How Realistic? $50k account, $500 / day
- Thread starter AFChao
- Start date
Exactly. Much was assumed and piled on from individual viewpoints.
If someone wants to roughly benchmark a day's average earnings, they should target 2x that IF both numbers are within the realm of price-action reality. For example, saying someone wants to average +10pts = $500 per day trading one (1) ES contract ($50 per point x 10 points) is ridiculous. Impossible.
Yet most private traders work like hell to find ways of booking a bazillion points per day on a single lone futures contract. That is basic human mentality of limited risk => uncapped reward.
Someone trading a $50k account using five (5) contracts of ES or NQ "only" needs to average (blended over time) +2pts ES or +5pts NQ daily. That gets them there. But stopping right there leaves the targeted goal to whims of draw days, scratch days and $1,000 days when profits explode to all blend out.
Targeting 2x the goal, +4pts ES daily or +10pts NQ daily gets them $1,000 daily in the same equation, all things equal. Those are possible goals, imo the 10pts NQ way easier than the +4pts ES if the term "easy" can be applied to trading at all.
Now when the natural human results of draw days and scratch days and 2x profit days along with expected average days blend out, said trader is nearing their intended long-term result.
But again, this is mathematically discussing plausible results. Real-time results are 200% dependent on individual trader's learned ability. Without the right trade management and self-management skills, a $5 million account will not average $500 per day over time. It will average net-loss, reflective of the operator's insufficient skills.
I don't disagree with you at all, you make good points. And people do like to jump on the bandwagon, but 1% per day consistently... I just don't see it, we all have winning days and losing days... to think one can win everyday is a bit naive, and 200% annualized returns, only a select few can achieve those numbers...
But the OP actually stated per day, not in a day... which is why I believe many found it implausible... myself included...
Quote from Realistic:
I don't disagree with you at all, you make good points. And people do like to jump on the bandwagon, but 1% per day consistently... I just don't see it, we all have winning days and losing days... to think one can win everyday is a bit naive, and 200% annualized returns, only a select few can achieve those numbers...
But the OP actually stated per day, not in a day... which is why I believe many found it implausible... myself included...
It was an incomplete statement, actually. Everyone else was left to decipher much about the logistics involved. Personally I assumed it was just the 167th troll-sparked thread and only replied for the sake of everyone else reading, in case that was the fact
The individual stocks traders here tend to forget that futures trading is akin to prop-firm leverage. $50k in the emini world is tons of buying power... no different than Lescor and others putting up that much to earn $1 million or more bp once they prove themselves to their respective firms.
Sole danger with futures trading is, anyone who can afford such leverage is granted that, before they prove worthy to anyone who can bridle them back.
A five-lot NQ position using -5pt initial stop is -$500 risked per full-loss trade. That leverage is well within risk parameters of a $50K account. Targeting +10pts per day benchmarked is possible, I'm doing that myself and others are too.
A long-term outcome of half that or +$500 daily averaged over time is plausible. How long it takes any individual to unlock their own keys for sustained success is the gray area where comments and opinions come in.
Quote from Realistic:
I don't disagree with you at all, you make good points. And people do like to jump on the bandwagon, but 1% per day consistently... I just don't see it, we all have winning days and losing days... to think one can win everyday is a bit naive, and 200% annualized returns, only a select few can achieve those numbers...
But the OP actually stated per day, not in a day... which is why I believe many found it implausible... myself included...
Trading is like going into a boxing ring and becoming the world champion , a good world champion will win every day .The difference is most here are sparring partners , they win on some days and lose on most, so the difference is the champion traders and their knock out blows when they deliver , they have the skill to deliver everyday come frazier or Forman .
The champions don't go to local gyms equivalent to coming to this board , they even have private discipline and trading coaches overseeing them.
that is the usual false assumption of way too many flailing traders... that in this profession you either net-lose or make multi-millions and there is no in between.
Truth is there are many individual traders successful in between. For a local example of that, revisit Lescor's 2010 trading thread. He made some $600,000 that year by admission, but daily win/loss ratio was nowhere near 100%. Not even remotely close.
You don't have to have a win loss ratio greater than 70 % to make money consistently , it depends on the size of your winning trades versus the size of your losers .If your profitable trades makes $200 and losers lose $100 , you trade 20 times a day with a 70 % plus method , the profit won't be every single day but it will consistent.
20 trades * 200 *70 % less 20 *100* 30%= 2200 daily.On a bad day trader will probably get $500 or break even.
On the average? Not even a wild dream. However tells you this is realistic or even remotely possible is an idiot of grand proportions. You are talking about a 250% gain per year, consistently. Nobody has done this for more than a year AFAIK.
In the example given which is a thread archived for posterity, I believe lescor average something like 2/3 profitable days and 1/3 loss days... or worse.
At times he had four losing and one winning session all week, some entire weeks were net-loss.
The idea of successful traders => super traders who never lose is simply message-board rhetoric passed down from flailing trader to flailing trader