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)
normally I trade my own account with only 2 contracts per trade, and haven't tried to trade more than 2 contracts. recently my friend asked me to trade his 1 million dollar account. that means I must trade more contracts per trade. my question is: what is the better quantity of contracts each trade? maybe 20? 50?. thank you for your help.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Well least to say that you're friend has a lot of faith in you.
There is a large difference between trading two as opposed to fifty contracts.
Things like anxiety, stress, fear get amplified 10x 20x when trading large lots like that.
Unless you are highly controlled with your method and your emotions, I would suggest to slowly increase your position size, based on competent results.
Take this business in slow steps.
Supermht, if you do not already have a plan in place that would tell you how many contracts to carry per trade or a risk tolerance amount per x number of dollars I would seriously stop and think about the magnitude of trading a one million dollar+ account.
It can all go away real quickly even trading 1 lots.
Take some time and come up with a plan of how much risk you are willing to take per trade and per set up and then apply that to whatever amount you will be trading.
i want to know from someone how getting filled is different between 2,10,20,50+ contracts? other than the emotional side of it, is there anything to how you get filled physically in the market when trading that many contracts or no?
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
Wow, supermht, so you're starting to manage your own fund now? congrats.
I've heard Al Brooks say institutions use maybe hundreds of contracts on the ES.
Maybe a relatively small retail fund like yours would be 10 to 20 contracts.
There's a youtube video somewhere where some yahoo was showing off trading 50 to 100 contracts at a time in a fast foward replay. Some dumb music blaring in the background saying "unstoppable!" where he ended up with +$200k for the day, but I can't find the link now.
But for fun, lets just say you are only going to risk 1% on the one million dollar account per trade. So say if you had a 20 tick stoploss, then $10000 = 1%, so $500 per tick on the 6E which would be 40 contracts. Or 20 contracts if you are risking .5% per trade. 10 for .25%
The ES can handle 20 contracts easy, probably the 6E too. More than 100 might get "noticed", or bound to get some slippage during illiquid periods. Of course, it'd probably be wise to increment your number of contracts gradually as you feel comfortable.
that's a very good friend you got there.....
be very careful when you procceed with this.i have traded with 15 contracts
in a trade and the stress is enormous.trading with other people's money
makes it more worse....
start from the bottom and build your way to the top.
wish you well.
Thank you so much for the great info, I will start with 10 contracts first, 2 target at 8tick and 16 ticks, stop loss is 12. I will keep updating the result.
again, thank you for your help.
This is a complicated question due to the market, and you!
As mentioned you could have some psychological effects if you think 1M is a lot of money. I have seen traders fall apart, or even business people due to the size of the contract. Personally, I am WAYYYY beyond that as it is just another '0', but I probably get even more comfortable toying with more money. For me the challenge is 'being wrong'.
Secondly, is the Market conditions. Getting filled in Futures will be difficult if you trade TF, 6E, others, but of course that all depends on your r:r and how you enter.
If you enter off buy/bid, sell/ask then getting filled on more than 10 contracts on the TF, CL, 6E can be difficult (it depends on current market conditions). The most I have traded live on TF is 12 and I didn't get filled as often as I would have liked on the winners. Of course, if you enter on a STOP waiting for the market, then your chances are of course much better in getting at least close to your price.
Now, I believe you trade the ES, and the most I have traded on ES is 6 contracts, but a friend (HORST) does 20 and he rarely doesn't get filled on buy/bid, sell/ask entries. If you were to do stops waiting for the market on ES, you could easily handle getting filled without too much fanfare of 200-400 contracts. Trading 50 would be a drop in the bucket unless you are again putting in limit orders.
I would go live market / Sim to practice and see if you have any issues as that is as close to real as you are going to get, but still not as accurate as you need. If you can allow a tick or two, you can also have someone write a routine for a buy @ bid +1, and sell @ ask -1 and you will probably always get filled on ES. Of course, most times that is really just buy/ask, sell/bid, but not always.
Good luck! With great opportunities comes great fortune!
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see 
