Joining the CME gang

[Laissez Faire]

It seems like your methodology is dependent on averaging down and eventually utilizing full day trading margins to recover from losses.

Hardly a robust methodology, but one which sets you up for major losses.

 

[NoahA]

It seems like your methodology is dependent on averaging down and eventually utilizing full day trading margins to recover from losses.

Hardly a robust methodology, but one which sets you up for major losses.

On the surface, its not a bad strategy, but of course you do sometimes hit the max loss.

The reason why I say its not bad is because the markets mostly tend to mean revert, or be in some sort of range, or at least give you decent pullback before continuing. So if talking ES, and you take a trade, and can scale in at -10 and -20 points, the chances that it goes 50 points against you without a pull back is very, very rare. If it ends up being a range, you more than likely make money. If its a trend and you get the direction right, you make money. And if its a trend, but you get the direction wrong, you might be able to get out for a tiny loss on deep retracements.

So on the surface, it isn't so bad, but it of course comes down to the numbers.

 

[Laissez Faire]

There's a great difference between averaging down to the point where you're utilizing full intraday margin ($ 500 per contract) and scaling in/out of a few contracts (or even holding 1 contract only with a wide stop), but still within a moderate risk % per trade.

 

[Overnight]

This week was a fuck up. Nothing to do with trading per se, I didn't realize Amps margin had changed. Couldn't recover from a down day.

I was pissed that I didnt see any email about the change. From now on, I will check their margins page before every session!

Now with 8x margins overnight and 2x day margins, gonna be making peanuts for a while. I think it will be high going into November.

I didn't get an e-mail from them either. To which margin change are you referring?

 

[DarthSidious]

I didn't get an e-mail from them either. To which margin change are you referring?

I know. Because I maintain a quote spreadsheet in SierraChart. It maintains the margins as I know and it pulls in the live positions as it happens and tells me what margin I am using. I know it's very basic functionality of a trading platform but it's not very good in Sierra and it's my little hack to keep as much info as possible on that spreadsheet. It had NQ intraday margin as $500 and right now AMP has them as $1000.

hilmy, I am always rooting for all the buggers on this board to succeed, but dude needing < $1k margin per NQ is a problem. My spreadsheet shows a NQ range of $8395 for today my man

 

[Overnight]

I know. Because I maintain a quote spreadsheet in SierraChart. It maintains the margins as I know and it pulls in the live positions as it happens and tells me what margin I am using. I know it's very basic functionality of a trading platform but it's not very good in Sierra and it's my little hack to keep as much info as possible on that spreadsheet. It had NQ intraday margin as $500 and right now AMP has them as $1000.

hilmy, I am always rooting for all the buggers on this board to succeed, but dude needing < $1k margin per NQ is a problem. My spreadsheet shows a NQ range of $8395 for today my man

Meaning this?

Jeez, that's been up there for months. *shrugs* No wonder I don't remember that e-mail. It dropped into the inbox in like April or May. Gone with the wind now.

If you have to day-trade with max leverage in this volatile environment to make money, best to stick to softs or grains I guess? Move less, lose less?

 

[Gaslight Capital]

hilmy, I am always rooting for all the buggers on this board to succeed, but dude needing < $1k margin per NQ is a problem

Same. Rooting for you, hilmy, but if you need less than $1000 margin/NQ? Better you than me.

 

[wrbtrader]

I strongly believe that there's a psychological variable in our trade performance for those not using an automated trading system.

If we get big losing trading days and if we have a strong control of that psychological variable...

We should then in theory get big winning trading days similar to those big losing trading days (I'm not implying the exact dollar amount).

A trader that can not do that will not make it especially whenever volatility changes or whenever margin requirements changes. This will prevent the routine of adding funds to the trading account so that you can trade the same position size as those big losing trading days.

wrbtrader

 

[apo99]

Great thread, lots of good info here on actual trading will try and get through the last 50 pages. Good luck man

 

[hilmy83]

Moving my trading business over to Tradovate.

they clear through Phillps/Dorman

Stats included in cloud platform

cheaper comm options in the future

no limit margin requirement..(we'll see about this)

a gamblers dream haha...accounts set up. starting friday or next week. awaiting amp funds transfer

month might be down 5-10k.

I have always been interested to try out tradovate. But i might move back to amp if tradovate execution is shitty or whatever else that might come up..

The other option i have been curious about is clearing through Sierra denali setup, since now i think they have a web trading available.