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.

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Originally posted by trader1512

WOW. All i can say is WOW.

I signed up for this forum to share thougths etc with other traders and perhaps learn a few things. I am new to this profession, five months, and have kicked all the tires i could. if they had a money back or free trial period i tried it. ive read what i can and try and put it all into my thoughts. but at the end of the day, my simple chart and methodology is were i end up. That is the holy grail. if you havent built it and it isnt yours then its not going to work.

Trading is very simple. You either have the discipline to stick with your plan and method or you don't. If you arent satisfied with managed profit margins then you shouldnt be in the game. if you look at a good period slice of any chart you will see a couple of things. the first, is the big move is rare and the second is there are lots of little moves.

i believe that is where the failure rate comes in. most new players want the big hit, the lottery ticket, the all-in bet. that in my opinion is why they are frustrated and lose.

I have been running a very simple plan so far. if i dont see at least 6 ticks from my entry to the first point of resistance, pivot point, murray math whatever you are comfortable with, i dont take the trade. period. i am satisfied with picking up 4 ticks on the first half of my position, bringing the second half to a 1 tick profit and letting it be what it be. my stops are placed at one tick below my entry signal and if the trade falls below and stops me out, i move on.

in the time i have been up and running i have made twelve percent profit. i am ok with that.

my next step is to increase my position size. notice i said the next step and all i am doing is increasing my position size, not my method, although that must be constantly refined, nor my plan.

i believe i will make money at this profession and hopefully, some of the brighter forum folks will start to take advantage of this forum and talk ideas and share both good and bad stories.

mr martinez, i truly believe you have picked the wrong profession for your personality.

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Trader1512,

Very insightful for someone who has been trading for as short a time as you have.

In the years I have been with this forum I've found it to be full of helpful and knowledgeable people. The negativity that some people bring is relatively new here. I don't suspect it will last for long.

As far as what you said about trading being simple, I think it would be better worded as "trading should be kept simple". I have seen many a trader who were doing well then decided to get to complex only to their own undoing. However I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking that trading is simple because its far from that. I think for most people they will find it to be the hardest thing they have ever undertaken. A new trader may suffer a lot of mental anguish along the way and it will take years (if ever) for someone to become consistently profitable.

Keep up the good work! Sounds like you're on the right path.

myptofvu,

thanks for the wordsmitthing. thats the message i was trying to get across, dont get hung up on clutter and complexity. figure out the tools that make sense to you and then master them. and like everything else, thats easier said then done. if you think you have mastered something and get complacent then bam. this is hard work and if you lose your focus, you lose.

enjoy the day and successful trading!

Jack Schwager Interview

Not to be negative, I hope you do well in the long run, I really mean that.

But the timeframe you're basing conclusions on is way too short, and I hate to say this: but I would bet dollars to donuts that sometime in the future you will see what I'm talking about

good luck

quote:

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Originally posted by trader1512

WOW. All i can say is WOW.

I signed up for this forum to share thougths etc with other traders and perhaps learn a few things. I am new to this profession, five months, and have kicked all the tires i could.
mr martinez, i truly believe you have picked the wrong profession for your personality.

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quote:

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Originally posted by pt_emini

Jack Schwager Interview

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Yeah, that's great, PT. Really covers a lot of the key points. It's so funny how the rate of success for med school is so low, yet no one says it is impossible. Imagine the rate of success if it had essentially zero barriers to entry like trading. I bet it would be way over 99% failure rate. But what you would hear is how over 99% fail, not that it is impossible. People see doctors, and they know it is possible. Yet with trading some say it is impossible. We see traders, yet there is no parallel with doctors, where the people would then say it has a low probability of success, it takes a lot of work, but it can be done. That makes no sense to me at all. I wonder if it could be a combination of people's very bad personal experiences combined with how much deception and outright lying they have seen in their experiences trying to become a trader that they feel every last trader must be lying? I don't know, but it is a very curious thing that the same common sense, logic, and decision making we see in a group of people completely changes when they apply the process to assessing trading.

Here's another winner:

http://www.screencast.com/users/LIVN/folders/Larry's%20Webinar/media/5daaa4aa-e9c2-45d1-850f-5f4f8d65dde9

There's no parallel between trading and med school.
Trading is gambling.
Disguised as something else, but gambling all the same.

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Originally posted by jimkane

quote:

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Originally posted by pt_emini

Jack Schwager Interview

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Yeah, that's great, PT. Really covers a lot of the key points. It's so funny how the rate of success for med school is so low, yet no one says it is impossible.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mmartinez

There's no parallel between trading and med school.
Trading is gambling.
Disguised as something else, but gambling all the same.

quote:

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Originally posted by jimkane

quote:

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Originally posted by pt_emini

Jack Schwager Interview

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Yeah, that's great, PT. Really covers a lot of the key points. It's so funny how the rate of success for med school is so low, yet no one says it is impossible.

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Not being a smarta$$, but if we follow that logic, then becoming a Doctor is gambling. There's 2 kinds of Doctors. Them that's been sued, and them thats gonna be.
So yea, it's all a gamble.

quote:

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Originally posted by jimkane

[quote] I wonder if it could be a combination of people's very bad personal experiences combined with how much deception and outright lying they have seen in their experiences trying to become a trader that they feel every last trader must be lying? I don't know, but it is a very curious thing that the same common sense, logic, and decision making we see in a group of people completely changes when they apply the process to assessing trading.

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I think that's exactly right. When someone wants to become a doctor, or plumber, or anything else, they aren't bombarded by charlatans promising them that they'll make the the best doctor ever in the shortest amount of time for only 5 easy payments of $97...

Pick almost any other profession on earth and there is a clear cut respected path to take with down to earth action steps to take.

Because the barriers to entry are so low, ie there are no licensing requirements to actively trade, you can run your trade biz from anywhere in the world, etc...the trading profession "educational market" follows the same basic model as the general (and extremely large)"biz op" market.

Those marketing surefire "systems" hammer the prospects with emotion inducing bullet points to "prove" that becoming a trader and using their system is the answer to all their problems.

People that are exposed to this message long enough are ultimately broken down and become immune to the message.They've waded through the garbage long enough. Then they aren't even able to recognize when someone with an honest message and sensible plan comes along.

Hey Martinez... the link I posted shows the audited statements for about $2.0million over 8 years...

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