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)
My trading mentor gave me these targets, what are your opinions?
I've been working with a trading mentor over the past month, and he's given all of his students the following excel sheet. It's a compound interest calculator. I don't know whether these goals are extremely ambitious or actually pretty reasonable. I've have been and will be trading MES, and then once the number of contracts builds up switch to ES. So, where it says 100, that's equivalent to 10 ES.
Just to give you some context as to my trading style, because undoubtedly someone could say ‘it depends on your trade style’, the set-ups I've been learning are generally trend following EMA bounces using multiple time frames to confirm trend direction, generally holding them from 2-15 mins depending on the time of day. I’ve been taught to combine this with a custom MACD and a slow and faster stochastic overlapping each other.
Now, I’m not asking if these strategies work, I thought I’d tell you that for some context. What I am asking, is in general, are those targets too ambitious or pretty reasonable?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I think the spreadsheet is fine as far as it goes, because it simply projects perfect performance and an assumed success rate indefinitely out into the future. This is not a criticism, just a point about these kinds of projections: fairly soon, the projected profit numbers would be in the millions, and then the billions. But there aren't that many billionaires in the world, which shows there is a problem with a mechanical projection like this. If it were this easy, everyone would already be rich.
I am happy to assume that the method you are using has potential, without even knowing much about it. Whether it works or not if executed in an ideal way is not the most important point. This is because many methods work well in theory, but when traders put them to use, they run into problems with execution based on their own personal trading psychology and issues. When trying to execute any method, traders usually find that their own reactions to having money at risk, and to losing, and their desire to win, and all their personal hopes and fears and a host of other factors interfere with their ability to trade effectively, no matter the method. Mastering these issues is a huge part of trading, and is the larger part, frankly.
So, back to your question, no, these projections are not reasonable and are not going to be what you or anyone else actually achieves. It may be a good thing to know what is theoretically possible, but that's just the theory.
In practice, the best thing to to trade small, in one of the micro contracts probably, using money you can afford to lose, and work your way through whatever you need to, whether in the method, or your personal reactions, or both. You didn't say anything about your experience, which is fine of course, but actually trading -- winning, losing and finding how to handle what comes up -- is the best way forward.
I hope you are successful, and I hope you find your way. I am not trying to be discouraging, just realistic.
Good luck.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
I agree with the above - all good points. In fact, I think one of the biggest misconception you hear from people approaching trading for the first time is that it must be relatively easy to produce an 'average' but 'low' figure a day.
