How much trading profit is enough to live on?

jinxu said:
I've been away for awhile. Back in November I lost about 75% of my capital during the election. Afterwards I decided to quit trading for good due to my mind feel like it was about to snap. It did and I started to develop depression. Then I lost my job in December and my depression got worse.

Then for some reason while at the peak of my depression in mid-January I started thinking about giving trading another try. There was only about $800 dollars in my trading account so I figure why not. I have much more in my saving account but since I am unemployed it's my emergency fund. Win or lose I didn't really have any expectation. Maybe just a few $50 buck profit here and there to keep me afloat. At the very least maybe just enough to pay for a meal.

That was about 3 weeks ago and now my account is at $4600 which is about a 500% profit. I'm absolutely dumbfounded. Either I was lucky or I actually had a functioning trading system. Most of my trades were winners too. I had lost a lot of money struggling as a trader before. The only things that had changed was I started focusing on high probability trades setup. My depression also made me dumb to the point where I no longer try to predict where the market might go. That helped me stop taking gambling trades that realistically only had a 50/50 chance of working.

On Monday I almost had a disaster and it finally click on me what my high probability trades are. I changed the rules and yesterday I made $800. Today I made $600. Those were the big winners, most of daily profits had been between $100-$300. I think I have a strong perspective now on how the market works. I kept thinking how it was possible my trades are working when before they didn't. I realized that the rules I had in the past didn't really work. Now I have new rules which are working.

However I'm still depressed but slowly recovering. Not taking medication. Trading still feel tough. Despite profits I still doubt myself.

Is it possible for me to make this a career? I'm starting to scale back a bit. I still have a lot more to work on to be perfect. Like taking as much profit from a trend as possible.

I'm aiming for at minimum $50 daily average profit as that pays the rent, bills, and lunch. But I want to see myself scaling up.
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Question needs to be turned around and asked this way--"How much can I stand to lose each day and keep my toes tapping?". This is more how one should look at this business and then decide whether or not to continue. If you make $1 a day, you're a winner.
 
Advantages are..


Mainly I can get in and out upto near my margin level pretty much instantly, 1 position or 2 half sized at 50:1 margin, means I can make 10% off 1 trade in 30mins. Your likely managing many small positions with much less margin if any, margin makes us rich wgen where good and spanks us when bad.

Also there is no such thing as luck good or bad,so 800 to 5000 is skill pure and simple, not saying he won't have a melt down sooner or later or conditions will stop suiting his method, but defo not luck.
 
Turveyd said:
Advantages are..


Mainly I can get in and out upto near my margin level pretty much instantly, 1 position or 2 half sized at 50:1 margin, means I can make 10% off 1 trade in 30mins. Your likely managing many small positions with much less margin if any, margin makes us rich wgen where good and spanks us when bad.

Also there is no such thing as luck good or bad,so 800 to 5000 is skill pure and simple, not saying he won't have a melt down sooner or later or conditions will stop suiting his method, but defo not luck.
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So your "advantage" is you use far more leverage than a prudent trader would even contemplate.

And you don't believe in luck.

I give up.

GAT
 
globalarbtrader said:
So your "advantage" is you use far more leverage than a prudent trader would even contemplate.

And you don't believe in luck.

I give up.

GAT
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GAT : I tried to explain to you that you can not understand if you have not " been in the tranches".
It is all about the trading skill that underpines it all.
 
globalarbtrader said:
So your "advantage" is you use far more leverage than a prudent trader would even contemplate.

And you don't believe in luck.

I give up.

GAT
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But it works for me so don't see the issue, not that I'd trade a 100k account like that, but in the real world very few of us have 100k+ accounts or ever will as we'll be too busy spending it.

Luck isn't real, you get statistical blips but that's not luck.


No luck required, I'm jumping on short term direction nearly scalper like, taking a profit, moving on, nothing remotely complicated.
 
globalarbtrader said:
I give up.
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You don't need 100k plus to trade 1 ES contract. If you trade 1 or 2 ES contracts and not pull out 1500 a month, you aren't a very good trader. You shouldn't need 100k padding for drawdown. If you have a 5k draw on 1 lot you have a major issue. It's not that complicated.
 
algofy said:
You don't need 100k plus to trade 1 ES contract. If you trade 1 or 2 ES contracts and not pull out 1500 a month, you aren't a very good trader. You shouldn't need 100k padding for drawdown. If you have a 5k draw on 1 lot you have a major issue. It's not that complicated.
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Trading is about risk not return.

The risk on holding 1 lot of ES is about 10% a year or 220 points, i.e. $11,000. On an account of $5,000 that's 240% a year. That's about roughly 15 times what a prudent trader would generally target. It's at least five times the "kelly optimal", which means it at least 10 times "half kelly". Bluntly, it's insane.


GAT
 
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