+40 pts on 2 contracts traded in last hour on simulation with one trade. Just figured I'd share. my goal for every day this week is 20 pts.
JM is that 40 points for both contracts? or is that 20 points movement with 2 contracts? just curious when you get a chance lets see the chart
I'm investigating trading the mini-DJIA futures, which I believe are the YM contracts. I plan to trade a single contract week-to-week. Is this thread a good place to ask questions?
tofay i traded much heavier than normal due to the volaitility of the market.117 rt's is 117 contracts 117 out. i might do 5 contracts which i count as 5 rountrips ina nd 5 out. so not a ton of vol really. the last month i've been making the TRANSITION SLOWLY FROM stocks to the ym's and es's and its being going really well. i'm trying to mkae at least 10 ticks a trade but if things reverse i get out fast and i've been using 10 to 15 tick stops. today i had a nice 40 tick plus gain on 10 contracts but i also got stopped out a few times on some trades. all in all a good day. one thing i'm trying very hard to due is let my winners run .
joeyata1 I was going to say; here I thought you had your finger constantly on the buy/sell button I was doing pretty good till I held too long on one of my trades; holding onto a fast moving trade will really kill your average for the day.
20 points with both contracts = 40 total I could have had 60 - 80, but I wanted to try to get myself ready for real trading as much as possible, so I took profits early to be on the safe side. I don't see anything wrong with taking profits early, as long as you don't miss out on extremely big moves. My mentor helped me point out that buyers were in control at the last hour so I cought onto that and took really early on took profit on one contract, and just let the other one roll on up. But I'd like to at the very least make 20 points per day total. Once I can do this consistantly for every day I trade in a 3 - 4 week period, I'll consider aiming for more points with the current amount of contracts, or possibly consider adding another contract. But again, this is still simulated trading, but I informed my mentor that I'm really taking this week seriously because it might be my last week of simulated trading. Could have done better, but better safe than sorry? I don't see anything wrong with that.
so on here when one says i made 120 pts to today thats 120 x$5 per contract or $600 for the day correct?
I'm not sure what your broker is like JM; but some brokers require you to have a certain amount in your account to trade futures ie like 2k and if you fall below that they liquidate your position. Might want to be sure on that one with your broker before you get a surprise. Also IMO I think you should start out trading 1 contract until you have built up a certain amount. Maybe given yourself goals like if you reach x amount of money then you start trading 2 and then if you drop below you go back to 1. Granted you might do fine with 2 contracts its just a sharp drop with 2 contracts can lead to a very fast cash loss. what do you think JM?