To answer some questions posed by MrSaltie: My trading career began around 1980. No computers. No cell phones. It was a hobby for me. Around 2000 I began using online brokers. Yes, I blew up my account several times. Yes, I fell for the ‘latest and greatest’ indicator BS. Now I trade most days for about an hour. Or less if I don’t like what I see. I trade treasury futures using ‘order flow’ or depth of market. Like a cat, I wait for the trade to come to me. It’s much like watching paint dry and isn’t for everybody but, it works for me.
My recommendation for success is: Make a plan.Trade your plan. Your plan should include both a profit target and stop loss. Never move your stop loss. Practice your trading plan for at least ten trading days before making a real trade. If you find you cannot stick to your plan paper trading, you are not ready to trade. If your chart has more than three indicators on it, make a new plan.
Good luck to all of you in this new year. There will be plenty of opportunities for us. We just have to take them.
Figure out what type of trader you are FIRST, then find a style to match it. For example: I am high energy, low patience, fast action type of guy… and I am a scalper. There is no way I can hold a position overnight, so I will never be a swing trader. So, I stick with strategies that scalpers use, not one swing traders use.
If you like action, trade NQ. If you want calmer waters, trade RTY.
I personally can’t trade with oscillators, so I don’t use them. Where other traders may do very well with them.
Try to keep things simple. The more variable you throw at trading, the more complex it becomes, and the more room there is for error. I focus on static levels. Things that are not subjective (previous day close price, open price, HOD, LOD, opening range, pivot points, etc…). I want to use something that is the same for everyone, regardless of platform, time zone, chart timeframe, or time of day they are looking at the chart. The levels is always the same. That way there is NO question and no subjectivity. (Nobody can disagree what yesterday close price was - it is the same for EVERYONE)
I’ve found my “secret sauce” and it is simple as anything. Find what works for you and go after it. Best of luck to you and welcome to Futures!
I just started trading 6 months ago. I blew up my first two small learning accounts “as we all do” and then started taking it serious. I read about 25 books on trading, followed some “furus” and finally found a mentor willing to show me some of the basics.
After much practice I was able to see a steady return (small return) on the weekly trading option spreads. But I wanted to day trade…how do I do that with a small margin account? I decided to learn Futures trading and attempted to apply everything I learned to this new ambition about a month ago.
First week, mon-thur made $1k, Friday final hour of day lost $1.3k. Then a 2 week losing streak where I bleed out another $1k.
Last 3 weeks I actually would have been profitable but the TOS fees basically eliminated all of my returns, hence the move to tradovate. Here is what I learned abnout trading futures.
Due to the speed, all of your mistakes will be on a greater curve. If you have emotional impulse errors in trading, in futures you will have larger ones. Do not trade in the live future market until you can trade mechanically. If it feels like the market is “playing against you” than you are simply not ready emotionally. The reason it feels that way is you are not confident in your trade.
Due to the lower margin, you can easily oversize in futures. A risk/reward system is literally the only key to stay in the game. Without it, you will not succeed. Find your risk/reward system and stick to it.
What is your edge. People have technical indicators, people have gut feelings, you can have that and not have a edge. An edge is using all of the technical/market knowledge you have and applying a back tested edge that is “proven” to be profitable after a number of attempts. An edge has to have a entry point and and exit point that you will stick to NO MATTER any noise. Without an edge you are guessing…guessing is emotional…it leads to emotional reactions…hence you get played.
Trading futures is hard. If swing trading shares is riding a bus on the highway, swing trading options is riding a taxi on a highway, day trading any of those puts you in the driver seat, but day trading futures is an F1 car at a racetrack. It leaves no room for error and being the line between aggressive and dead is paper thin. You have to fine tune your edge, practice, put in the chart time, the paper trades, the execution, and follow through. People who have mastered futures can make more money with less starting capital than any other form of trading. That is the same reason there are less successful future traders than any other form of trading. You have to accept that you are a rookie driver and everyone on the track will bump you into a wall over and over and over until you find your own lane…which could takes months, or years, or longer.
Oh please, this comes across so disingenuous. You’re not paying it forward, you’re shilling your program for $1,300. And if I pay up front I can save $50!!!
Just because you are disciplined in normal life doesn’t meant that will translate into trading discipline or being good at trading. Again, being good at chess has no bearing on being good at trading or being able to maintain 10% body fat. You are projecting your failure and misleading others into believing the lie that 99% of traders fail. The truth is that 99% of traders that don’t understand how the markets work fail. The only sure way I’ve found is to follow the supply and demand zone strategy with price action. Everything else is basically worthless. Once you learn to trade with the institutional traders, you will start making money. I have to believe that if you really lost $300k, you clearly didn’t employ sound trading practices, with proper position sizing, wider stops and only trading key supply and demand zones.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. My post was made two years ago. I continued to lose and lost almost $500k before getting good enough. Now in my first profitable year, I’m on track to make $1M a year. I highly doubt anybody else is doing that through this broker.
You are completely wrong about chess not being linked to trading. Thinking like everyone else is not going to help in this business. And 99.99% of people do fail at this. I can attest to that. Complete fantasy to think you can make this work after just a few years. Most people can’t stick it out for whatever reason, be it psychological or financial.
No, you don’t have to trade with the institutional traders or trade key supply and demand zones. I certainly don’t and I make great money. Everything else is not worthless. There must be many ways to make this work. You just have to find one way. So if you’ve found a way, good for you.
Tell me now, how much did you lose and how much do you make now? Be honest
That is fantastic and think thats amazing you have been able achieve that! I certainly have not been able to get anywhere near $1m in one year currently, but hope that I will be able to claim that soon.
There are many ways to trade and make money. I just have found one of the most SURE ways to trade with the least amount of risk and highest reward is to trade supply and demand zones with explosive candle movement and price action. Nothing else in my opinion comes close to its effectiveness and this is something many professionals will agree with me on. Most retail traders don’t even understand this concept or know how to trade this method.
Doesn’t sound like you were fortunate enough to have been taught this when you first started trading, otherwise you probably wouldn’t have lost so much and had to spend so much time before you became profitable. Your failure has caused you to project bitterness and bleakness. Do you really think it’s helpful to tell others your chances of success are almost zero? You are clearly angry about how much YOU lost and how long it took you to be successful and want others to interpret this as meaning they will most likely experience the same thing.
Rather than offering sound advice and life changing information like I did in regards to supply and demand trading, you let everyone know they will most likely fail. Since you have clearly become so successful, why don’t you instead, impart your winning strategies that are making you incredibly rich so others can benefit and potentially have the same success.
You most likely relied on the advice of traders who didn’t know what they were doing and were telling you to trade this indicator or that or follow this price action or this price action method but not to trade key zones near areas of supply
By now, you know that you should be trading with the institutions and smart money. Most other strategies rely on lagging indicators and you will have a much lower success rate.
I have lost money and have had to learn some hard lessons. I haven’t lost near the amount you have. Under $15k. But I was also fortunate to have good training earlier enough in my trading career to steer me away from methods and strategies that just don’t work and could have resulted in me losing much more.
Hello Jeff. Great to finally have someone who is willing to enter into a proper discussion!
Just as you found it hard to believe that I had lost as much as $300k (eventually nearly $500k), I find it extremely hard to believe that you have only lost $15k. It is so hard to become profitable that you are extrodionary if you pulled that off and now make money. But I must say that I always had very high aspirations and wanted to make at least $1M a year. Personally, if you’re not making a killing, I don’t see the point in all the effort required to make it happen.
I must correct you. I never followed anyone and taught myself everything. Perhaps that is why I am now on a path to great success. What I do is completely different to anything I have ever heard of. It is utterly mine. I just stared at the screen for years (order book) and kept trying. I have traded day and night for years and years on the same market. Eventually you have seen it all and you just know what’s going to happen next (some of the time).
I am most certainly not bitter. You are just reading into a bit of writing on a forum! I’m actually really positive and driven. I disagree, regarding telling others the chance of success is almost zero. It is true!!! I nearly lost everything and doubt I will ever meet anyone else like myself in real life. There must be only a handful of us out there. Just how many losers do you need to pay $1M plus to one winner. Also, that $1M I make costs others at least $2M due to fees. So a lot of $10k losers = one winner!
Finally, I would never impart my edge on a public forum. This is dog eat dog. If you drop by the NQ I’ll feast on your corpse just as you would on mine if you could But I’m happy to put this on a public forum… If you want to be really successful at this, keep going for years, keep staring at that screen, keep trying, have a LOT of money and you might just make it in the end. In fact, eventually, anbody with enough intelligence can make this happen. It just takes longer than most people can afford.
You clearly like your supply and demand zones. Interesting to hear. But after seeing everything happen I have found pretty much any moment is tradeable if you spend enough time looking at it. So I’d say it’s more to do with experience in the moment than believing that one moment is better than another. It’s all possible!
You deleted what you wrote but I can still see it. Thank you for what you wrote. I’m sorry you’ve had a tough time of it but you simply can’t expect anything else in order to achieve what you want.
I really don’t want to say too much in a public forum and yes, you are correct, you’ll never get answers on the internet. But I will at least advise to be extrememely careful with that $20k you are willing to risk. It’s not that much in this business and not enough to safely make $1M a year. I’d say you’d need around $100k to achieve that safely. If you have only done this full time for one year, I’d recommend going on 1 micro for the next few years. You’ll laugh at this but when I started micros didn’t exist. If I had done that, I would have saved $500k in losses. You are expecting too much after one year and that $20k will go. You might have better trading traits than me and I am prepared to accept that you might be able to succeed much faster than me. However, one year full time followed by success sounds very unlikely. Take my advice or leave it Be patient and plan to make good money in 5 years and lose very little now. Make money some other way for the next 5 years.
The only other thing I will say is what you will have heard before… it’s not what you do but what you don’t do that makes you sucessful in this business. I had a fatal flaw for years and it made it very hard to suceed. Find out what you are doing wrong. That is the key. And remember the average person is exactly that, average. If you look around you and see that you are not average then you have what it takes Good luck.
Hello MrSaltie!
I also would just like to thank you for your truthful input on this topic. I have been reading through this forum in hopes to gain some type of guidance or idea as to where I should go from my current situation in trading. You have actually helped shed some light into what I should start to focus on more.
I am glad you are doing well in your trading career. Even though I know I am far off from your degree of success, and there is a chance I will never succeed. It gives me hope to know that another managed to fight there way from that point of frustration and failure to now quite the opposite.
Hats off to you MrSaltie.
I don’t think you should pay for anything yet I follow a guy on YouTube that has taught me a lot. I’m also new to this you should check out his live streams I think you will really learn a lot from him in a few days. Day Trading LIVE! WILD WEDNESDAY! - YouTube
The only thing I know is trading an idea is better than trading the markets, short term. As Mr. Tomsic and Dr. Brooks can attest to on their hilarious dark comedy youtube videos
You’re correct, its not a structured program where there are different people teaching you different fields. This is all self structured and you need to commit to it. My point is the OP needs to come to terms that this will take time and alot of personal commitment.
