Sometimes I wonder why I even day trade...

[Mercor]

The percent returns look unreasonable....That is only because the denominator is the margin money
The percent return should not be based off what the exchange daily deposit demand is. It should be based total contract value.
ES500 at 4700 = $235,000
In the post he is using $2500 for margin
If you make a 10 pt profit = $500
$500 / $235,000 =0.21% daily
$500 / $2500 = 21% daily

Making 0.21% per day seems reasonable
Making 21% a day does not
In the end you have the same profit

I never heard of anybody making 5 or 10 points per contact per day
I think making a point a day is success and will make you wealthy

 

[Overnight]

The percent returns look unreasonable....That is only because the denominator is the margin money
The percent return should not be based off what the exchange daily deposit demand is. It should be based total contract value.
ES500 at 4700 = $235,000
In the post he is using $2500 for margin
If you make a 10 pt profit = $500
$500 / $235,000 =0.21% daily
$500 / $2500 = 21% daily

Making 0.21% per day seems reasonable
Making 21% a day does not
In the end you have the same profit

I never heard of anybody making 5 or 10 points per contact per day
I think making a point a day is success and will make you wealthy

I think this is faulty logic. You're just fudging the maths to make it seem what it not really is, but rather what you think it should be but is not.

I look at it from a NLV standpoint in the account.

Assuming flat at start of day, with $10,000 in the account and day-trading only the ES, your NLV is $10,000.

At a discount broker you get, say, $500 margin to trade ES per contract.

You trade 5 contracts per clip that day, so your total margin being used that day is $2500.

You make one trade, and make 10 points on that 5 contracts ES trade.

That's a total of $2500 made in that trade. At EOD you are flat and your account NLV is $12,500.

That's a 25% gain in one day on your NLV. The notional amount in futures does not matter, because while you are swinging around a million bux worth of underlying value, you are not required to have that value in the account. All you need is the $2500 margin the broker requires. And you had that covered in spades, because you had 10K to start with.

 

[deaddog]

For those who want to maximize their use of time ( ie not as a trader ), swing trading indexes and/or holding quality stocks is quite good. There are a ton of investors in Canada that made a small fortune simply by buying their home and investing in Canadian banks. TD for example was up like 24x from 1995 to 2019 ( reinvesting the dividends ). I got the home part right but never had the patience on the banks.

I agree with this. I day-traded both stocks and futures in the mid 2000s. I switched to swing trading stocks (no leverage) and my returns are better and I have less stress and more time.

Part of the reason my returns are better is I probably became a better trader as I gained more experience. I'm not sure of the allure of day trading for new traders. It's kind of like learning to swim at the deep end of the pool.

That being said I didn't listen to anyone else when I started, I had to learn for myself.

 

[virtusa]

The percent returns look unreasonable....That is only because the denominator is the margin money
The percent return should not be based off what the exchange daily deposit demand is. It should be based total contract value.
ES500 at 4700 = $235,000
In the post he is using $2500 for margin
If you make a 10 pt profit = $500
$500 / $235,000 =0.21% daily
$500 / $2500 = 21% daily

Making 0.21% per day seems reasonable
Making 21% a day does not
In the end you have the same profit

I never heard of anybody making 5 or 10 points per contact per day
I think making a point a day is success and will make you wealthy

Depending on what you use, the contract value or the margin, the formula to calculate the profits stays the same. Only the return changes as the basis changes. The margin is the key to success, and because of the leverage and the compounding effect combined with the high frequency it causes an explosion of the returns. Being able to trade on a $2,500 per contract (which covers a 50 points move in the ES) while avoiding large drawdowns is the key. Essential is to have a good system that reduces the losses as much as possible. That's why I always say that a good entry is the most important part of the trade.
Margin was created to potentially increase your return on invested capital. If not, what's the use of margin?

That fact that you don't know anybody making 5-10 points a day doesn't mean anything. You need access to all data (or at least a big chunk of it) from all the daytraders to make any valid conclusion. Very successful traders stay low profile and these non visible ones are exactly the interesting ones.
I remember that @Scataphagos ones wrote he knew somebody who made 9 points a day average during a period and got rich. And that was when the ES was probably only at 1,000-1,500. 9 points in those days equals today percentage wise 42 points as the ES is not at 1,000 but at 4,700 now.

Even with just 2 points a day you turn $5,000 in over $3.5 million if you are really good as daytrader. The financial entry level is low, so almost anybody can start with it, and the returns can grow very fast. In longterm trading you can never achieve that and you need much more starting capital to have a meaningful profit.

The first 10 years of my daytrading I also thought it was impossible to make 2 points net average a day. I lost the first 10 years continuously money. You should know how to daytrade if not you will never make it. But the majority does not know how to trade to have consistent profits in all types of markets.

I don't know anybody who is dealing or taking drugs, but reality is completely different, drugs are everywhere. Why don't I see the reality? Because of lack of data. I am not in a position to see the real numbers. So my opinion is wrong as I don't have enough knowledge about drugs and drugdealing. And these drugdealers or drugtakers will not come to me to make me smarter. They will stay low profile. Same happens in trading.

 

[Mercor]

Depending on what you use, the contract value or the margin, the formula to calculate the profits stays the same. Only the return changes as the basis changes. The margin is the key to success, and because of the leverage and the compounding effect combined with the high frequency it causes an explosion of the returns. Being able to trade on a $2,500 per contract (which covers a 50 points move in the ES) while avoiding large drawdowns is the key. Essential is to have a good system that reduces the losses as much as possible. That's why I always say that a good entry is the most important part of the trade.
Margin was created to potentially increase your return on invested capital. If not, what's the use of margin?

That fact that you don't know anybody making 5-10 points a day doesn't mean anything. You need access to all data (or at least a big chunk of it) from all the daytraders to make any valid conclusion. Very successful traders stay low profile and these non visible ones are exactly the interesting ones.
I remember that @Scataphagos ones wrote he knew somebody who made 9 points a day average during a period and got rich. And that was when the ES was probably only at 1,000-1,500. 9 points in those days equals today percentage wise 42 points as the ES is not at 1,000 but at 4,700 now.
I seen traders post before and i recall the number was about .75 to 1.50 ES points per day for the successful ones

Even with just 2 points a day you turn $5,000 in over $3.5 million if you are really good as daytrader. The financial entry level is low, so almost anybody can start with it, and the returns can grow very fast. In longterm trading you can never achieve that and you need much more starting capital to have a meaningful profit.

The first 10 years of my daytrading I also thought it was impossible to make 2 points net average a day. I lost the first 10 years continuously money. You should know how to daytrade if not you will never make it. But the majority does not know how to trade to have consistent profits in all types of markets.

I don't know anybody who is dealing or taking drugs, but reality is completely different, drugs are everywhere. Why don't I see the reality? Because of lack of data. I am not in a position to see the real numbers. So my opinion is wrong as I don't have enough knowledge about drugs and drugdealing. And these drugdealers or drugtakers will not come to me to make me smarter. They will stay low profile. Same happens in trading.

I agree with your post
I am sure there is somebody making 10 points a day
At 1000 contracts that is $125,000,000 a year....Someone doing that would probably have a bigger footprint in the financial markets....so likely would be known
maybe eventually someone pushing the market that hard gets caught in a Black swan event every couple of years....
It would be a good thread to open and ask what do you net per day , per month, per year on a daily basis in the ES500

 

[virtusa]

I agree with your post
I am sure there is somebody making 10 points a day
At 1000 contracts that is $125,000,000 a year....Someone doing that would probably have a bigger footprint in the financial markets....so likely would be known
maybe eventually someone pushing the market that hard gets caught in a Black swan event every couple of years....

I never spoke about trading 1,000 contracts. Don't put words in my mouth I never said. I only said that on ET people told that trading 1,000 contracts is no liquidity issue in the ES.
1,000 contracts is less than 0.05% of the daily volume. Will not be noticed quickly.

It would be a good thread to open and ask what do you net per day , per month, per year on a daily basis in the ES500

No, it would be a very bad idea. I saw how people got attacked when they toldsomething that according to the "experts" was not possible. The person who would post all that information about his trades has nothing to win, so why share it? Best is to keep the stupid stupid and surely not make them smarter.

It is normal that you never hear about top daytraders. Not because they don't exist, but because they are not interested in you. And they have no interest at all in sharing their track record with anybody.