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Making a Living with the Micros


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Making a Living with the Micros

  #101 (permalink)
 
lesterb's Avatar
 lesterb 
Toronto, Ontario
 
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@sstheo, you may be interested in the spreadsheet that I posted in the download section. It allows you to input a number of different variables to see how they impact growing an account.


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  #102 (permalink)
 
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 MNSTrading 
Grand Rapids, Michigan
 
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sstheo View Post
We are each upon our own Trader's Odyssey, and these companies are sexy sirens, singing seductive songs, and almost securing our demise upon the rocks. Odysseus had his men tie him to the mast so he would not succumb to the wild temptations.

In this bewitching scene from "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" the sirens sing "Go to sleep, you little baby"

Very seductive, I'll admit. Fortunately, I'm a Dapper Dan man.
Completely agree about building from scratch BTW.



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  #103 (permalink)
 
sstheo's Avatar
 sstheo 
Holladay, Utah, USA
 
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lesterb View Post
@sstheo, you may be interested in the spreadsheet that I posted in the download section. It allows you to input a number of different variables to see how they impact growing an account.


Great stuff. Thanks Lester!

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  #104 (permalink)
 
sstheo's Avatar
 sstheo 
Holladay, Utah, USA
 
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MNSTrading View Post
Very seductive, I'll admit. Fortunately, I'm a Dapper Dan man.
Completely agree about building from scratch BTW.



images

HAHAHAHA. How is this?

"But building from scratch takes so long! Come, come play with us instead. Listen to the sound of the gentle waves lapping upon the shore. Don't mind those rocks there, they are not too sharp. Hear my sweet melodies. Bask in my song. Feel the sand between your toes. Let the sun warm your skin and feel my hands applying the lotion to your strong chest... Sorry about the nip slip there, I will cover up again."

We are in this for the long haul... Must say "no" to the temptress of "free" money... newbies and experienced traders alike.

I know some of these companies advertise on this site, and I am not accusing anyone of any fraud or maliciousness. The fact remains that most traders fail and would be better served by trying to intelligently trade the micros, which is the WHOLE point of my journal.

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  #105 (permalink)
 
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 MNSTrading 
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sstheo View Post
HAHAHAHA. How is this?

"But building from scratch takes so long! Come, come play with us instead. Listen to the sound of the gentle waves lapping upon the shore. Don't mind those rocks there, they are not too sharp. Hear my sweet melodies. Bask in my song. Feel the sand between your toes. Let the sun warm your skin and feel my hands applying the lotion to your strong chest... Sorry about the nip slip there, I will cover up again."

We are in this for the long haul... Must say "no" to the temptress of "free" money... newbies and experienced traders alike.

I know some of these companies advertise on this site, and I am not accusing anyone of any fraud or maliciousness. The fact remains that most traders fail and would be better served by trying to intelligently trade the micros, which is the WHOLE point of my journal.

Absolutely. You have just written the jingle. Janet Jackson is on line 1.

I have mixed feelings about prop trading like I have mixed feelings about Bitcoin. The last webinar was with one of the sponsoring companies and he made some excellent points about having structure and access to professional development. But in the end maybe it trains you to rely on a guru, and trading style a very personal thing. I am a trend trader and the guy who taught me was a scalper. the trading universe is brilliantly scaled. You can trade anything from one share of Kodak to all the coffee in Brasil. It is delicate to navigate, I'll allow, and you have to really work to understand the details of the job but its part of the work and very much worth it in the end, I believe.

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  #106 (permalink)
 
sstheo's Avatar
 sstheo 
Holladay, Utah, USA
 
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MNSTrading View Post
Absolutely. You have just written the jingle. Janet Jackson is on line 1.

I have mixed feelings about prop trading like I have mixed feelings about Bitcoin. The last webinar was with one of the sponsoring companies and he made some excellent points about having structure and access to professional development. But in the end maybe it trains you to rely on a guru, and trading style a very personal thing. I am a trend trader and the guy who taught me was a scalper. the trading universe is brilliantly scaled. You can trade anything from one share of Kodak to all the coffee in Brasil. It is delicate to navigate, I'll allow, and you have to really work to understand the details of the job but its part of the work and very much worth it in the end, I believe.

I am really looking forward to your conclusion coming to fruition in my own life: "very much worth it."

I am convinced that the prop firms make most of their money on fees. Why? Because I know at least two of them keep "live" accounts on a proprietary sim for a very, very long time. They have stats to show that most live traders will blow up with "live money", so their risk is so low...

The thing about the guru is so real, as I shared in one of my early posts " No More Mommy." It took me years to disconnect from the milk.

And I still want someone to hand me trades. But I resist. And it is working. Hard work, yes. But getting easier.

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  #107 (permalink)
 
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 Sandpaddict 
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sstheo View Post
My consistency has vastly improved over the past year, thanks - at least enough to publicly post on FIO... (I am not yet perfectly disciplined, as Wednesday proved to me. I should have walked away when I was out of sync with the market.) I routinely get about 1% per day. If I can just keep the drawdowns at bay, my initial $12,000 will become $100k by next spring.

Addressed to all readers:

I agree that all the funding companies are BS. They are drug pushers, preying on the "free money" Greed Gland inside all of us.

When Homer wrote the epic poem "The Odyssey" around 1000 BC, he must have known about TST and the rest!

We are each upon our own Trader's Odyssey, and these companies are sexy sirens, singing seductive songs, and almost securing our demise upon the rocks. Odysseus had his men tie him to the mast so he would not succumb to the wild temptations.

In this bewitching scene from "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" the sirens sing "Go to sleep, you little baby" and that is exactly what TST, OneUp, Leeloo, E2T and others want us to do as we open our wallets wide. (3:30 min, but worth every second)



I interviewed many traders and found the average they spent was $7,000 on combine fees and resets, before they either succeeded or failed for the last time and walked away dejected.

Newbies have NO BUSINESS frequenting this type of establishment! They need to be tied to the mast and then have the cords be drawn even tighter - as the soft lullabies tempt certain death.

On the other hand, truly experienced traders should be okay. But even then, there is the 9% gain per day requirement on the evals and the 20% profit sharing when live. These should make any rational, prudent, far-thinking and patient market participant flee with his bank account unadulterated.

Instead, all traders should start with micros and build, build, build. If you want to make a career out of trading, yet you can't profit with ONE MICRO contract, why do you think you can trade with 15 Emini's????

Starting with just $1000 and trading one micro per $500 in the account and earning an average of 2% per day gives you $116,000 in 12 months.

Starting with the $7,000 you would save by not doing the evals and doing an average of just 1% per day gives you $76,000 in 12 months.

That same $7,000 in 24 months at 1% per day becomes $830,000+.

I love the siren song reference. Seems a pretty acurate description of what these companies in general. *This coming from someone very ignorant on the subject so don't listen to me lol.*

I don't know these companies or what they do exactly except for reading and studying some Mike Bellafiore of SMB in the past.

I remember commenting to my wife that this guys a l***er but I can't stop reading because it's so friggin entertaining!

Now that was a prop firm but I'm assuming they are all based on the same premise?

But now it's a combine? Is that even right? A Gauntlet? An Incubator? A Multi-Level-Marketing-Online-Day-Trading-Platform? Oh no. No they wouldn't say that.

I remember that Bellafiore going off about how many time he wanted to quit cause his traders ALL weren't working 26hrs a day like this one guy and it cost millions to run his business and I can't make money with these guys but this one guys making millions alone working every minute of everyday. "He doesn't even eat..." lol. It's ALL a roit act.

Now they ALL use GREED as thier main marketing disguised with clever webinars designed to sound like legitimate advice... but it's mostly just infotainment!

As for the compounding your glossing over one tiny... huge thing.

If you trade the exact same strategy and can make %1-%2 day ON AVERAGE (ya I dont care what anybody says it's doable (but not like that)) then you would be trading 5 times the amount... then TEN times... then TWENTY TIMES!!! ...ect.

The psychology of that surely would cripple anyones ability to execute flawlessly in such a such short period of time.

I think %1 percent a day (on average) is doable but I doubt the compounding.

Great journal.

Thank you

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  #108 (permalink)
 
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 Botts 
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Sandpaddict View Post

As for the compounding your glossing over one tiny...huge thing.

If you trade the exact same strategy and can make 1% - 2% day ON AVERAGE (ya I don't care what anybody says it's doable (but not like that))
then you would be trading 5 times the amount... then TEN times... then TWENTY TIMES!!! etc..

The psychology of that surely would cripple anyone's ability to execute flawlessly in such a such short period of time.

I think 1 percent a day (on average) is doable, but I doubt the compounding.

Great journal.

Thank you

Well said.

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  #109 (permalink)
ComTrader123
park ridge nj
 
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Good to her someone thinking along the same lines. The strange thing abut the combines is that I do very well the first few days but the problem for me is greed. I expect to make the same 2500 every time I trade. lol. Out the gate I am trading well because I survey whats going on in the market and if I notice that I am predicting the right price movements then I fork over the money to the sirens and trade the combines. I do well and then sit there and calculate all the money I can make theoretically and become very unrealistic and greedy and anxious. jumping into situations that I should not and then reverse my profits. If I can save for the micros and trade the crude oil mini I think I can do it and at least I can trade for real. Cannon trading is offering an account for 2500 dollars. Do you know what the cheapest I can go to open a micros account to trade mini crude? How much do you think I would need and exactly how many contracts could I trade? I want to have enough money to stay in the game and not get a margin call. If it means trading 1 mini contract, so be it.

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  #110 (permalink)
 
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 Sandpaddict 
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ComTrader123 View Post
Good to her someone thinking along the same lines. The strange thing abut the combines is that I do very well the first few days but the problem for me is greed. I expect to make the same 2500 every time I trade. lol. Out the gate I am trading well because I survey whats going on in the market and if I notice that I am predicting the right price movements then I fork over the money to the sirens and trade the combines. I do well and then sit there and calculate all the money I can make theoretically and become very unrealistic and greedy and anxious. jumping into situations that I should not and then reverse my profits. If I can save for the micros and trade the crude oil mini I think I can do it and at least I can trade for real. Cannon trading is offering an account for 2500 dollars. Do you know what the cheapest I can go to open a micros account to trade mini crude? How much do you think I would need and exactly how many contracts could I trade? I want to have enough money to stay in the game and not get a margin call. If it means trading 1 mini contract, so be it.

There are some massive informational holes to be able to point you in the right direction. But why on earth would you want to enter one of those?

Save your $2500 and blow it up trading one micro at a time.

Yes by the sounds of it you will blow it. And the next $2500 too. And probably the next $5000. Oops I mean $2500.

But seriously. By the sounds of those "services" and I use that term loosely (man I've been waiting forever to use that saying lol) they maybe teach you to use good money management BUT from what I can tell they have timed perfomance goals.

THOSE ARE TOTALLY INCOMPATIBLE GOALS!!!

Here take no risk but make at least $4000 a week. But don't worry... were OK because when you blow up we'll have extracted the profits but no losses and collected fees along the way.

So go get some more capital and TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!!

I am only PARTLY being facetious and would WELCOME anyone from these firms to weigh in.

Cheers from the trading underbelly.

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