Quote from romik:
Hi Belavia,
What you need to ask yourself is this. Do I have a system that can generate at least 1 point a day on average over and over and over, because that is all that you would require, just 1 NET point per day. Stop thinking small, that is the key here as well as having the ability to gain that 1 net point. At the moment what is your capital? That is another question. Say, it is $5,000.00, which is about average for most starting out in futures. That would mean that you can trade up-to 10 contracts ES, but that is too much risk IMO, unless you DO have that 1 net point system. BTW, 1 NET point system is not achievable through taking lots of trades, the commission will eat up your net point. so the bottom line is identifying a strong move and taking ONLY strong possibility trades, none of the 'I hope it will and not having enough justification for an entry, blah blah blah'...
Anyway, getting back to position size. 10 lots would be risky as a novice trader you WILL make mistakes and you WILL lose. The point of losing is to train your mind to never start believing that you were right making an entry at a certain level and then when price reverses on you, you still believe it's going to go your way and you end up holding on to a loser. And when that loser is 5 points down (assume your predetermined stop was 2 points), then you are down $2,500.00 or 50% of your trading capital! You don't want that so ,=my advice would be to start with 1 lot=small cash gains ("supplementary income"), but if you do end up holding on to a loser for even 8-9 points and getting a margin call and get it closed, in that case you would be down $450.00 or 9% of your capital, which is NOT good, but not as bad as 50% in a 10 lot scenario.
So I hope you understand, that whether you will make a living or simply get supplementary income from trading ES (one of the most liquid instruments) depends on your capitalisation. I am not referring to the insides of the actual success, just to lack of range at certain times.
Don't forget, if you can show investors that you can generate 240 net points per year, you will have many people that would want to give you their money.
All you need now is to develop a system, that would either identify large moves when they do happen and you would get 5 points or a system that would provide you with 1 point per day on average, mine is the latter.
All the best!