How long will it take to turn a $5,000 account into $100,000?
- Thread starter guy2
- Start date
This is insane...
$500 performance bond/ES on $5000
$500 performance bond/ES on $5000
I turned 10k into around 400k (I know I said 360k in an earlier post but I forgot about the second account- I'm still paying the taxes on it!)
This was the last three months of 2000 and I shorted 2 ND at a time three or four times per day. Maybe more. No indicators, no volume, just a price chart and a phone.
Just luck and a runaway market, that's all. I haven't been able to replicate it since and the more I know the worse I trade, it seems.
I guess my answer would be to find a market that is moving fast and ride it. Go with the flow and don't worry so much about the money. I can remember days coming home and not knowing if I made 5k or 25k that day.
Albert
This was the last three months of 2000 and I shorted 2 ND at a time three or four times per day. Maybe more. No indicators, no volume, just a price chart and a phone.
Just luck and a runaway market, that's all. I haven't been able to replicate it since and the more I know the worse I trade, it seems.
I guess my answer would be to find a market that is moving fast and ride it. Go with the flow and don't worry so much about the money. I can remember days coming home and not knowing if I made 5k or 25k that day.
Albert
I wouldn't limit yourself to no losses in 26 straight trading days. My experience in scalping markets has taught me it is usually better to keep trading small 'comeback' trades rather than let a losing day sit on the books and poison the rest of your week. This is jmo, maybe others think it better to reflect, regroup, etc. I think that has a strategic importance to implementing your plan but I don't know if it is wise just to stop and quit for the day if you've been scratched one or two times.
I've been trading, equities and futures for 9 years now and have had a fair amount of experience on and off the floor. I've seen people make huge money in a short amount of time, but in my experience it's a vanishing minority of people who are able to achieve this. In my experience most novices starting out with a 5k account blow out more often than not. Not trying to dampen enthusiasm, but I think it's best to enter the field with your eyes open.
Dan
http://www.TradersLog.com/
Dan
http://www.TradersLog.com/
Dan,
I agree with you and from what I've read, the often quoted figure of 90 to 95% of those accounts being blown-out I would bet is an accurate figure. The smaller the starting account size the more likely it is to blow out. This is compounded by the fact that (I am guessing here) there are probably more inexperienced traders running that small account.
From your experience, what would you say was the single most important factor that led to those failures? There are obviously many factors that can contribute to this high percentage of failures but if you had to pick one and say this one appeared more often than any of the others as the reason, which one would it be?
Personally, I would guess the most important reason for $5k account blow-outs to be:
Lettting losing trades run to their stops and not letting the winners run to their targets.
In the ES for example with 2.5 point targets and 2 point stops you will probably find that the losing trades lose 2 points per trade but the average winning trade is rarely 2.5 points because the trader is too quick to take their profits.
