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I have awesome ability to predict the Futures market.
This is the result of 7 years experience, and more than 1,000 days studying the market real-time.
On November 18, 2016, I began practice trading an account worth $100,000 with TD Ameritrade. This account would play 5-10 futures a day, every day, for the next 10 months.
Today the account is worth $1,215,000, and this x12 result is linear in time. This is a 100+ page document of 3,500+ trades, available upon request.
10 months, 237 days of trades, with a result of +1,200%, and no major drawdown (+/- Weeks is 33-15), and marginal short term success here provide what I think is sufficient proof that I trade futures successfully.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I appreciate your enthusiasm but from experience: sorry pal, nobody cares. As an aside, I have never met or seen demonstrated anyone with my abilities to predict the markets. But, I had in 2006 a near perfect discretionary record predicting the markets. I carefully quantified every prediction, in advance. Later, in what 2009, I had 2 of the top ranked futures systems tracked on C2 -- one was a quantitative system that performed well for years after. I made about only about $600 in subscriptions for offering the systems over about a 1-2 years. I made $6,000 in a couple months trading it with a small account. I eventually did give back most of that by over leveraging the system beyond its design specs (it continued to work as designed).
Some certain psychologist will promote building a track record. Nobody values a retail track record unless you're producing 1 million dollars. Also, nobody funds discretionary traders. The risk is too high. The only exception are certain well-known pay for tryouts with very high requirements. As an aside, most prop firms do not look or value track records, either. That's another bit of probably well-intention misinformation. Also, a certain psychologist will promote sharing all your information with prop firms, which as a group including hedge funds, are quite well-known for trying to discover strategies or do conduct "fishing" aka fake hiring. Prop firms do tend to hire people who are local to the firm, specialists like programmers, or PHDs. Most attempt to make their money from market making, proprietary edges, and vertical or cost edges and not what one would call traditional trading ability. Basically, in a nutshell if any prop firm has the money to fund you then they probably already have their own proprietary strategies that are doing well in the market. If they already have their own proprietary strategies then they do not need you unless you can make more then they can make or unless your strategies have specific qualities that they desire -- such as HFT strategies.
The only people that in my experience that fund traders are other traders. They tend to do this more because of an interest in markets and/or losing or just wanting to figure out what you are doing. If you share your results, most-likely any fund will attempt to reverse engineer your strategy by using machine-learning and data mining. They will probably discover that they already have similar strategies and thus wouldn't trade it, at any rate. They might also be able to quickly figure out where let's say 70% of your profits are coming from. They already knew this. But, they might in the process of researching your strategy discover something novel that helps them. Is it cheating? Hard to say as it might be an insight you do not even understand but one thing is for sure: they won't need to fund you once they figure it out.
Based on my experiences, I would recommend you try to get a real account sooner the better. Actually, I do believe that simulated accounts, if careful precautions are taken, can provide a reasonable approximation of real world results. However, the longer you stay in sim the more regrets you will have and there might be small or subtle things you can pick up on in live markets.
Also, I think there is a myth regarding super star trader. I can explain why "super star traders" are not really valued. It boils down to basically a few complex reasons and a few misunderstandings new traders have. The first reason is that 1% of the people hold 90% of the wealth. These people do not need to trade to make money. They can do all sorts of special deals with less risk.
The second reason is that nobody is forced to trade. A good analogy, I was reading some years ago about how heart surgeons with the highest degrees and most difficult specialties were basically going back to school because stents were decreasing the demand for open heart surgery. The markets are risky. If people were forced to trade, you could really command a high salary because there would be a natural demand. You might even make a decent living as a break even trader because, at least, you would be losing less then the other guys. But, as is you can be the best trader in the world. Does that make it a good investment? An investor can invest in real-estate, buy-and-hold, passive funds, and special deals not available to you. These other deals might have lower returns but also far less risk. Most of the super wealthy don't need to make money. They just want to preserve what they have. They are not risk takers as often portrayed except in specific areas where they feel they have exceptional advantage. As an aside, you'll find a lot more people who made a fortune in real-estate then about anything else. Why? Because, it doesn't require a great performance or ability to do well and importantly, it is one of the easiest things to get funding for. A 100% return on a 10k trading account is only 10k while a a mere 10% return on a 200k property is 20k. The latter is much easier to get funding for and requires less skill. You basically benefit from market valuation: the same principle that the big traders to use to make money in the markets. Market valuation allows you to profit even without relative advantage. Traders require relative advantage.
The third reason comes from a misunderstanding. A lot of traders hear that its impossible to beat the markets or that some marginally low return is good such as 20%. The reality is that trading is a risk venture and because of the leverage available in futures and options that any return less then something stellar 100%+ could just be random luck. That's why any serious trader will shoot for 100%+ returns or will seek superior risk adjusted returns with minimal drawdown. They also hear that certain hedge funds might only make 30% but they fail to understand such funds might be using (1) less leverage. (2) a superior risk/adjusted return (3) a diversified portfolio, over many positions, (4) most importantly strategies that have different correlations/return structures, and (5) that the strategies were "beyond backtested" -- that is they were modeled and simulated over many future scenarios. And such funds, often do not do as well as anticipated. But the "can't beat the market" is, in my opinion, meant to refer to the long run: a track record of say 15 to 30 years.
However, as someone who has did both discretionary and quantitative trading, I know there can be significant value in both. It is certainly more difficult to capture all realities of market cognition in any singular system-- though you aren't limited to a single system as a strategy developer.
Your best bet is to try to leverage your capability. This is easier said then done. Some possibilities, that I'm considering too:
1. Open a $7500 account and compete in the Q4 World Cup Equity Index Challenge.
2. Open a $5000 account at Striker and track your results there.
3. Take a OneUp funding try out.
4. Try to find a like minded trading partner who has significant capital. Share your trades for free and/or in exchange for research/leg work. Or try to become the research assistant of well financed trader.
5. Open a small account at C2 with real money and use the "trades own money"/tracking.
6. Start a signal service. Promote heavily. Be sure to advise yourself of all the rules/regulations.
7. Share your results for free / Try to become a guru. The gurus that are well-known would be trivial to beat for anyone like you or me. There is a risk/trade-off. Your strategies are likely to quit working as too many people follow you. Be prepared to change things up if that happens.
8. Take say 50k to 100k and try to become a CTA.
9. Try to start a seed hedge fund. After demonstrating your ability with a 15k-25k account, try to get funding from family and friends.
10. You might could join a bank and provide advice for clients. I think "we" could probably beat the client side analysts.
11. Start a news letter or provide specialty analysis for other investors.
12. Try to take a shot. A lot of good traders have called big moves but didn't put a big enough position down. Go big or go home. Be prepared to reload and lose many times before you it hit big.
This is good advice. Right now, I have no access to money. It's many steps to get to that point, and I think it's better scenario to find investor. Am open to options, but I'm pretty much starting at square 0, with much expertise market.
Right, you need to "reframe" for success. Have you tried NADEX? You can start with as little as $50 (but I'd recommend $500). They have various intraday, daily, and weekly spreads and binaries on various markets. You need to calculate the spread and fees first and see if you can overcome then. You could also look at Bitcoin. The volatility and directional is sufficient to make outsize returns without leverage. If you use limit orders at GDAX then you won't pay any trade fees, either. You can start with more or less any amount, say $500 trading Bitcoin.
If you still live at home then get a job. You're living without any expenses? Try to get $7500 and enter the Q4 World Cup Equity Index Challenge or just enter World Cup next year.
Here's a plan. Start with a micro sized Bitcoin account. Double it up a few times. Take that money and open a World Cup. Use the platform and experience to get OPM. Reduce leverage. Good luck!
I am never sure why people who have a lot of screen time but have limited real time experience in in the markets think they have an edge(?) over pros with proven track records. They don't.
Matt Z
Optimus Futures
There is a substantial risk of loss in futures trading. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
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Kevin, good point on becoming your own "savior". However, I don't fault the OP's sentiments. Reality is you have to get yourself in the top echelon of earners to be able to have save enough for a trading account in any reasonable time. This is a rather inconvenient truth. It is inconvenient because many people, who study trading, would be happy to earn a low six figures. However, it will be difficult to even start trading if one is making a low six figures, and exceedingly difficult to get started if one makes less.
You have to get your living expenses as close to zero as possible. My suggestion: the best thing you can do is to try to get roommate(s) and get your living expenses as close to zero as possible. If you buy a house, overbuy and rent out half of it. If you have enough money, perhaps look at a multi-tenant property. If you live at home, look for possibility to rent any unused rooms. If you can't do that then try to get yourself in a subsidized living situation: don't rent an apartment but instead just rent a room.
I know well the trap that the OP is in. The solution is to "reframe". The trap is two fold. The first trap is that the sim trading is giving the op the sense of reward but none of the benefits, namely money, that will allow for long-term success. The second trap is that the op keeps trying to refine his performance to fix a problem that cannot be fixed in that way.
The root problem of the trap is a false belief about the value of a performance record. An awesome record is only worth the credit that someone will give it. Most people will not give it credit. It is therefore worthless. On the other hand, if one is doing well with real money then past poor performance is often not an obstacle. Or to be more accurate... a performance record is only as worth as much as one can leverage/get out of it.
@mattz I would argue they could. However, some of this is due to inexperience. Also, the sim trader who isn't working, living at home, etc is actually trading more closely to a well funded trader. Once the sim trader needs to go make money. They will immediately start to divide their time which will decrease their performance.
