Honestly, Can You Be Successful Without a HUGE Account?

Quote from austinp:

<i>"But that points out the duality of my position. On one hand, when I trade, I am ruthless---<b>I want to rip every dime from some newbie who is too slow to figure out what is happening at a given point in time. </b>I want to kill as if I were a fighter pilot.

But at the same time, I want the people in my room to eventually sharpen their skills so they can achieve consistency in their trades. True, they may not be easy sources of trading profits for me and the other professional traders, but then my room becomes more popular and I still benefit."</i>

Dear Alex,

First, my sincere condolences on your father. Mine was mishandled while suffering from an enlarged heart condition. He passed away nearly three years ago at 74, probably too soon. I understand how you feel.

I see myself as trading against a nameless, faceless entity as "the market". My profits do not come from newbies, veterans or anyone in particular. It comes from the general populace which creates the single market entity.

Fridays usually suck for trading. Three out of four aren't worth bothering with. Last Friday was actually one of the exceptions... rather predictable and orderly.

#1: Price action opened on a gap-up into bogus employment data. That report usually gets faded about as often as data gets revised. In other words, almost every month.

There were three open gaps in the tape over past five sessions. No way under the sun do all of those gaps hold a market up supported by such swiss cheese. Ain't gonna happen.

#2: Confirmed sell signals happened to come at the R1 values for a number of reasons. Shorting there and holding for the ride was a high-odds proposition.

Daily pivot points are touched intraday, during the cash session roughly 70% of the time, long term. The previous day was missed, which adds a bit of odds that Friday would see its pivot point touched. Always good to know where & when odds are shifted in our favor.

Once the pivot tap was fulfilled, anything goes. The dipster mentality remains alive & well (for now), and a pop from that visual support was probable. Indeed, buy signals at the pivot for a number of reasons worked.

#3: Price action failed nearly to the tick at a spot one would figure it would. Another high-odds short signal offered.

#4: Price action confirmed a third high-odds sell signal at the pivot, again for a number of reasons. Easy money.

Another interesting note: Price action that reverses from either R1 or S1 successfully will seek out the opposite 1-value more than 50% of the time.

In other words, the R1 failure = gap close = pivot tap had a greater than 50% chance of visiting S1 sometime before the closing bell.

Again, always good to know when odds are in your favor at any moment in time.

To end the day, there were buy signals near ES 1414 for those who care to play every minute of the market.

Typical, normal price action... this is what normal markets act like. That dead VIX, low volatility crap is gone for awhile, maybe for years. Days like Friday where +20pts ES / +200pts YM are readily available between the bells will grace our charts much more often than not.

**

I'm sure you are a very good trader, perhaps even great as noted by others. That said, there is always something more to learn. But knowing enough allows us to take money from newbies and confident veterans with equal ease... or one could say, the collective market as a whole.

Best Trading Wishes
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Boy, you sure make it seem easy. If everyone just used floor trader pivots or any variation thereof, there would be hardly any losers (but then we wouldn't have a market would we)? Well now that the cat is out of the bag you guys should start to rake it in.
 
<i>"If everyone just used floor trader pivots or any variation thereof, there would be hardly any losers..."</i>

Well, I turned three ES trades on Friday for +2pts (just before it dropped +5pts more thru the pivot) and then +4pts and finally +3pts, all on the short side.

Pivot values did not trigger any of those trades... knowing the general roadmap they plot out sure helped.
 
osorico,

Nooooo you must be promoting paint shop pro because you have some sort of interest in it! I will now never use it. Im a paint shop pro skeptic.. hehe just kidding. just wanted to take a skeptical stance.

I've used PSP before. I like it but I grew up on adobe starting with my first 3 pass flat bed scanner I got in 1989.

Cajun

I think you should have used JASC Paint Shop Pro to do the blurring.
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Spectra, is it true Alex was schooled by John Carter and Hubert Senters, the ex-traders turned marketeers? If so, he is one of the rare people who spent a decent amount of money with those clowns and actually learned to trade profitably.

Senters was once overheard as saying that newbies are going to lose their money anyway, so why shouldn't he and Carter take some of it before they lose it all. Cynical and sad, but true.
 
Quote from Neet:

Better than your swiss army knife catching losses, that's for sure.

Neet
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... the trick with catching reversals, is to know when NOT to do it [work'in on it :) ].

In the meantime, my 2 trades generated 5 times as many points as the OP's example using 13 trades.

I'll stick with what I'm using ... and here it is for free [you can mail me a check if you make money with it :p ].

Later,

Jimmy Jam

In case anyone is curious, that's a basic RSI on a 5 minute YM chart ... yeah, I know, tough stuff.
 

Attachments

Quote from Spectra:

I also notice that none of these trades appear to be losers
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Really? Must be my eyes - take a look at the first 4 trades again:

Sell 52
Sell 58 << Avg now 55
Buy 53 << Loss of 2
Buy 55 << BE trade
 
Quote from austinp:

<i>"one cannot make a decent living solely from trading unless one is trading size"...</i>

Well, I guess we need to define "decent living" as the constant.

Average +2pts ES per day, 250 sessions per year. That includes +40pt profit sessions like Thursday March 2nd and -20pt weeks that may come along someday. Blended average, +2pts ES daily over time.

Using this example, +2pts X 250 sessions = 500 ES points profit per trading year.

500pts x $50 = $25,000 per contract.

Variables then are commission cost = average profit size per trade. Assuming $25 per contract average size trade with $5 per turn cost, total net profits after commish in this example would be +400pts.

400pts x $50 per = $20,000 per contract net, pre-tax.

*

Two contracts exceed the average U.S. median income by a solid margin

Five contracts are a six-figure income

Twelve contracts is a cool quarter-mil.

Once a trader can accomplish +2pts ES per day (or better) consistently, position size takes care of itself. PureTick is working on helping new traders survive, tread water and grow up instead of blow up.

Here's wishing 100-lot ES positions for everyone's future!
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I like playing with hypothetical concepts too. The sad truth is every trader will have losing days and perhaps a lot of them.

Puretick isn't tracking 20 YM points per day and it is operated by a "professional."
 
Quote from JimmyJam:

OK

If this is an example of what is considered good trading in your room, if you think this type of scalping is really scalable, if you think 13 trades resuling in $100 (give or take based on commissions paid) is good trading, and if you think it's a an example of what should be held up to ET'ers to generate more business for your room, well, I'm going to have to go with Option X.

Good luck,

Jimmy Jam
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Didn't I read in some other thread you are looking for $500 per contract, per week?

Seems to me the posted brokerage statement (albeit for just 1 day), meets that criteria. $120 or so net for the day, trading single contract = $600 per wk. (You can argue with yourself over the fact that she added on a couple trades for a total of 2 contracts.)

Who the hell are you to say what style of trading is good vs any other style? I don't watch Cramer but one of the few times I did, he said something that made sense... Your bank doesn't care if your deposit money comes from a Google trade or if it comes from 1 day or 1 years worth of work.

I hope the swelling goes down.

Play what you see,
Osorico
 
Quote from Spectra:

osorico,

Nooooo you must be promoting paint shop pro because you have some sort of interest in it! I will now never use it. Im a paint shop pro skeptic.. hehe just kidding. just wanted to take a skeptical stance.

I've used PSP before. I like it but I grew up on adobe starting with my first 3 pass flat bed scanner I got in 1989.

Cajun
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:D
 
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