moving from 1 ES contract to 2 contracts

Quote from jeb9999:

Overnight margin on ES is $5,625. $3000 to $5000 a week trading one ES is 53% to 89% weekly return on margin or 2756% to 4628% annual return (noncompounding). I've never seen or heard of any trader with consistent annual results like that.

If you can document these results for one year with real money trading you will have people beating down your door to set up a hedge fund and invest with you.

<sigh> I'm clearly outnumbered in this thread. I'll be posting in the PnL thread from this point forward if anyone cares to watch me fail in the long run. Read: im done in this thread, leaving for a memorial day BBQ now. Going to take a swim to wash the ET hater off of me. :cool:
 
Actually, going from one car to two is easy. One can implement different strategies that allow for less stress. One I particularly like is taking out half the profit at a designated target (generally between 2 and 3 points and trailing the other half with a stop at 1/4 profit to cover the fee. This way you get your 2 points on 1 car and let the second car ride to either a stop of 1/4 or another couple of points.

BTW I found this particular strategy to work very well when moving further up the game. Once you get some experience under the belt
(3 to 5 years) and some capital to pile up contracts, the money does grow nicely.
 
Quote from Baywolf:

We've completely diverged from the OP topic, but I get your point. The PnL thread can't be taken seriously for a number of reasons. So then what can aspiring traders look forward to, if not results from an anonymous trade forum? They might be better off getting "20 points Guaranteed" from your website? Let me further your "gold rush" analogy: Aren't the people that got rich from the gold rush just supplying the tools and services that the gold miners needed? This is in fact why you are an ET sponsor, and offer a service to traders. It is in your best interest to discredit other traders and make yourself appear intelligent on the same anonymous forums in the hopes that gold rush miners will flock to you instead. So yes, I'd rather take the chance to be inspired by some that may or may not be making a killing on the PnL thread.

Well, the reality is my being a site sponsor here had little to do with drumming up business. First of all, this is an environment not conducive to that. Talked about that enough before, no need to belabor the dead horse.

Secondly, the people who got rich from the gold rush, found gold. The storekeepers who sold picks and shovels made a living. They did not get rich... all the mines out west are named after the finders and founders of the mines you can tour today. The storefront owner who sold supplies and goods has long since been forgotten.

Lastly, I'm not picking on you or anyone specifically. My point is this: how about promoting reality instead of fantasy? I see you are trading with Ninja software by the look of that dome snippet. Me too. Here's what we can both do. Starting tomorrow, we can post snapshots of our trading day from the Control Center > Executions window.

In the random example attached, note how the "accounts" column between commission and connection is blocked from full view. Just show the first digit in your account there... that way it shows everyone that real money was traded, not sim or replay.

I'll post up my results each day this week... just like that. Can you think of any reasons why we both can't do the same? Not a contest or anything, I hope you out-earn me every day. Just keeping it real to show the days where gold was gleaned or iron pyrite filled the pans.

Real money trading results... guaranteed :)
 

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Quote from wiesman02:

As many of you know, I trade the ES.

I've been trading the ES using only 1 contract.

lately, I've been averaging $200-$500 per week trading 1 contract. I hope as the weeks go on, I will get more efficient and gradually make more as well as have at most, 1 losing day per week instead of 2.

Here's my question. At what point should I move up to 2 contracts ? When I'm consistantly pulling in 10 points / week ? More ? Less ? Obviously volatility has a lot to do w/ this answer, but I'm just looking for some advice here. not necessarily a set #, ya know ?

Also, i'm assuming if I'm consistant, then account size is not as important. Obviously I won't be trading with a $2k account. Assuming for arguments sake my account is $10k.

When does one move up ? I know pyschologically, a move to 2 contracts would mess me up. And I know I'm not ready yet, so I ask u all for help on this one.
whatever you are losing now on your bad days as an avg, when you can afford to lose twice that, go to 2 contracts,or wait and as your acct grows ,you will have become a bettter trader and trade larger because you have learned to manage losses,and then you will increase and decrease your size according to the tradeable information you are seeing on your screen because you have learned how to percieve risk and reward,in this volatility you should be making 3 times what you made in feb still trading one contract,you wait for a trade to setup, you take it, instead of moving 2 1/2 -3 points its 6-10,i'm of the opinion that you should reduce your size and number of trades here because its easier to give it back, this strategy has worked great for the last 4 weeks
 
Quote from Baywolf:

<sigh> I'm clearly outnumbered in this thread. I'll be posting in the PnL thread from this point forward if anyone cares to watch me fail in the long run. Read: im done in this thread, leaving for a memorial day BBQ now. Going to take a swim to wash the ET hater off of me. :cool:

No hate here and not looking for you to fail.

Assuming that you can generate your stated results why are you limiting yourself?

I am serious about you having a documented one year track record trading real money and setting up a hedge fund.

Why hold yourself back making thousands per week when it could be a million plus?
 
Quote from jeb9999:

Overnight margin on ES is $5,625. $3000 to $5000 a week trading one ES is 53% to 89% weekly return on margin or 2756% to 4628% annual return (noncompounding). I've never seen or heard of any trader with consistent annual results like that.

If you can document these results for one year with real money trading you will have people beating down your door to set up a hedge fund and invest with you.



Yes but you have to take into account the contract's true value is really worth about $55,000 so in reality he is only making a 300 to 500% return on investment annually . Also as long as one does not hold through the cme maintenace period, you can trade on 300-500 margin per contract in es.


:)
 
Quote from Baywolf:

I use one es contract and I make $3000-$5000 a week. Using two contracts is essentially doubling your leverage. It makes me nervous, it should make you nervous.

I'd work on refining your technique before cranking up the leverage. Unless of course you have a 90%+ win rate :cool:






How long have you been averaging 60 to 100 points per week ?



What was you weekly average when the vix was at 16 and we had 6 point range days ?
 
Quote from volente_00:

How long have you been averaging 60 to 100 points per week ?



What was you weekly average when the vix was at 16 and we had 6 point range days ?

These are questions that should have been asked earlier...

As far as 1 or 2 I think trading 1 is psychologically harder than 2 (or more) as there is constant regret leaving points behind with 1. May be better therefore to trade 2 NQ than 1 ES even though NQ more volatilte point-wise. Or trade something even smaller.. Point is to break your 1 ES into 2.
 
Quote from Rashid_G.:

These are questions that should have been asked earlier...

As far as 1 or 2 I think trading 1 is psychologically harder than 2 (or more) as there is constant regret leaving points behind with 1. May be better therefore to trade 2 NQ than 1 ES even though NQ more volatilte point-wise. Or trade something even smaller.. Point is to break your 1 ES into 2.


I agree. Just trading 1 forces you to either cut profits early or risk having a winner turn into a loser trying to catch a larger move. This will often wreak havoc on a trader mentally. I have always been a fan of starting with 2 contracts and scaling out once you have mastered the platform you are working with.
 
This is advice for Baywolf but the OP could use this technic too:

Quote from Baywolf:

I make about 8-20 trades per day @ 1 contract (~1-2 pts per rt). The reason I haven't moved to two contracts yet is because I still suffer from squeezes like everyone else. I'm just able to stomach 1 contract much better.

Here is a solution for this kind of problem, there was a trader who actually used it here a few years ago:

Have a partner, wife, internet buddy, who trades with you, using your signals but with more contracts. The point is that you don't know if your signals are traded with 3-5 or even 10 contracts or they are traded at all.
i know, there is a danger that the partner will go heavy on a losing streak, thus accumulating a big loss, but it can be prevented just to go easy until there are profits to lose from. Since you claim to be a consistant winner, your partner could start out using 2-3 contracts first, then after 1-2 weeks moving up. Then you guys share the profits.
The trick would be that you never really know how many contracts are used with your signal and if I were you I would do the summary/profitsharing only at the end of the week, so less information is aviable for you...

P.S.: If it is an internet partner, there would be days, when he isn't even trading, so again, you could just focus on your own trading and giving the signals.
 
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