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Asking Suggestions On Next Step After Profit With One Lot Trading-Micros
I was wondering if the numbers of lots could dipend on what's going on in the market. In a day with a tight trading range I would enter with less contracts and so set less target profit. The opposite in a trending day
I don't know if this make sense for you.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Think you are missing the main point that so many have mentioned.
The number of contracts (standard, mini, micro whatever) is not what is important. The percentage of your trading capital exposed per trade, and in total if other markets are traded simultaneously, is what matters most.
I agree with the range of 1-2% limit. Which would mean a 10k account allows for $100-$200 of leeway. Trading ES doesn't leave much room for slippage/move against you before needing to exit regardless of trading 1 or 2 and forget 3 or more contracts. Though that same amount is plenty for micros. Seems a no-brainer which to go with and stay with until trading capital is much higher no matter how many of this or that.
The whole point here is that even though the market is taking off, doesn't mean what you are looking at is. Today, the market is up, and oil tanks. You never know. Buying more than you can afford will invariably end in losses. Personally, I do fairlly well, but I still have losses. Most of my trades, viewed individually, have a chance of success of about 70%. Meaning that 30% will be losers. Which 30%? Nobody can tell that. If that 30% were the trades that I went all in because the market looked good, I'd probably be an overall loser. Do yourself a favor and develop a trading plan that works for you. The plan should be mechanical. meaning that you leave all of your opinions, whims, and emotions out of it. Every trade fits the mold. I think there is more money lost because of emotions than anything else. Then I use a buying power limit for every trade. If it tanks and I lose, so be it. I make it a learning experience and move on, but I do not lose half of my account either.
Hello,
View Futures.io Webinar CME Micro-Eminis by FuturesTrader71 from 2019-06-12 Youtube, where it is explained why trading in 1 lot is difficult and he recommends trading in 3 lots.
Sure. Trade three lots. Three times the profits. Three times the fun. Hey, great. But we are all operating in a vacuum here. You have to give thought to your account size. The system of taking into account your buying power allows for the inevitable losses we all have. Three lots of X could be anything, large or small. I would never consider a trading plan that just arbitrarily assigns lots of three as the go to size for everything, regardless. It might be easier than thinking, of that I have no doubt. But no one has ever said that this is supposed to be easy. Personally, I want a LOT of trades on at the same time and that means buying power. The more trades I have on. and the more diverse my portfolio, the less I am rattled by market sell-offs.
Thank you for the gentle reminder. I do want to be super conservative because I have seen how very quickly things can get ugly. You are so right. Even on $10,000 that only gives me 8 ticks on a one lot so I don't expect to move up to ES for quite awhile (if ever since my trading style is not scalping so my target and stop are larger). I am trying to be content to stick with my one lot micro and learn as much as I can until I can increase my capital and only advance to 3 lot while maintaining the 1% range.
To all: For most of the advanced traders out there, we see it as a case of an analysis of risk/reward on a trade and a desire for efficient use of our account buying power leading us to a potentially larger trade which in turn means a greater number of contracts. Advanced traders probably do trade more contracts but we also probably have the buying power to do that. Almost every trade I enter is the result of 4-5 calculations and it starts with risk/reward. The last calculation is number of contracts/shares/whatever.
I understand what you are saying @SunTrader, but I think I have to politely disagree with your comment about the number of contracts not being important.
I think it is important, and managing multiple contracts is a completely different skill-set than managing 1 contract. Knowing when to lean into a setup with more contracts is one skill, knowing how to maximize your risk/reward with multiple contracts is a whole other skill. How many should you hold for 1R, how many runners, should you scalp the majority of your position? Should you swing the majority of your position? By what logic do you come to this conclusion?
This is what I was meaning to get across by my original post, and I think I assumed that risk-management at the account-level was already taken care of, but as others have pointed out, maybe I shouldn't assume that, this is a good point.
