Problem with trading 1 contract only

[heavenskrow]

It's almost impossible to make money with only 1 contract.

Some entries deserve 1, some deserve 2, some deserve 10.

Not to say that the money made on a good day or week is usually disappointing.

Start with 1, because you are a newbie and your purpose as a newbie is not to make money, but to learn how to control your emotions, learn the market behavior, feel the market, learn the technical rules and mechanics, etc. Most stuff is only learned with real money (real emotions and real fillings), but aim for the minimum money amount as possible.

Eventually you'll learn what to do to avoid losing big. By losing, you'll learn to be disciplined, to set limits for yourself. Forget about the money, now it's not the time to make money.

So you will increase your positions. But not every trade will deserve 2 contracts. Sometimes you can see it's a high probability trade, but the stop-loss is too big, so you trade with only 1 contract. Sometimes you will see a strong trend and opportunities offering 1:3 or better of risk-profit ratio. These are the trades you should do with more contracts, 2 or 3.
I have a trend following strategy that consists of a number of contracts, but is doubled at the pivot breakout and then closed soon after the breakout, mixing trend following and scalping.

Right, as much as every trader's goal is to make money...my current goal is to be consistent and successful and thus limiting myself to 1 contract is a part of keeping myself disciplined.

I guess what I was trying to say is that similar to NoDoji's comment is that in managing a trade there is the , “part one” management style (quicker, higher probability profits at the first obvious point of potential resistance) or the “part two” management style (holding for larger gains – a lower probability option with greater payout when it works.

What I tend to do when having more flexibility, is to sell a fraction of my position in part one, then hold the other half for part two.

Anyways thanks to many people on this thread. I learned that I have to learn more about backtesting as well as looking into spread trading. Also that everyone has different opinions on targets because we all have different trading styles but not that it is the correct answer necessarily.