Honestly, Can You Be Successful Without a HUGE Account?

Quote from Spectra:

In general, I don't like having daily goals. It puts too much pressure on the trader. Some mornings you may make $250, some you may make $10 and be lucky to survive without a big loss. In any event, you cant squeeze something out of a dead lifeless market.
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I have yet to see a market that does not give you a 1 point movement. You are right to state that it is better to make $10 at the end of the day than to be -1K. This part is obvious. As for the daily goals. I like to have a number in mind, if I reach it, I close down for the day, if $$ is not reached, then there is a need to sit fo the rest of the day until the amount is achieved. Naturally, sometimes the market has a lot of action,and then one can stay all day and try to bring in the big fish. I think it is better to be fresh and alert the first 1 1/2 of the session and make that $500 than make a couple and then give a cuple hundred and then make a couple and then .....
just my 2 c.
 
Hi guys,
I started from 10K. I was not so lucky (and smart) at the begining and I spent almost 3k without any results. I tarded gold and silver.
After that i found YM futures it was really interesting and i started to trade it. My account was about 6.5k. I gained about 2k for 3 trades (I traded 1 contract) I opened when day begins and out on first profit (at close price). It was spring bullish market and it was hard for me to seat and watch how this index is growing without my participation. And than correction begun. I lost almost 4k and stod trading at 2.6k in account.
My mistake was in trading on intraday. Few times i was successfull and profit was about 100-250$. But it was not enough(!) for me and I started to trade more frequently in intraday - as a result minus 4k in my account.
In present I analize my situation and found three mistakes:
1) I stoped using my system on bullish market pressing.
2) My profitable system was not for me - i'm more likely to trade in intraday but not twice a day on opening and closing os session.
3) My account was to small to achieve those level of satisfaction wich i want in intraday. I agree with guy who wrote that 50k is good money to start trading. With such acount I may take those first profitable trade in intraday (it was always first trade) and relax (200-300$ a day is really good result even for my meannes).
 
Quote from tasmanyak:

My account was to small to achieve those level of satisfaction wich i want in intraday. I agree with guy who wrote that 50k is good money to start trading. With such acount I may take those first profitable trade in intraday (it was always first trade) and relax (200-300$ a day is really good result even for my meannes).
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I started with $27,000 and luckily never blew up the account.
 
Quote from Bankster:

thats friggin great!
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I was obviously not with Alex or PureTick.. Went through most rooms on the net honestly. Which is why I think I'm able to talk to a newbie with an objective opinion.


-- Cajun / Geoff / Co-Admin PureTick.com
 
Hi guys, i dont mean to offend anyone but is ~$100 profit per day as posted by the original poster considered good/successful around here as a trader?

I am just very surprised considering quite a few job fields pay $50-100 an hour easy, plus med/benefits, not to mention you dont have to risk your own money or the stress that comes with it.

:confused:
 
Quote from newguy05:

Hi guys, i dont mean to offend anyone but is ~$100 profit per day as posted by the original poster considered good/successful around here as a trader?

I am just very surprised considering quite a few job fields pay $50-100 an hour easy, plus med/benefits, not to mention you dont have to risk your own money or the stress that comes with it.

:confused:
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I think that Spectra was mainly trying to demonstrate that a newbie with 1 car can make some money and I guess you're supposed to imagine that she only had a 5 or 6 K account.

Other than that he saw the question as a chance to pump Puretick which is good since those guys really try to help people.

Now as for making real money. that all depends on how good a system/method u have and how much risk u want to take.

When I finally started becoming profitable on a dalily basis (futures) I had about 20k in my account. I had a daily goal of 750 bucks trading 3 cars on the ER2 and sometimes the ES.

After a year of that I moved up to 6 and 9 cars with the additional cash in my account and now have a daily goal of 1200-2000 bucks depending on the market conditions etc. I usually make my daily minimum with no sweat and no stress. I love to trade --to me its fun.

As far as the alternative you mentioned with med/benefits etc. thats fine and I doubt unless you have a Masters degree or you're a union carpenter,pipefitter, plumber etc. you're making that kind of money, but even if u are u have a fucking asshole of a boss (usually) have to drudge thru the snow and pay for gas, fight other assholes in traffic. Fuck that. I wake up, work out, have a nice breakfast, maybe fuck my girlfriend, and then from 9:30 to 11:00 am est I trade. Then go do whatever the hell I want until 3 pm est. and come back and trade the close. IF i feel like it! Hell -if its nice out, I'll blow off at 11 and go take the Harley for a nice ride somewhere-maybe even take the woman with-take my laptop and trade from the hotel I end up at for the night and trade from there in the morning.

Try doing that with a day job baby!!!
 
there are few more common reasons for trader failure than overleveraging. since futures allow much more leverage, they are (all other factors remaining equal) much more dangerous, and traders are much more likely to fail in futures.

however...

just because you CAN trade X contracts per Y dollars in your account does not mean you should.

i STRONGLY recommend beginning traders (traders with less than say 1000 futures trades under their belt) trade AT MOST 1 contract per 10,000 of account equity. and that's assuming a maximum 20 pt stop in the YM.

i don't care HOW GOOD your methodology is - if you overleverage you are setting yourself up for failure.

thus, the MINIMUM account size should be 10 k and that's trading 1 contract. do that for a YEAR and THEN think of increasing leverage. of course at that point if you are doing it right and are an intraday trader, you should have significantly increased your account equity.

DO NOT OVERLEVERAGE.
 
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