am a shit trader confirms to me that it is not about trading but about you being irritated about somepostings. But I don’t give a shit what you, or anyone else thinks about me. That will never change my financial situation, so why should I care?

The 3 points stop does not mean that all my trades need this. Again,on purpose, you twist my words or even put words in my mouth that I never said. Optimal performance is with 3 point stop. As you don’t know the distribution of my profits per trade your statement is false again. Maybe 1 big trade needed 3 points and all the others 1 point. In that case except for 1 entry all the rest were magical trades as you call it.

It is clear now what the purpose of your postings is so I will not react on you anymore.

And if you know so good how I should trade, you might be that kind of person that you think I am.

 

[J_Smith]

Something to think about!

J_S

 

[tt.texantrader]

About your second point: I tested a big amount of trades to find the optimal stop. Again you make one mistake after another. Between may, 18 2015 and today there was NOT A SINGLE day that the difference between the high and the low was 3 points or less in RTH. So that statement from you is pure nonsense again. In this 247 days period the average difference between high and low was 23.25 points. The lowest was 3.75 points and the highest was 119.75 points.

You talk about averages here, but once again, as you even pointed out, averages mean nothing, its the distribution. My point is that is a day has a range of 10 points, and you're using a 3 point stop, this means that your stop covers 30% of the daily range. Its kind of like saying you can guess a person's weight, who appears to be about 200lbs pounds, and yet give a margin of error of 30%, so this means that if you say 200lbs, and they end up being just over 140lbs, you would still consider this to be a good guess since you were within 30% of the 200lbs guess. Do you follow?

A 3 point stop, if your testing shows this, is totally fine, but this means you're not nailing your entries as perfectly as you appear to claim. Furthermore, if you enter, and your trade comes close to stopping out, but you close it out for a couple of ticks profits, do you count this in your 80% win rate just because it was closed at a profit? Don't get me wrong, this is good trade management, but this certainly once again doesn't exactly fall in like with your initial stat of 80% wins with an average of 5 points.

I'm not sure why you didn't address my liquidity points because they are absolutely valid. I simply don't believe that as a retail trader, your account could be in any way liquidity limited in the ES unless all your entries happen during a volatility spike and there simply aren't that many contracts traded at one level. The fact that you know that a 3 point stop works best for you, this means that often the trade does go a few ticks against you, which means that you could add to your position for an even better price.

My beef is that what you say isn't exactly where the truth is. You purposefully leave things out, which of course is totally fine given the anonymity of the internet, but by doing so, you're giving the wrong impression, which isn't helpful to the trading community if what you want to do is be honest and helpful to this community. Of course if you have other intentions then continue as you are, but the fact that you're so secretive about details with reference to stats and such means there is more to the story than an 80% win rate and 5 to 1 profit.

 

[Loooppy99]

WTF has the last 4 pages got to do with the first post of this thread.??? get a life you guys.

 

[dartmus]

You talk about averages here, but once again, as you even pointed out, averages mean nothing, its the distribution. My point is that is a day has a range of 10 points, and you're using a 3 point stop, this means that your stop covers 30% of the daily range. Its kind of like saying you can guess a person's weight, who appears to be about 200lbs pounds, and yet give a margin of error of 30%, so this means that if you say 200lbs, and they end up being just over 140lbs, you would still consider this to be a good guess since you were within 30% of the 200lbs guess. Do you follow?

A 3 point stop, if your testing shows this, is totally fine, but this means you're not nailing your entries as perfectly as you appear to claim. Furthermore, if you enter, and your trade comes close to stopping out, but you close it out for a couple of ticks profits, do you count this in your 80% win rate just because it was closed at a profit? Don't get me wrong, this is good trade management, but this certainly once again doesn't exactly fall in like with your initial stat of 80% wins with an average of 5 points.

I'm not sure why you didn't address my liquidity points because they are absolutely valid. I simply don't believe that as a retail trader, your account could be in any way liquidity limited in the ES unless all your entries happen during a volatility spike and there simply aren't that many contracts traded at one level. The fact that you know that a 3 point stop works best for you, this means that often the trade does go a few ticks against you, which means that you could add to your position for an even better price.

My beef is that what you say isn't exactly where the truth is. You purposefully leave things out, which of course is totally fine given the anonymity of the internet, but by doing so, you're giving the wrong impression, which isn't helpful to the trading community if what you want to do is be honest and helpful to this community. Of course if you have other intentions then continue as you are, but the fact that you're so secretive about details with reference to stats and such means there is more to the story than an 80% win rate and 5 to 1 profit.

I have read ian's posts and I believe he is telling the truth. Please stop this argumentative trash talk. You've already made your point. Do not reply to this note. You've already taken this thread too far past the acceptable level of off topic posts. Start a separate a thread if you want to continue to go off topic.

 

[tt.texantrader]

Do not reply to this note.

Ok there ET police. As if you never go off topic. And is this really off topic? Is this really trash talk as you state? The OP wants to hire a day trader. Do you think if someone came along and said they have an 80% win rate with the average profit being 5 points and the average loss only 1 point, wouldn't this sound too good to be true? Even as "ian" points out, the distribution is much more important than an average. So if you ask me, all of this is completely on topic.

 

[autotradingalgos]

Managing money for others suits traders that wont affect their own profitability by the impact of the larger size. Running many systems gets around this, but I know that the extra admin of being a CTA / Fund does put off alot of talented traders. Collective2 is a good place to learn about systems and how to search for quality vendors.

 

[tommo]

The comments "a profitable trader wouldn't want to be employed" is nonsense. I personally know traders with track record looking for funding. However, they have track records of making 500k+ a year and are now looking to step up to the 10-20million account level and would be looking for 20-30% of the profits. Its a way for them to take their own money/risk off the table and simultaneously push on their trading size and ultimately profits with a view to building their own funds.

There are plenty of highly successful traders looking for opportunities. However not for 10-20k. Youre looking at hundreds of thousands as a minimum