Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
I agree with most everything posted here. If you have $25K in your account and don’t have to worry about the PDT then the QQQ, SPY are going to be your best instruments.
If you don’t have $25k, then I would suggest micro forex. $1 a pip means you can have a small account and still trade 2 cars, without risking more than 2% of your capital. Once you become consistently profitable you can switch to trading futures like the 6e and 6b.
As someone mentioned before, there are some short comings to forex. However, when you are ready both mentally and have the account size, switching to the corresponding futures contract will be easy. If you look at a EUR/USD chart and 6E chart they will look almost identical.
As someone who has recently become fascinated with day-trading, I am hoping to "give it a shot", perhaps a couple mornings a week before my day job. The $10K minimum IB imposes to open an account is reasonable for me to get started, but I certainly can't commit $25K.
Given this, do you think it makes sense to start off with the ES? I would, of course, trade 1 contract at a time, and manage risk with stops. Are there other instruments that don't have PDT restrictions but are better for beginners?
I've never invested in anything where I didn't see that "I could do better than what's going on". I've had to jump around to different forms of investing three times because returns turned into nothing special. Futures will probably be the same: get the money while you can because this isn't stable full time job (unless you are Anagami or TMFT maybe).
So what I'd tell a friend is go for it, if you see you have an edge, but money management is more important than brilliance. GL
I am wary of trading in a simulated way, because my actions surely will be different without money on the line. Of course I will spend a little time to get used to software, indicators, etc., but don't know how much other than that I will learn through this.
Fair enough. Is there anything else I should try then (that doesn't have PDT restrictions)?
I know the conventional wisdom about sim, but sim didn't work for me. For some reason I could not take it seriously enough, so I developed some bad habits with hit, because psychologically, I knew it was not real. What it helped me with was with developing my entry and management techniques. I had to actually put real money on the line to develop discipline, because the consequences were real, and they hurt
That's where moving to live trading cheap mini contracts, and ETF's made the difference for me. The consequences were real, but the sting was not as bad. You minimize the risk of ruin, until you fully learned your lessons that only real life can teach you... if you are like me
