Barabas-

Like you, I left a $170K job 12 years ago to pursue day trading futures. I made that decision based on some "Christians", 2-3 firms, who I naively trusted and believed. Frankly, I was a sucker. My system worked like yours until the crash of 2008.

But, since then, I have lost money every year for 11 years. I quit a while back, when I was informed that only 5%-10% of day traders actually make ANY money- and very few make what I did 12 years ago. This losing proposition- 90/95% lose has been known for 30 years!! But, the wealthy firms who take your money are never held accountable.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of charlatans who claim they have the system that is 70%+ accurate, but do not disclose they have inverted, (perverted), risk/reward ratios. With these nonsensical 'systems' a trader would have to be 'right' 90%+ of the time to make anything. I have tried at least a dozen of these 'B.S. systems', which is why only 5%-10% make any money- even after many years of experience. It is a very dishonest "business" and, I encourage you to do what I did: accept it is a losing proposition, just like gambling in Vegas, lick your wounds and move on. Don't waste any more of your time on this hoax. It is the ultimate Scam and the CFTC does little to protect the consumer. Get out while you can. Without inside information or omniscience you will fail.

I ask every "Guru" (Con Artist) who tries to pitch me their B.S. 1 question: "Please send me a copy- with all your personal information blacked out- showing what your actual profit or loss was the last 3, 6 or 12 months". None ever do that. In fact, all they do is trade in Simulation, and they make their real money selling their systems. Think of it: How can a moderator observe charts all day long, or even 1/2 day, and 'chat' with members in their phony 'trading rooms'.

Once you've lost money with these bogus 'systems'- try getting it back. I got 40% back, from 1 firm, when I filed a complaint with my State's Dept. of consumer affairs. They acted on my behalf and I got 40% returned- 2 years later.

I get tempted to look at charts but stopped doing so long ago. There is a reason professional trading prop firms, and institutional trading firms refer to "Us retail Wannabe Traders" as 'Paper'. Because all we do is give them our money 90%-95% of the time. It is a losing proposition, with very, very few exceptions. Day Trading is a Con- but the Con Artists will claim anything to get your money. The odds are against you 9-1. A losing bet. Sorry, but the truth is the truth. The game is stacked against you. Best wishes.

Scottiep

barabas,
I have spent the last 12 years trying every method from stocks, options and futures. None have ever really worked for me. Stocks you have too worry about if the CEO is going to get arrested for child pornography. Options you have to follow 2 different prices the underlying stock and then the price of the option. Futures are news driven; you have to worry what the dollar, ECB or the fed is going to do next. Each product has its drawbacks. I, myself, am at the same point you are. Frustrated!
I've come to realize that there are some people that want to be a BULLFIGHTER but once they enter the ring and see the size of the bull and how big those horns really are, they come to realize that all they really wanted to do was dress up in a too-too, wear a funny hat and carry a cape.

I have A LOT to say because I have been in literally the EXACT same situation. I had produced about $90,000 in net profits in my first 6 months of trading before quitting my job to become a full-time trader, I spent the following year losing every dollar of that money. Some of my suggestions may be repeated but I did not have the patience to read everyone else's responses and just skimmed them. If you're willing to listen to someone whose been in the same exact shoes and you actually want to come out of it as a career trader, listen:

I'm going to address the job part at the end, let's talk about your trading first.

(1) First, you need to stop your search for indicators. If you are trading 5 minute charts with a stoploss where you expect to lose less than $200 in those products, you are essentially are a very short term day trader bordering a scalper. What you are missing right now is the context of the markets, indicators cannot define context, however a trained eye can have a "pretty" good idea going into a session if this is likely to be a balanced day or a trending day. I'm not saying you will predict what happens before it happens but I am saying you need a unique plan for each and every scenario. There are zero indicators to my knowledge that covers the shifting context of markets. With all the stuff going on as far as Fed, Trump, Iran, etc etc there is no indicator that is going to cover your ass all the time when you are trading news driven products like ES, NQ, and CL.

With that being said, it is likely that whatever indicator you are currently using DOES work, but only during the correct context. So you are going to need to develop a system on defining (in real-time) what type of market we are currently in. The reason why algo traders struggle to do this is because you cannot code context into an algo, so they have to create numerous if/then scenarios for the algo to execute. If you didnt know, some of the best algos are actually trading off news releases or certain key words in trump tweets, etc. I have never met someone long-term profitable trading a yes/no indicator without adding personal discretion.

You mentioned your system averaged $300 a day over the course of 5 months, well what was the market like during those 5 months? What was the volatility? What was the relative volume to other times of the year? Who was participating in those markets? What was the average rotation size for the timeframe you look at? Where were your targets and where were your stops? Maybe that edge is temporarily gone and will return when certain market conditions return. Maybe that edge was temporary and will never be back...

(2) I reluctantly want to tell you to learn about orderflow, the reason why I am reluctant is because you are likely going to struggle to be patient enough to really learn the auction process and how reading the tape, dom, and other various orderflow tools actually work. Orderflow is a way to judge the quality of YOUR PREDEFINED SETUPS THAT HAVE EDGE, orderflow itself is not a tool for entering the market. Because it sounds like you do not yet have setups with proven edge, I really caution you to not think that you can jump in the market because you saw 1000 contracts at X price, or you have noticed an iceburg forming or something because that's a recipe for big losses. Just remember orderflow either confirms your idea or keeps you OUT of the market. It's not a setup.

(3) Third, we know nothing about your trade management. If you are trading 1 lots well this gets pretty difficult, because you either have to win/lose, you're not affording yourself the opportunity for a scale out for risk reduction. Being able to do this will greatly increase your win/scratch %. So if you cannot afford multiple contracts in these products you need to start trading the micros (MES). You are doing yourself a HUGE disservice trying to get after it with 1 lots. I would recommend immediately transitioning to trading 3 lots on the MES as opposed to 1 ES.

(4) Next you need to specialize in a product. You mentioned 4 futures that you trade, my initial guess is that you probably look at the same indicators and tools across all 4. This is extremely erroneous. It is extraordinarily rare that a system would work in CL and then untweaked also be profitable in the ES, its so extremely unlikely. Your first order of business needs to be selecting ONE product and building consistency in your approach there. Then your PROCESS can be applied to other markets as you expand. In ANY of the products you mentioned there is more than enough activity to make any kind of money that you want to make over the long run. You are not improving your expectancy by jumping across markets in fact you are making it much more difficult on yourself because your feedback loop is messed up. If you are trading a particular setup in both CL and NQ, and you lose on it 5 times in a row on NQ, you might have lost confidence to trade that setup in any market but it may actually have edge in CL. It's extraordinarily difficult to interpret your results.

(5) Speaking of interpreting your results, how are you journaling? And do you have the ability right now to determine whether a losing trade was a mistake or a typical loss of your system? You could have a losing trade for the following reasons:
-Entry Error
-Management Error
-Incorrect Stoploss Placement (perhaps too tight)
-Incorrect Target Selection (is the target some arbitrary number or have you identified a level that you expect price to get to based on the context of that particular market)
-A scheduled loser of your system

Let's say you have a system that wins 56.5% of the time, and you get 2.5R on your winners risking $200(R) per trade:

Over 100 trades your expectancy is: 56.5 x 2.5R($500) - 43.5 x 1R (200) = This system "should" make $19,550 over 100 trades

However lets pretend you are executing PERFECTLY and making no errors, there is still a probabilistic chance that your system has 4, 5, even 6 sequential losers in a row. So, do you have the psychology skills in place that you could drawdown $1000 or even $1200 dollars in just a few days and STILL execute the system perfectly and believe in it?

The answer to that is likely no, and that is probably what is resulting in you looking for new indicators. (And I am speaking from experience here)

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Now lets get to the job thing.

If you want to trade for a living, you need to get into prop. If you have 3 months left to live off of, you're done. Your trading account will not be able to sustain that.

Just to be frank, I have never met a person in my life who makes 50k a year trading 1 lots. Lets just imagine you are a gifted superstar trader you do a complete transformation and you pull in 4k a month in profits trading the size you do right now. Generously, that's 3k after taxes, do you live frugally enough that you can live from 3k AND still add to your trading account to grow it? Because if the answer is no, then that means even if you do survive another 6 or even 9 months you are bound to blow up the very first time you have a negative month after that. You CANNOT be paycheck to paycheck in a trading account (again, speaking from experience). Not to mention the unbelievable weight that has on your psychology, how are you going to perfectly execute your system and then remain calm when it has 6 losers in a row?

Get a part-time job at a minimum. Free-lance your skills from your old career, uber, do phone sales in your free time, start a youtube channel, just get something or several somethings rolling on the side because you need to cover your expenses outside of trading. You can either have 2 jobs, or stick with 1 job your losing money on and then be forced to go to a job you don't like. Either way is difficult, but you know which choice you like better.

Brush up that old resume and start talking to prop firms, and if you don't currently have the credentials to get hired, you know what they're going to want to see? A consistent and methodical trader who is tracking his progress and getting better with each trading session. Buy (literally) yourself some time with a part time job while you try to get your foot in the door at a firm over the next year and hopeful you progress enough as a trader that you become highly marketable.

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To wrap this up I am going to summarize my list of executable actions:


1. Move to the micros
2. Select which 1 micro product you will specialize in
3. Backtest a strategy and find an edge (this is easier than you think, and there's many places you can research how to find your own edge, I think there's even a webinar on this website called "vetting your own edge" or something like that)
4. Implement a new rule where you are only allowed ONE change to your charts per 2 week period (even a damn color change, ONE change per 2 weeks)
5. Test your strategy in REAL-TIME, but WITHOUT trading it. WATCH your strategy play out or not play out over the course of 2 weeks. Watch every day, DO NOT take the trade. Watching it will help you with timing, what to look for when its working and not working, and getting used to seeing it fail. While you are in the trade your personal emotions run to high to objectively look at all of these variables because you cant help but want a win. So look at it where you do not care if it wins or not.
6. SIM trade that strategy for 2 weeks
7. Go back to live trading (there is only so much SIM can do, your first order of business is finding an edge, that is what SIM is for, however when you go to live you will find out if YOU can execute that edge or not)
8. Journal the details of each and every trade, tracked my setup, day type, context, volume, and anything else you think could be useful. Invest in a software like tradervue or journalytix, I think the basic version of tradervue is free.
9. Start analyzing whether you have made a mistake or this is a standard loss expected by your system
10. Look at every mistake as an opportunity to learn, so that when you mess up (because all of us at every stage still make mistakes) you will be able to use a mistake today an experience that makes you money in the future.
11. Also create some sort of routine for analyzing the news, I'm not saying to trade the news, but I am saying if the fed is cutting rates you sure as shit don't want to be short for a swing trade. The other day ES popped nearly 10pts just from news that the US was sending a negotiation team to China. If your indicator was telling you to fade that move, that would be a trade you would want to skip.
12. Create a "learning" syllabus, PLAN your education, the times of searching "CL setups" in YouTube is over. Remember step 4, where you cant change your charts? You need to select a tool that you are ALREADY using to get MORE skilled at each week. So if I have volume profile on my chart, I am going to plan out a week of learning where I will listen to other people talk about their use cases, I will plan out times where I just sit there and look at volume profile on my charts over the last month, time where I look at previous trades I made and go back and see if there was information volume profile gave that I did not see at the time. If your "studying" consists of finding "new" information, that is not study, study time is for SKILL improvement. Most traders have everything they need to be profitable already on their charts.
13. Create a technical goal and a discipline goal for each week (I do this every week without fail), Technical Goal could be: "I want to get better at recognizing weakness in pullbacks". Discipline Goal could be "I want to stop moving my stoploss after I have initially placed it in my trade". And you give yourself a score on how well you executed these goals every single day this week.
12. Demonstrate consistency for 3 months and start applying to firms, if you do not get hired at that point 6 months or 9 months of consistency looks even better. Firms want you to manage how much of their capital you risk. They will help you in getting more profitable, but they need to be able to trust that you are not going to blow up

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I know this is very long and will probably require multiple reads, but I have been there my friend and it was not a fun time in my life, in fact it wasn't even that long ago so I recall those feelings vividly. To my benefit, my fiance actually produced enough income to pay our bills. However it still messed with my psychology deeply as I felt emasculated and downright embarrassed being reliant on my lady to produce an income for us both. I forced many trades unnecessarily because I was trading to make money now not trading for the best performance over the course of 1000 trades. The latter is where you have to be at. Best of luck.

This is the MOST ill informed post I have read in past 20 years. No, seriously….while you find no better way of laying out your frustration and failure, you also misinforming the community and discouraging other people from analyzing they mistakes and becoming successful. "...I quit a while back, when I was informed that only 5%-10% of day traders actually make ANY money...." - You "were informed"??? Really??? Who was that Good Samaritan who offered to you this priceless piece of information? Look...any person who have ever made it in this business of trading (including myself) will tell you that trading is SIMPLE but NOT EASY. I would be the first person to admit that this is a VERY difficult field to conquer and it takes YEARS of practice, self-analyses, thousands of hours of practice and restructuring of yourself psychologically before you even start to see glimpse of the hope. But to say that this game is rigged, that this is Vegas, that this is hoax is not only preposterous but also ill advised.

I understand, you did not make it...I also understand that you lost money. Perhaps you are correct and your best place is in the corporate world or whatever the business you were making your 170K a year....but at least be fair and look at what YOU as a trader did wrong and WHY you have failed instead of telling people they should sue their broker for their own mistakes.

Market does not care about YOU, ME oar ANYONE else. The only function of the market is to advertise price in order to attract buyers and sellers, conduct an auction to facilitate the trade and offer the liquidity. It's what YOU as a trader do with this information and how YOU execute your trading plan that is determining whether you will become successful in trading or not.

I think you ought to take your own advise - lick your wounds and get back to happily making that 170K a year while not posting nonsense on this board, discouraging people from learning and becoming successfull.

True, absolutly agree it is possible to make money trading as a retailer, but there is some truth to the remarks of @Scottiep.

As a result of ESMA ruling the EU brokers are forced to publish the % of their losing retail accounts. Most of them publish numbers around 75-80%, very little below 70%. If you take into account that that there maybe 10-15% dormant accounts you can conclude that only 10% of retailers are winners in the game of trading.

So yes, these numbers are more about FX/CFD brokers on less regulated/transparant exchanges. But they give us a bit of insight. For more transparent and better regulated markets like the US futures market these numbers will undoubtly be less worse, but not that far off imo.