john99

No offense to the OP. But are you serious? Is this whole thread a big joke? You plan on trading for a living with only 75k and you are using brokers like Scottrade? Some of you say 75k is more than enough to trade with or even 45k. Honestly, how many professional traders do you know that trade that small of an account and make 6 figures? I know ZERO. Yes, maybe a retail guy got lucky 1 year with 45k, but consistent for 3+ years is a rarity. Next comes Scottrade, please do some research on finding a better broker. You must not care about execution speed or commissions. Do you know how much you would save in commissions if you made 100k and you were trading with a real discount broker vs Scottrade. I am actually shocked to read people like this believe they can trade for a living, (ie- the guy just shorted a stock for the first time ever and his wife is getting excited about the business). There are so many red flags, I just keep shaking my head. My suggestion- Go to IB, Keep your day job or part time job. Never use borrowed money like an insurance or home LOAN to trade, and be prepared to lose all of your money you have in the market for when your support and resistance strategy stops working.

There is a video comparing the best futures broker based on advertised rates.

No. I'll probably never quit. I know how to trade. I just need to have daily stop loss limits in place in case I start trading against the plan and let my emotions take over. It's really that simple. And I bet it's this way for a lot of "FUTURES" traders that experience losing weeks or months worth of profits in a single day. It's just plain stupid. If your a futures trader you have to have a planned stop and trade only signals that you recognize. If you start trading against your plan the best precautionary measure you can take is to have a daily stop loss in place that will close out your positions when you get down X amount of dollars. There's been days where I've been down $5k and I made it back to positive, but there's been just as many days where that $5k loss turned into a $10k loss. I pretty much know that when I get down X amount of dollars, that the day is going to be a loser and that I should quit, but sometimes I let the emotions turn on and I use increased leverage to get back to breakeven. This is pretty much like a gambler going on tilt. Experienced traders know the end result is more often bad than good in this scenario. You correct bad behavior by reducing leverage, not increasing. To some it up. Use daily stop loss limits on your account. Trade your signals that you have planned ahead of time, and only take trades where you feel comfortable with the risk of having your planned stop loss hit. HPT

Hey Guys this is HPT, Most of my blowups and screwups have been from doing what mcichocki said, gambling. Gambling as in, adding to losers, and overleveraging myself on bad trades. As long as you have good risk management (dont add to losers, use planned out stops, and trade the right size for your account), then you should avoid the screwups that you frequently see I have. I believe market internals are very helpful in day trading the indices. For example, you wouldn't want to be looking for short setups in the market with nyse A/D at 3 in the afternoon and when NYSE tick extreme readings haven't touched -400 all day and the volume is below avg. These are the types of slow low volume days that creep higher all day that many traders get stuck trying to fade. I know this from experience. HPT