Meanwhile, at Goldman Sachs and other leading investment banks, the world’s top floor-traders (the ones who have had all the professional training and done their “10,000 hours”, to acquire the necessary skill-set by experience) are earning their 7-figure annual bonuses for doubling their accounts over the course of a year: that equates to about 6% per month, compounded 12 times annually.
Everyone will bight my head off for this but if this was a live scenario (I understand you’re demo testing at the moment) simply remove your profit out of your trading account. Someone on here taught me to always have multiple revenue streams and remove profit from danger. People are talking about making 20% after their losses a month/year whatever if they even make profit at all. You’re talking about making 50-120% per week (I assume % of capital) simply remove the profit. Keep a tight working/trading capital and put it to work and make it work hard. If your strategy is working stick with it, The profit is the product of the working capital so take it, don’t leave it exposed to a major drawdown (which can hit anyone no matter what your strategy) and if you lose a chunk of your capital it gives you time to think before re funding your account so you won’t revenge trade. Just my opinion. Seriously though good luck, I really hope you do it.
Do not be afraid of your profits, be afraid of losing them. Do what you can to learn how to trade so you can keep your profits and not lose them all back to the market.
Very well said, of course this means you will not be able to benefit from the power of compound interest in the long run, unless you find a middle way. withdraw half your profits and keep half to slowly increase your trading size in line with your cap. I think it varies from trader to trader but good point Shyfx!
[QUOTE=“oceanmen;711879”]Very well said, of course this means you will not be able to benefit from the power of compound interest in the long run, unless you find a middle way. withdraw half your profits and keep half to slowly increase your trading size in line with your cap. I think it varies from trader to trader but good point Shyfx![/QUOTE]
Thanks oceanmen, you’re right 50/50 or even 75/25 withdrawal is a good way to increase your account and with the percentages being quoted a nice living too!.
There are many cautious traders here who are happy with small increases as they have other incomes or fear of loss but how many cautious traders have small increases because they’ve had large drawdown on their profits?. The loss is factored in to the end profit. If you’re able to make larger profits and keep them separate from your account you are still ahead of the majority on here (including me!). Of course it’s riskier but it’s an individual choice as to how much risk you work with.
IMO its better to focus on pips and not the amount of pips to the same profit.
For example:
If you want 10 pips worth 0.5$ a day (beginning) you have your strategy of TP and SL, if you try 5 pips worth 1$ a day it might mess with your strategy, being the losses bigger, being the SL fixed
I agree with this to a point, however, if you are focusing strictly on pips and are getting awesome pips, more gain of quantity of pips than loss on pips, but losing money all the time, then you need to re-examine your strategy. Strictly focusing on pips is not a good idea, IMO. You also need to pay attention to how much $ those pips are earning (and losing) you.
Lets say your risk reward is 1:1, 15 pips sl and tp, if you’re getting right 3 out of 4, or 4 ou of 5 (75% to 80%) you’re going to slowly grow the value per pip, managing the risk.
Or to put it in another way,
Any trade you risk 2% capital, in that way if you’re being lucrative your strategy stays the same, while your pips are becoming more and more valuable.
If you always set the same risk in every trade, some fixed % of your capital, the same number of pips will get bigger $ if your strategy is lucrative, less $ if your losing.
That’s why I think focusing on pips is more important.
But of course anyone has their own strategy and no two people are the same
I’m normally reluctant to dignify comments quite as ill-informed as this with a response at all, but on this occasion, just in case anyone’s gullible enough to take it seriously, I’ll mention that it’s utter nonsense.
Two weeks is very short period of time, and yes those returns are possible but it is more important how your strategy will react on long term trading. So you can come back to this thread after at last 6-9 months and you can tell us how did it go.
Google this “After 167 years, Chicago Mercantile Exchange closes futures trading pits” CME closed the last of it’s trading pits on the 6th of July.
There cannot be any more Floor Traders if there is no more Floor.
You are right…someone here is ill informed.
I traded open outcry at the start of my venture into the financial markets…so YES…I was a Floor Trader. It has been a very long time ago since I moved out of the floor into Electronic trading starting with when CME introduced “Globex”
You remember what Globex was? I am sure you do…seeing that you are very well informed where this is concerned.
Floor traders are called “Locals”… but then of course I am sure you already know that.
Locals continued to trade and most found it better and more convenient doing it Off-Floor and now you find the floor like a ghost town so CME has decided to end the era of the open cry…CME is the last man standing…the era of the Pit aka “The Floor” is over.
You cannot have floor traders when you have no floor… but then of course you are already well informed right?
I am doing well. I am not trading at this moment because I need to prepare my exams (studying law and computer science at the same time so it’s quite harsh).
But I did learn a lot about structure and fibonacci related strategies so I will adapt my strategy. Essentially it’s a strategy based on price action and market structure/ratios and I feel I have more control and don’t expect the market to do something, I just watch if my criteria are met.
The results are quite good but I need to foreward test it for a month (will do in september).
Maybe I’ll share my strategy back then. I don’t expect you to have the same results as me because it’s all about discipline and execution but it’s nice to see that people are actually replying and are interested.
The reason why I got so big of a profit is because my strategy included the breakouts advantage taking, and I was kinda trading off structure so my strategy had a very positive edge. By the way I noticed that a lot of traders can’t read a chart and don’t understand how the price moves and how it respects structure. People are using fibonacci not realising that without an understanding of structure fibonacci is useless.
And yeah you will get 50-100% return of investment even with normal trading. You just manage your stop loss to be 10% of your capital and expect to have a 2:1 win/risk ratio per trade and a more than 50% probability strategy. Basically structure strategy and harmonic pattern (i dont use harmonics just structure and fibs) is a very good probability one because it’s based on dynamic support/resistances and the market does respect that. Well people do, that’s why psychology is important.
So my strategy was based on structure a lot, I didn’t quite realise it (unconscious competence) but since I found the Jason Stapleton stuff on youtube I got it. Not advertising stuff (and it’s free anyway lol) just saying the man speaks the truth, not just about the strategy but about all the psychological stuff and the basics of chart reading.
Words can’t describe the extent to which some of the “advice” offered here makes me shudder. Risking 10% of your capital per trade is a guaranteed eventual way to the poor-house (needless to say - which is precisely why so many beginners’ books say it so repeatedly.) :34:
It’s not an advice, I just say you can do it. (people actually risk more in stock market).
Well you can use 5% and will get the same return in 2-4 weeks.
I don’t see why it makes you shudder. It’s just a probability game. You have a more than 50% chance to win 100 dollars for risking 50 dollars. And you have 10 chances before you are out.
If you can’t do that with 10% you won’t be able to do that with 5% nor 2,5%.
It’s all about emotions and execution. People emotionally think they risk less if they are risking 1% of their capital. But here is the thing, if they have a poor strategy or a poor execution they will lose money anyway. They will actually be consistent losers, and you don’t need to wait 6 month to see that.
I don’t recommend risking more than 10% of your capital per trade anyway. Plus, with this amount of risk you can go for higher timeframes which will prevent you from overtrading.
I know you don’t. That’s part of the problem. :15:
It makes me shudder for the same reasons that it would make 100 people out of 100 who trade for a living ([B]not[/B] just 99 out of 100!) shudder: it’s a [U]sure-fire[/U] recipe for an eventual disaster. I’m saying this with apologies and to try to clarify it for other readers, not try to criticise you, Vlad, but I’m afraid your idea that 10% staking can safely be combined with a win-rate just over 50% really is the height of naivety and inexperience.
The “nearest analogy” I can quickly think of (though it’s a far from perfect one, I admit) that’s readily understandable is to liken it to the well-known “risk of ruin” calculation for repeatedly playing “black” at a roulette table in a casino. If you do that for long enough, you [B][U]will[/U][/B] eventually hit 12 consecutive losers (reds). You can (perhaps) work out for yourself where your trading fund will be, after that losing run. Perhaps more importantly, you’ll also [I][U]much more regularly[/U][/I] hit some very long patches within which losers predominate over winners by a factor of about 3/1 or 4/1, over a really large number of trades/bets, and those will [B]also[/B] wipe you out with relentless efficiency.
At times, with very well-researched and well-proven methods, I’ve started out some small, high-rsik accounts by risking as much as 2% per trade, but only temporarily, with much higher strike-rates and with quite some anxiety.
Edited to add: for the third time, respectfully, I [B]strongly[/B] recommend to you reading the position-sizing chapters (the second half of the book) in Van Tharp’s book [I]Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom[/I], or the equivalent parts of [I]any[/I] other introductory book on trading systems. I’ve learned the hard way that you won’t take my word for it, but perhaps you’ll take the word of someone as universally highly respected and regarded as he is?