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.

There's a dedicated topic to KingFish if anybody wants to continue down that line and/or compare pips2007's method to KingFish's. Probably more value keeping KF comments there.

Sorry I havent posted on this for awhile . Have had some family issue's to deal with. I am still getting e-mails asking to listen if I do this again so I will.
I will pick a day next week most likely the 11th and will once again call trades however with a small twist. I will call all trades my method gives me not just the ones I think safest. I will do this for 3 hours or so in the morning. Starting about 30 min before the market opens. I will also call some russell and euro trades if the ES gets slow or is just not moving well.

Thanks hunterone. If it's okay with you, can you or someone that's listening to you keep a log of your calls and how it went to post here when you're finished? Then if you could comment on the trades (not necessarily your methods) - if you have the time.

hi,

Everyone makes money and loses money at some point. but when your losing money you're paying for the experience in my opinion. It takes months sometimes years to learn the markets.

You have to start small and be patient work on your education as much as you can.

True Archon

So many newbies, put up a few thousand dollars, hang out in chat rooms, and start randomly pulling the trigger with no clue what they are doing.

I agree a little education goes a long way

Just wanted to post about my trading today, trying to define some of the problems that confront me, and perhaps others.

I was reading 1518 as the 61.8% retracement level from the 10-11 high to the 11-26 low. At 10:12 this morning the ES hit 1518. I waited for it to show some weakness there. Sure enough, within 15 min it had fallen 2 pts. Then I waited for a slight raise in the price to 1517, and that is where I shorted at 10:30. I gave this trade a 2pt stop and a 1pt target. I was quickly stopped out, and down 2pts.

Then I waited for more weakness to appear, and it did. There was a big shooting star at 10:42. So I reshorted at 1518. Same stop loss and same target. Again I was quickly stopped out.

So, I lost 4 pts and gave it up for the day. By 2:54 the ES had fallen to 1513. Now this would have been a good short. However, I was trying to protect my equity, and ended up lossing equity that I should not have.

I actually lost 4pts from where I began my short at 1517, yet the market never made it to 1521. So it didn't even move 4pts against the position, and yet I let myself get chopped up for 4 pts, while trying to gain 1 pt, and if I had been daring and held on I could have had a 4pt gain at 1513.

This is why I hate small stops. It seems like the market eats them up. Of course the alternative is worse, BIG STOPS = BIG LOSSES

I think this maybe a classic reason why most traders fail. I know it is why I fail.

As always I appreciate any comments.

Greg, one of the things that I think that you need to look at is the probability of your trades being winners. You're risking 2 points to make 1 point. There's nothing wrong with that. But in order to break even before trading costs you need 66.6% of your trades to be winners. i.e. 2 out of 3 trades need to be winners. You make 2 points and you loose 2 points - break even. In reality, to make money using a 2 point stop and a 1 point target you're probably looking at maintaining a 75% win ratio. 3 out of 4 trades gives you 3 points gained for 2 points lost per 4 trades.

Now if you maintain a 75% win ratio over time it won't matter that you lost 2 trades today. If you trade twice a day then over a week of 5 trading days you should 7.5 winning trades and 2.5 losing trades.

You don't need to win every trade or take every trade to its fullest profit. You just need to maintain your win ratio for your trading stop loss to profit strategy.

If you aren't winning at least 75% of those types of trades then you need to rethink your setups.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply, DayTrading.

It does all come down to percentages and numbers.

And I find that most trade setups break even over time.
The trade setup I wrote about today does work about 2/3
of the time. So after commissions you will loose money
trading it. One reason why I normally do not use Fib's.

But I have yet to see a setup that does better. I have spent
4,000 hours over the past year trying to find one, and I just can't.

It seems like a 2pt target with a 2pt stop will work about
50% of the time. Again you break even to the market and
loss to the broker. Or if I use a 4pt target and a 2pt stop
I will only win 1/3 times, but still break even with the market
and pay the broker.

If anyone knows of a setup that is profitable I would love to hear
about it and back test it.

Thanks again.

Greg, have you looked at fading the market against Single Prints? Or put another way, using Single Prints as support and resistance?

Greg why were you day trading a position trading time frame? The trend was clearly up at that time why were you trying to short? Fibs give areas not a line in the sand. You were trading as though it was a line in the sand. How do you know when momentum is changing? How do you confirm what you are seeing in a trading area?

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