Trading e-minis with $1k starting capital

Quote from eminimouse:

Keep doing what's right Index Scalper...

This thread finally brought me out of lurker status because your entries sound like pages from my own trading diary. Your commitment to improving your trading skills is evident by your willingness to put it all out there on public view. And I must say, certain posters have taken a real interest in helping you succeed.

My own humble observation is that "discipline" is mandatory until you have full confidence in your strategy. When that confidence is unshakable, then the trades will be natural and you won't have to fight with yourself. You may not be as inclined to revenge trade or take impulse trades to try to "make up" for days when the setups didn't perform as well, because you'll be confident that your trading strategy really works. That will take a huge weight off your shoulders.

The trick is how to gain confidence in your strategy without blowing up first...

My own trading turned a corner after I started comparing my real time trades with what the results would have been had I followed my strategy to the tick. It really helped to identify both my performance strengths/weaknesses, as well as strengths/weaknesses of the strategy itself. With a lot of trade by trade comparisons and a little tweaking (e.g. the addition of a trailing stop to let your real winners reveal themselves) you might be pleasantly surprised.

One other suggestion is to keep a spreadsheet record of your strategy's performance, independent of your execution. Over time you'll see its true nature, its win rate, expectancy, average drawdown, etc. If it's a great strategy, then these numbers will give you the confidence to trade without the psychological baggage.

And since you don't have the time/money cushion for all this forward strategy testing you may benefit from manually backtesting it as much as you can and add those results to your spreadsheet. The more information you compile, the better.

And since you have rules about entries, exits and stops, it should be relatively simple to evaluate each of your strategy triggers for its potential gain/loss. (None of this "Oh, I would have stayed in that trade since it was an obvious trend move", etc...).

Ok, that's enough spew for a first post. Carry on...:)
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Great post eminimouse! And thanks for the suggestions!
I'm currently working on exporting the trades from my platform to excel to be able to objectively evaluate my strategy.
 
Quote from gurucandidate:

As scalp quite a bit and I have enjoyed reading this thread and I am learning from it and I would like to share some of my experiences, but first, the following from IndexScalper rings so true to me:

"Couple of problems that come to mind...
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Gurucandidate, you're one of the very few posters on this thread that understand what's involved in VST trading and what I'm trying to accomplish.
 
The ER is thin, spiky and getting worse to handle as the CME does everything possible to suck liquidity out of that symbol.

The ES is by far choppiest and persistently sideways symbol.

You are trying to scalp two opposite extremes, each moves differently and both are toughest in their own right.

*

I'll make a suggestion which I hope you'll seriously heed: trade the NQ

If you insist on VST scalping for whatever reason(s), the NQ makes straightline breakout moves which should be very visible to you.

If you decide to trade for handles at any time, the NQ is most trendy and straightline of all eminis.

ER2 is tougher now than ever before, and it will get worse. ES is what it is. You will make more money in the NQ with less effort, especially so when you focus on a single symbol and not divided attention at warp speeds.

Hope this helps
 
Quote from austinp:

The ER is thin, spiky and getting worse to handle as the CME does everything possible to suck liquidity out of that symbol.

The ES is by far choppiest and persistently sideways symbol.

You are trying to scalp two opposite extremes, each moves differently and both are toughest in their own right.

*

I'll make a suggestion which I hope you'll seriously heed: trade the NQ

If you insist on VST scalping for whatever reason(s), the NQ makes straightline breakout moves which should be very visible to you.

If you decide to trade for handles at any time, the NQ is most trendy and straightline of all eminis.

ER2 is tougher now than ever before, and it will get worse. ES is what it is. You will make more money in the NQ with less effort, especially so when you focus on a single symbol and not divided attention at warp speeds.

Hope this helps
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Thanks for a suggestion austinp. I used to trade primarily ER2 and I'm aware of the liquidity issues associated with it. I stated earlier that I will not be trading trading it anymore. Well, even though I did a few trades on it today (all winners btw), the truth is that over 90% of my activity today came from ES.
I didn't completely rule out getting involved with NQ, even though I didn't like it when I tried it a couple of weeks ago.
 
Quote from IndexScalper:

Gurucandidate, you're one of the very few posters on this thread that understand what's involved in VST trading and what I'm trying to accomplish.
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VST = ?
 
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