Does anyone really make money trading futures?

Does anyone really make money trading futures?

I am just wondering.

I know I don't. I have tried all the indicators and the chat room gurus, and none of them make money.

I have a suspicion that a lot of the chat rooms for emini trading are just for hobbyists and market enthusiasts and not for serious traders trying to make a business out of trading.

For any new traders out there please be very cautious of paying anyone to mentor you or signing up for training or a chat room. From what I have seen the only people making money in these deals is the mentor, the chat room owner or the author of the training manual.

I would love to hear from you if you are a successful trader making 20% off your account or better over the past year. I know only 5 to 10 percent of traders are supposed to be successful, but I am beginning to think that zero percent of traders are successful over the long haul. Certainly anyone can have a streak of luck and rack up a few good months where they dramatically increase their account size, but these people are normally big risk takers and eventually they blow out their accounts by taking the exact same risks that help double their accounts in the first place.

Thanks in advance for any response.

Good post Jim!

I like the idea of having a verified section and unverified section. I think that we can consider any comment from a vendor on this forum as an unverified comment. If a vendor comes forward with verified statements then I will happily open up a verified sub-forum for them. They'll probably have the whole forum to themselves for a long time and it would be great publicity for them.

Coming back to hunterone... One of the strange things about him is that he earns a great living from trading and doesn't need tuition money. He also seems generous enough to share his methods for free. I'm not sure why he would spend the time and effort to set-up a PalTalk room and call trades in there when he could probably post his trade set-ups and explanations in a fraction of the time on the forum.

Likewise, Reese could also post the setups and trade descriptions. Hunterone hasn't expressed any secret or proprietary methods that he doesn't want disclosed. If Reese wanted to defend Hunterone he could easily do that by posting the setups and trades that he took and how he saw them before entering the trade.

By the way, did anyone attend hunterone's PalTalk room today?

I really wanted to do it, but my questions about PalTalk went unanswered, so I passed. I would love to hear how it went. I really enjoyed the day I spent with him, and I really wish I was sure PalTalk was okay, so I could spend more time, but I'm not going to risk it unless I have some good information saying it is for sure safe.

There were quite a few in attendance yesterday... Hunterone will be the first to admit that he didn't have a stellar day (his trading partner I think did have quite a good day) ... but 1 day does not mean that much on its own - I am attending all week and will only make any "decision" about the appropriateness of his setups for me based on at least 1 week of trading.

Yesterday was not as trending as his system often allows him to take advantage of ... so I assume he will do much better on trending days.

My system actually struggles at times on trending days as I exit my positions only to watch the market contine on without and I don't lkike chasing. That is one reason why I am interested in attending his paltalk room and adding a tool to the box so to speak.

This is OEX week - and often swings are related to option activity so it may not be as trending as he would like. However - there are a lot of news items about to be released which should provide volatility.

quote:

---

Originally posted by jimkane

dt,
Here's what I would consider a better forum structure...

I'm looking for a better way to assist the newcomers, in a much more efficient way that doesn't require this endless conflict. There must be a better way. If we truly want to help out all these beginners before they get suckered...

---

I'd like to comment on what drives me nuts about most trading forums. It's not the big complaints or rantings that go on ... I can choose to read or ignore those ... (Hey even Voodoo1 is entitiled to his opinion (:->))

It's the lack of participation at most forums that leaves me scratching my head. I've been trading securities since I grew up when my Dad was a Stock Broker - and recently for the past 3 years futures daytrading ... and I am always learning new things.

So why then are there not more people involved in commenting, questioning or asking how to's on the many threads here - and in other forums. There's a very serious lack of active participation but a lot of "looking".

See:


Above is a capture of the MP FORUM where there are many threads which have a lot of VIEWS and almost no posts. I recently posted an observation about the POC and LVA for last Friday's trading and there have been plenty of VIEWS but no posts.

Nobody even logged on to say that I was an idiot ... or the setup wasn't valid - or it was great or whatever ... HoOw are we going to learn about MP or any other potential trading strategy if we don't communicate.

This particular thread "Does Anyone Really Make Any Money Trading Futures" for all its faults at least has some participation and is one of the best threads on this site.

I spent the day in Hunter's room and yes what a super nice he sounds. Wile I was there these were the trades I was able to document, I might of missed alot of trades and am really unsure in Hunterone's defence:

930: long 1418 stpout 1416.75 -1.25
941: long 1414 stpout 1412.75 -1.25
1116: long 1418.50 tgthit 1419.25 +.75
1158: long 1416 stpout 1414.75 -1.25
1208: long 1415.50 stpout 1413.75 -1.75
1216: long 1413.50 tgthit 1412 +1.50
146: shrt 1417.50 stpout 1418.50 -1
150: shrt 1417.50 stpout 1419.25 -1.75

This is just on trading 1 lot and again I might be missing some trades, and am not trying to skew his results, I am just posting my observations.

Just one mans opinion

As I suggested earlier, if you're allowed to enter text in the room you should enter the trade that he took when he takes it as it's often difficult to hear what someone is saying but easier to read what he did. If 2 people do this then you have confirmation.

bakrob99: I have yet to work out why some threads are so popular and others that seem like great topics get no or little response. I can understand the view count because I do that myself. If I Google something and come across a forum with an answer then I will view it only and not response. One of the reasons that people don't respond to any forum is because you have to register to do so. People are hesitant to register for a number of reasons. The primary reasons I'm guessing are related to time, effort and fear of spam.

Well guys here ya go, Hunter is now offically in the business of selling a system. I do recall this thread started out with him saying that he did'nt want to teach, o how he could make so much money from trading, but now look who is advertising his services. Become a great trader and give me $5k to learn. But what happened to the $267 avg. per contract and trading the 21 lots ...Heres the link to hunters home page,,don't all run out and sign up at once, the server might crash..So who now doesn't believe that his whole reply to this thread was not a scam to lure in the punters...

http://www.tradingmentor.net/index.html

Again just one mans opinion

I base this on the fact that I have been trading 21 contracts on the e-mini for several years usually only trade 3 hours a day and avg $267 per contract per day. I was also on the floor at the cbot and the cme in the late 80s.

Thats the quote from Hunterone, Trendski just asked hunterone, do you look at the Trin and hunterone said he doesnt know what the trin is, this coming from a guy with floor expererince....lol

It sure seems that way Voodoo but I have yet to see the mention of money...perhaps I missed it on the site....anyway at least we can rest easy knowing we are generating curiosity in him....we'll help him sell his method IF he can't trade himself.....

lots of time generating hose web pages so I guess the "fre" stuff won't be too free...

quote:

---

Originally posted by voodoo1

Well guys here ya go, Hunter is now offically in the business of selling a system. I do recall this thread started out with him saying that he did'nt want to teach, o how he could make so much money from trading, but now look who is advertising his services. Become a great trader and give me $5k to learn. But what happened to the $267 avg. per contract and trading the 21 lots ...Heres the link to hunters home page,,don't all run out and sign up at once, the server might crash..So who now doesn't believe that his whole reply to this thread was not a scam to lure in the punters...

http://www.tradingmentor.net/index.html

Again just one mans opinion

---

I consistently profit from futures/futures options, but it took me a long time to figure out the best way for me to do so.

While a set of trading rules is very important, I have found that it is just as, maybe even MORE important, to develop "trading callouses" from getting your butt handed to you repeatedly along the way.

Here's the thing: Any set of rules will only work until they don't. It is normal human psychology that there will come a time (again and again) where you deviate from the rules because A) you have had a string of losses, B) you have had a string of wins and now you have a loss and can't believe you're really supposed to "lose this one," C) you get greedy, D) you get scared for whatever reason, or E) any one of a thousand other things that will cause you to screw up.

I had ups and downs for many years until I thought I had it figured out and had a couple of years of really solid profits. I had my own private island picked out :) (not really, but I did have a condo in mind O/N an island). Then came the financial crisis of 2008 and I learned that while I had a generally good strategy, because times were good I had not developed an appropriate risk control system.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars later... (and that didn't take long at all!) I learned the hard way that my strategy was woefully inadequate when the unexpected happened. It took me a while to brush myself off, but eventually I did.

Since sometime in 2009 my cumulative returns are somewhere around 450%. Over the past 9 years I've found that proper risk control continues to be where I tend to fall short, so I've had some choppiness during this time. About two years ago I tightened things up some more to try to make for a smoother equity curve... this mean that, theoretically, my losing months should NOT be as large as in the past, but my winning months will also not be as large as they were in the past.

That's okay though -- even my cumulative success over the past 9-10 years, when averaged out by month, comes to < 2% a month. I suspect that 2% a month, long term, is about where I'll stay, but the ride should just be smoother along the way.

A return like that may or may not be enough for a particular person--it is for me--but keep in mind if you want to shoot for the stars there's a really good chance you're going to eventually crash land back on earth. It really does come down to being adequately capitalized and having a reasonable return be "enough" for you. By all means, trade even with a small account, because you need that experience to get to the point where you'll know what you're doing when you have the larger account. Just don't expect to turn a tiny account into a massive one along the way or you will probably be disappointed.

-PDG