[Dogpile]

working backwards yields a similar figure.

RUS is trading near 850. forget leverage for a minute. a 1% return per month is 8.5 pts (would equal 12.7%/year). Assume 20 trading days and you need to avg 4.3 ticks per day to get there -- 5-6 ticks with trading costs.

So I agree that 6 ticks per day for RUS is a good goal if you can do that with 'surgical strikes' -- not being in the market very much and can do it with reasonable stop-losses. Compounding 6 ticks per day is powerful on its own if you can do it with low variance. Then just add contract size and you can leverage returns while maintaining the same low variance.

But this doesn't necessarily mean the profit target for a trade is always 6 ticks. You might have a 1 pt target for a set-up. Or a 1.2 pt target. Linda Rashke says their modeling shows that you should be targeting 0.5 to 1.0 ATR to optimize your results. Depending on the timeframe you trade, this probably isn't all that much. Another way to do this is to make sure to take 1/3 or 1/2 your position off for a small scalp (0.5 - 1.0 ATR) and then play the other 1/2 to 2/3 for normal profit goal. This might yield the 6 tick target and your risk in dollars drops exponentially if you can get a small profit at very high % on 1/2 your position.

You need to also occassionally have big wins to offset those dead fat profile days when the market trades narrow range. But I agree that if you wait for a really choice set-up, they aren't going to come around much more than once per day -- per market you watch. Sometimes twice. Very rarely three times.

Wait patiently. Get in with your surgical strike and get out. It might not achieve your trade target (which is likely higher than your daily goal) on the first entry -- but if it does, strongly consider calling it a day. Trading one time per day, per market is a beautiful thing.