Some year-end musings for you…
Happy New Year! Wishing you a LUCRAtive 2022. 🥂 🎉
Here’s a link to the book I mentioned if you’d like to check it out:
Lucra® by Mindie Kniss and Sean Stephenson
Success coaching for entrepreneurs and traders, plus online courses on coach training and professional speaker training.
Wishing you the very best Mindie. Thank you for creating this space for aspiring traders. I am looking forward to a fresh start of one-day-at-a-time(s). You might also enjoy meditating on Zen in the Markets by Edward Toppel.
Thanks Rob! I always love a good book rec. 📚
Mindie, I hope you haven’t made an effort to find the book I mentioned. I retract my suggestion. Aside from being way out of date, I had not read much of it myself and when I did, well, meh….
No worries. It was just sitting in my cart. No time for “meh.” 😉
Again, Mindie, thanks for sharing the info. Very helpful and a great reminder to always strive to separate human emotions from the business of trading the markets. I have “been there/dun dat” emotional blundering to the eenth degree many times over.
Interestingly, for December 2021: I began my futures account with $30 on Dec. 2nd and ended the month on Dec. 30th with approximate $1,080 on December 30th.
If my math is right, that is a gain of over 2,000 percent on initial capital of $30.
But, and a very big “BUT” here is the ups and downs in the interim.
By the close of trading on Dec. 22nd, my account profits totaled $9,900 (I have the statement to prove it), a gain of 18,000 percent on initial capital of $30, if my math is right (always have trouble with math).
Having the experience of turning $30 into $9,900 in my futures account is precisely when I started thinking: “I got this. This is ez-pz.”
Then the series of losses began on Dec. 23rd. In just a few days, from Dec. 23rd to Dec. 28th, during a binge of overtrading that included big losses AND moderate wins, my account value dropped from $9,900 to $668.
Then I had one winning trade on Dec. 29th of $450, to end the month with about $1,080 after commissions.
Am I to be sad or glad? After all, still “green” for the month and still a gain of about 2,000 percent on the initial starting capital of $30.
Glad or sad?
Answer is neither. Instead, keep emotions separate from the business of trading. Answer is to do a better job sticking to a trade plan that contains rules that work.
Learn from the lessons, leave emotions behind in the dust and do not celebrate too much.
Looking forward to January 2022 to see where the initial capital of $1,080 ends up, provided I stick to my plan and leave emotions alone.
At least my trading equity curve for the month of December is still rising in the right direction. Keep up the good work, Mindie!
That’s awesome, James. 🙌🏼 What futures can you trade for $30?
Thanks for asking Mindie.
I only trade the ES/MES. I use AMP Futures as my brokerage. For my account, day trade margin on the ES is $300 per contract; day trade margin for the MES is $30 per contract. Round trip commission on ES is $9.70 per contract (includes all exchange fees and datafeed); Round trip commission on the MES is, I think, about $1.43 (including exchange fees, datafeed, etc.). So commissions are not as cheap as some other FCMs (Futures Commission Merchants). But the day trade margins are quite generous, for all that I know.
So on Dec. 2nd, I started with 1 contract on the MES for $30 per contract and $30 became $60 after a couple of day trades by Dec. 3rd; when I reached $300 in the account a few days later, I moved on the ES, opening trades with 1 contract $300; after a couple of days, $300 became $600 and so on; when the account had $1200, I began trading with 3 cts of the ES (not good money management I know, but I choose to have a more aggressive approach). I traded only once a day from about Dec. 10th through the 20th and built the account to about $9900 on Dec. 21st and throughout that time (Dec. 2nd through the 21st) I had NO LOSING trades, working about about 1 to 2 hours a day.
Should have stopped trading for the rest of the month after Dec. 21st. But did not, and the losing began on Dec. 22nd. Using stop losses would have helped, but I did not.
And when greed and impatience and the “I got this” attitude develops, and you are not even AWARE OF IT, then you are no longer focused on the process of trading safely, and your program of patience and discipline begins to fall apart from there.
BTW, before I started using AMP Futures, I was with PFGBest and they had a great trading platform and a very friendly staff. But the President of PFGBest became corrupt with time, and you can read about the fallout of his corruption at the article below:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pfgbest-brokerage-customer-funds-suicide-wasendorf_n_1660673
Keep up the good work, Mindie!
Thanks James. Congrats!