Making a living with a $30K account

Quote from Tums:

Michael Schumacher makes $80 million a year. He earns this by racing the Formula One Ferrari, which is designed a bit like a jet airplane, around the track at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.

Can it be done? -- YES.

How many people can do it? -- A few.

Can you do it too? -- I will let you decide.

You might say: but... I don't need to be like Michael Schumacher. All I want is 1% of what he earns, and I will be happy.

Well unfortunately, to earn that 1%, you will need the same effort and tenaciousness as what Michael put in.

p.s. those who tried and didn't make it usually NOT because they don't have talent, but because they have crashed and wiped out.
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this is a really good post. the only thing i'd quibble with is the "usually" in the postscript. people crash and burn for any number of reasons, lack of work ethic, lack of talent, lack of humility (a biggie, im[not-so]ho). hard to say which dominates, though.
 
Quote from JangoFolly:

You strike me as one of those losers who automatically projects onto others what you are unable to accomplish yourself.

You strike me as someone who has little clue about mathematical and probabilistic reality.

Regardless, I gave the OP well-qualified, constructive advice on a path forward regarding his friend's dilemma.

Then you need to read what you said again. The OP's friend lives in a fantasy land, and your well-qualified, constructive advice was sheer speculation, again mostly disconnected from probability. Very very very few people attain what the "friend" was projecting. Your response reflected little grasp of reality also. Basically, "well it is attainable if this and this and this... NOT. It reflects you as a trader with a few months experience, who has not blown out an account or learned the hard way how HARD this is.

This is not an emotional support board, where we say "you can do it, don't worry that you are headed for the iceberg and there are no liferafts". It is a place where people scrabble to try and learn enough to make some profit in the market. Without trying to play Russian Roulette along the way
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We have a somewhat civil thread on ET for a change, nice! :D Anyways, I'm sticking to my original assessment of his situation and say that I don't think his expectations are realisitic. Scaling into futures with 1 contract at a time is probably the best way for him to "test the waters" and build it up from there. I doubt he'll listen, but it's his money.

If I were him, I still would stick with what works (as some people suggested) and use 2-3:1 margin for increased returns. His trading capital isn't nearly large enough to encounter liquidity issues.
 
Quote from JangoFolly:

You strike me as one of those losers who automatically projects onto others what you are unable to accomplish yourself. Regardless, I gave the OP well-qualified, constructive advice on a path forward regarding his friend's dilemma. On the other hand, you simply snipe and bitch at everything like a little whiner. Grow up and contribute something.
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Your comment on ranfiel and his decisions and choices is very interesting. It, apparently, deeply affects his ability to contribute.

Designers have always chosed what they wish to work on. I sometimes think of three different designers and what they designed. Clocks, hammers and the planetary system. They all are very functional and each designer had a specific focus in creating the product that they came up with.

Ranfiel is a designer of what? He certainly missed the boat on compentent whining. It certainly won't keep time, drive a nail or provide regular moonlight.

Think of all the wealth created by the financial industry and all the clocks and hammers and planetary systems running within this huge and complex system. Then imagine this little twerp coming down the street whining in every direction he looks. Why does he presume to be part of anything in the financial industry?

We are entertained every Friday in the early evening. It is just a drop in event. If anyone offered 30,000 to anyone else, they would simply take it and ask what the person wanted at the end of a year and a deal would be struck imediately.

the hammer end of the investment spectrum is like going to the Fairfield County Bank and Trust Company to by a sailboat over two years. 30K of equities is put in street name and two years later the residual equities of much more than 30K net are picked up along with the deed to the sailboat.

30K to make a 130K? Sure thing.

30K to make 230K? Sure thing.

Who cares what the deal is. In 2006, NTRI was traded four times.
each trade lasted 3 days. The average profit was about 30% per trade. That is 12 days of the year that was spent. Compounding 30% gives a yield of 289% for the 12 days.

Trading leveraged commodities indexes or the forex is even more profitable.

The financial industry is a place where anyone has the oportunity and can make the choices to make as much money as the person desires. Or the person can just show up and give the money to anyone he decides and make the deal he wants.

So ranfiel shows up on our doorstep and sits there and whines all day long every day and his deal is to be a loser all the time. Can you imagine what it would be like for him to take a few bucks and give it to someone and just be a millionaire the rest of his life? Problem is, he can't figure out how to give his money to the right person much less learn to do it himself.

There are many intra day whiners on ET. Lets give them something more to whine about. Day whiners unite!!!!
 
Quote from jack hershey:

Your comment on ranfiel and his decisions and choices is very interesting. It, apparently, deeply affects his ability to contribute.
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Jack pointing at others is interesting. When you start posting competent track records of your performance, I will consider you as something other than a dog incessantly barking in the petstore window. You seem to have ignored every single request to explain the one time you tried to post publicly. You have a deft ability to avoid reality.

But it wouldn't surprise me that you don't grasp the problems brought up by the "OP's friend." It is a textbook case of someone who is a few feet from becoming a bug on the windshield.

The overwhelming words on the street (many other ET posters) is that you talk much and perform little.
 
Quote from rcanfiel:

Jack pointing at others is interesting. When you start posting competent track records of your performance, I will consider you as something other than a dog incessantly barking in the petstore window. You seem to have ignored every single request to explain the one time you tried to post publicly. You have a deft ability to avoid reality.

But it wouldn't surprise me that you don't grasp the problems brought up by the "OP's friend." It is a textbook case of someone who is a few feet from becoming a bug on the windshield.

The overwhelming words on the street (many other ET posters) is that you talk much and perform little.
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4 out of 5 people think I am full of shit. The ratio has shifted a little in the last five to ten years. That is "overwelming" by any standard.

Where I hang out, the ratio is a little different. People who have looked at my record do either of two things: coattail trade it or, if officials, make the mistake of citing me for insider trading. One group gets rich; the other group learns a better way to monitor multiple large accounts at major brokerages and retract mistaken citations.

When you either qualify as a broker who has access to heavy duty traders or you become an SEC monitor of some such, then you may get to see my accounts. There is one other exception. If you have a scarce professional skill and are willing to contribute your time and talents to others who are unfortunate or you have an adult handicapped child, then in such cases you can expect me to trade for you and do it as a courtesy until a fund is created that is sufficient for anyone to manage it.

The manual version of what I do has been made available by a team of people who competently trade PVT and SCT. Making 30,000 a day is not uncommon. As you say an overwelming part of the people "on the street" absolutely and totally know I am full of shit. They are making a great personal choice.

wwre you to see my records or observe the results of someone trading PVT or SCT at expert level, there would be absolutely no chance that you could do it simply because you have permenantly denied yourself the opportunity by past cummulative bad choices that are not distilled in your belief system.

There are many many ways to make money. The heavy hitters I know and who know me, deal with people like you and having your beliefs all of the time and for brief moments. There is no possibility of any kind of relationships, financially or personally. They are definitely not "on the street". The street is populated with people who created and follow the conventional orthodoxy. The street is what is seen on TV and in books and at workshops. Brokerages are officialdom make up the street.

I am definitely "outside" and what I do incessantly is pool extraction. I extract the market's offerings every day all day long. The huge pools of capital are simply an unlimited source of capital that is free for the taking. The street feels that this is unbelievable and astonishing and seeing it taken for a moment is "uncanny".

For me, your views are humor. Cramer is humor and so is Bloomberg, CNBC and whatever FOX thinks it is going to bag.

Currently there is NO forum on the internet that deals with modelling markets and instituting any kinds of developing for making money. Nor is there any conventional systemmic work being done anywhere. Google "bailout" to get a better picture of what is NOT going on.

I do the numbers like Greenspan, O'Neil, past of Alcoa, etc, and Pete Petersen. There is no forum for this in ET.

Woof Woof.
 
Quote from jack hershey:

you have permenantly denied yourself the opportunity by past cummulative bad choices that are not distilled in your belief system.

I don't use "belief systems" in trading. I don't trade things with questionable value, or "psychology" or a raft of other things. If it does not work when pounded in with multiple years of data into a spreadsheet, or it is "proprietary" but backed with "testimonies" (especially self-testimonies), it has no value to me.

It is commonly held that pehaps 95% of people lose money trading leveraged instruments. But that does not mean the other 5% make money. Most of those, IMHO, break even or are precariously dangling with slim profits. I would say maybe 1% make money regularly. And most of those probably would do better at a day job. For the remaining perhaps 0.1-0.5% of traders, most of them are believed to be affiliated with trading concerns, not some Joe Sixpack who studied some course on the web, watched price action, and is now making 6K per eyar (like Chloride Schizo

Most of the ETers who claim vast sums of money form their $25K account, I believe the evidence is, that it is almost a fantasy rather than trading.

So in other words Jack, regardless of your own self-described success, I am neither moved nor impressed. I have no desire to see your track record. The unwillingness to show it when you claim success, tells me what I need to know. Mostly, "fantasy land."

As for myself, there is either hard evidence, or it remains an unproven belief that can be ignored. Unpopular? Maybe. But I prefer to be on the side of fact.

Woof Woof to you, also
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Jango Folly you are absolutely correct in your comments.

Jack Hershey has shared quite a bit with this forum, it continously eludes as to why the detractors continue to harp on one or two points that they strenously disagree with, instead of taking the whole body of work as it is. I would be seriously upset if anyone choose to focus exclusively on my bad points and choose to ignore all of the good things that I've done and constantly bash me for one or two things on my resume that they disagree with ... oh wait, that is exactly what they do.

That's probably why I will continue to support him ... not to mention the fact that I still have yet to improve substantially on the money management algorithm that he gave away in an offhand comment (in fact, it's exactly what the OP's "friend" needs to wildly succeed in a very short time - less than a year - in this game).

I don't quite get where rcanfiel is coming from with his posts that constantly harp on the "glass half empty" approach, but I wish him well with his trading and hope he continues to work to improve it ... a good beginning might be an improvement in the attitude.

Good trading,

Jimmy Jam
 
I've read some of the posts here and am surprised how simple facts are overlooked.
Trading ES just 1 tick per day NOT 1 FULL POINT, just 1/4 of a point is equivalent to 1% a day. That is $500 margin per contract, use double that $1000 and the 1 tick is $12.50less commish n fees = $9.50 which would be 1% of twice the daily margin.
So theoretically speaking utilizing $30,000 should generate almost $300 a day if the trader could only get 1 TICK a day which would be equivalent to 1*22*12 = 264% a year WITHOUT COMPOUNDING but, there is just 1 tiny problem, so far nobody has been able to CONSISTENTLY achieve that 1 tic a day.
Now, the friend should open an account with just $1500 and trade a single contract, the day he has managed to trade 90 consecutive days with zero DD and has got his 1 daily tick then he can put all his money in.
 
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