MightyMouse

Wow! I have to ask whether one has to be Scandinavian from a Scandinavian Country or would being any nationality and living in a Scandinavian Country be good enough as long as you are foolish enough to not finish school and try to make money with a deck of cards? Yes, they are foolish. Just as foolish as an NBA player who does not complete his degree. I am sure if someone where willing to waste their time reverse engineering your indicators, they would be rewarded with a new set of squiggly lines that tell you either nothing or as much as a 10 period moving average. But, of course, your indicator can see into the future for those willing to play hide and seek with you. Cute mixture of silliness, mock arrogance, and potential bigotry. I apologize to anyone taking this thread seriously, but I am embittered because I am a degreed Hispanic living in Africa and I hate it when job opportunities at quant firms close up because I do not live in a Scandinavian Country.

Pick a market and stick to it. Don't bounce around because it won't help. You need to become a maser of es or any other vehicle you trade. It's a lot harder to master more than 1. Think of it as you being the new fish in a pond and nature's laws are at work. How do you eat without getting eaten?

I take myself out of a losing trade before it hits my stop almost always.

Are you going to let this hit your target or stop or are you going to get out earlier than 1039 if it starts losing or sooner than 993 if it goes in the money?

Nice day. How many trades did you do today?

NT sim is one of the best out there. it's very close to real. The only real difference is that you are not part of the order flow in sim and every contract counts during the session. Also, you emotions get to ride in the back seat in sim. Good luck.

You've listed several very good reasons not to chase. If you wait, it will come back a lot of times. An entry should be a range of prices (ticks/pips) the best giving you the smallest risk. If an entry is 1 price only that makes it tougher to enter.

Don't chase. Use your paitence, discipline, and confidence. Your entry should be where it is because of your plan. if you chase, you increase your risk and are not following your plan. Whether you like it or not, you really have no idea of what price would do if you chased and entered. Your entry could have been the little bit extra that some other trader needed to see to execute an entry in the opposite direction. It's really only an assumption that price would have done what it did if you chased and entered.

Don't hire a mentor. Think about it. Why would a successful trader waste their time with a green pea trader for a limited amount of money if they could simply trade and make significantly more in the market? You will find guy who needs you to solve his problems; not the other way around. Think of the incentive to make up trading results and experience, etc to get you to fork over cash. There is virtually no way for you to know for sure if his numbers are legitimate Trading is a real business and there are traders who are really good at this business and they will take your money away from you very quickly. Your best bet is to sim trade and save your 2k until you at least can make money on a sim basis. Mentoring and every other advisory service is also a business and they are there to get money from you. Like any other sales situation, they will say and do whatever is possible and, hopefully, legal to get you to part with your money. also, they probably sell advice because they aren't realy making enough from trading.

It's a nice looking chart. How would you use it to trade?

War tactics do a apply to trading. I frequently refer to predation as a means of ambushing weak traders. I believe that it most closely resembles no limit poker. Horse racing is paramutual betting and it is againt a "house" similar to casino gambling. Poker also has a similar social aspect too it; where you communicate, joke, etc, and are all oponents and ulimately win at the loss of others. And, you can win or loss like a gentleman or like someone who thinks they are the best player and everyone else is only lucky.

Cute dig! I am assuming you are having fun.

Not miserable at all. Realistic is more like it. Oh no they make money consistently and a couple trade large size; it's just that they don't have back to back to back to back days with 100 trades in a row with no loses. Forgive me; I am just not used to seeing such incredible results from so many people. I guess if I want to keep visiting this thread I’ll have to get used to it.. Personally, I am currently down slightly for the year. I guess I am the loser here at 39% win/loss including commissions. Their win/loss is similar to mine, but they tend to ride a winner better than I can which makes a huge difference. Lastly, you don't have to get your panties in a bunch if you aren't soliciting anything. You are fooling yourself if you think there are not people on TL who are soliciting.

Well, it's good that you are making money in sim. No sense going live if you can't make it in sim. There is a huge difference between sim and real trading. Then and only then will you deal with your personal demons. In addition, you become a part of the order flow instead of trading off of prices that never leave your computer. Do not think for a moment that adding your 1 contract to the order flow won't make a difference. Most day traders I know take a lot of small losses trying to get positioned and these guys are survivors who are making money. I am not accusing any individual specifically of making up thier results, but seeing back to back to back winning days without a loss puts my BS radar on alert. And, if you are supposed to be learning from all this, seeing bs is not going to help you. In fact, it will hurt you since you may think that you are lacking or not good if you can't consistently achieve the same results.

Is this thread all sim? Is it pretend? It's funny how barely anyone has a win/loss percent of anything less than 70-80%. 20 out of 21 profitable days? 37 winning trades in a row? I am embarrassed for you if these are supposed to represent real trades. If you guys are posting this rubbish to solicit traders for your business or something, I am sure you are in violation of CFTC, FinRE rules on communicating with the public.

6 ticks on nq per trade is fabulous! If you are earning 6 ticks per trade on average all you need to do is devise a plan to add contracts and you'll be on eof the best traders ever. Why? because if you are taking 30 dollars a trade and you do only 2 trades a day that means that in a month you will have made about $1200 trading nq. NQ has a contract value of around $32000, so at 1200 a month and 14,400 a year, you are earning somewhere around 40-50% of the NQ contract value. If you in fact only trade 1 contract a day in NQ, your return will be half of that at like 20%. That puts you in probably 1% of all traders. So it's not a low amount at all. Traders at major Wall St firms who are given $25,000,000 to trade and have 300 person research departments at their disposal have 10% as a goal for the year. I think it's delusional to expect to earn more than 10% from the markets consistanly especially as an underfunded independant trader trading on a home PC. I really don't know if you are comfusing target amount per trade with avg per trade or something. I suspect that a lot of you guys have bought into the BS of how much money you can make trading and are rejecting the reality of what a trading account tells you at the end of the month. Ever wonder why the "great" traders on here do not want to share their actual results? They may post a winning trade here and there to keep up the illusion of greatness, but the illusion fades when you get to the hard reality of it. I hope no one targets 1 tick per trade or 6 ticks in NQ. Commissions would eat you alive. I am fortunate in the sense that I have the time and capital to see this through and I am not implying whatsoever that I am making a living trading. Most don't have the luxury of both time and capital and you need both. If you or someone thinks what I have described is a waste of time and not worth the effort to trade and it prevents them from committing their limited time and capital to the markets, then I feel that I have done a solid favor for at least one person on this forum. My comment on including all trades in an average is because I have heard all sorts of numbers and averages and people tend to want to be "the better trader than you" and tell you their average winner. Or, they give you some back tested result as their numbers. Whatever it is, none of it is as real as the account balance at the end of the month of a real trading account.

Incidentally, I began this by questioning what is meant by trading "profitably" and trying to distinguish between trading above zero and and earning a living trading which are both forms of profitable trading, but vastly different in capital needs, mental prep, etc. It quickly got lost in some sort of numbers game.

It's kind of simple. Most traders lose money trading so their average gain per contract traded is less than zero. Yet, they contiue trading. Suggesting that a tick a trade per contract traded is a waste of time could imply that you are earning more than that and I, therefore, tip my hat to you since you are earning more than a lot of traders. My hat tip is a sincere statement so please don't take it any other way.

If you are averaging more than 15 dollars or so a day, per contract traded and are day trading, and you have been trading more than a few months, you are much better trader than most traders. I tip my hat to you. In determining your averages make sure you include all winners and all losers and also make sure they are real trades and not sim. Out of curiosity, what IYO is a good amount to expect to earn on average per contract traded?

LOL That's actually funny. I don't trade that way. I don't think anyone does. It works out that way when you accumulate all your winners and losers. Someone who is a consistant loser can do the same calculations and realize that he is losing like $10 a trade or about 1 tick. So, you can ask, why bother trading when you are losing 1 tick per trade at the end of each month. Day trading is a grind which is why most people do not succeed. I will go a few months without making anything or losing and then in 10 days of trading I hit a streak that brings me back in line. It's how it works. I am not making it up. take your trades and you will see something similar if you are actually making money. It doesn't amount to much on a per trade basis. In addition, it took me a long time to get to where the amount per trade was positive.

Most people have limited time or funds or both.

the risk is technically unlimited with a short. Right or wrong I still look at the long contract value for determining rational expectations. You can use your account size instead as the amount at risk, you're simply dealing with higher percentages, but you still shouldn't expect to earn signifcantly more than the 350 -650 range. Also, I am not suggesting that you stop trading for the month when you hit 350. 350 is an average which could mean losing 1000 this month and making 1700 next month.

Take all your trades for a period of time and divide the avg contracts traded by the months you traded. You may be surprised. Also, I am talking about daytrading which is essentially grinding it out day in and day out. If you are a position trader, it's a totally different set of numbers. I simply assumed that most people here are day traders/scalpers.