dragon987

I would continue focus only on my one market which I trade well (otherwise I would not have doubled the account). Then I would analyse continously my trades, especially, win/loss ratio and largest looser etc etc. and would run a monte carlo analysis (supposing you have a larger number of trades). With that you can find out, which draw down you can expect when applying a certain method and a given account size. Then, if that is all OK and gives green light to upscaling, I would trade a second contract, and apply one of the methods for position sizing ie. fixed ratio or so, and strictly following that, meaning, when the account is falling back below the threshold, I would reduce the contract number back to one - and continue as usual. This inevitably leads you to increasing contract sizes, since you are continously profitable and controlling your risk adequately. Given that your method gives you a reasonable frequency of trades and the market has enough liquidity, no need to consider an additional market to trade at the same time. Only my humble opinion. Cheers.

it might work as you plan, depending on your strategies. Backtesting is in any case a good idea as a first look on a greater amount of data. You should also involve different other types of analysis like Monte Carlo. If backtesting is successful, it does however not mean that your strategy is successful. Then you have to deal with all the other things like optimisation problems etc.

After starting 8 years ago as a day trader, only now I am consistently profitable. My system only produces 3 trades maximum per day session, all in the first 90 minutes. I developed many systems though during the years, only the last one fits my psychology so I can follow it. It took endless hours to get that far and study, study, study, than life testing on a serious sim account where I could mimic the life trading situation under realistic conditions.In my experience 90% of advice available to you on the internet is useless. Few pearls may be found though, mostly on the forums like this one. Consider your risk. How much can you risk with an account of 3000 USD? 2% per trade would be 60 USD. This is definitely very little, which instrument would you use? My advice: - keep your day job -start trading on a sim account and see how you do. -start with daily bars, and try to be consistently profitable with a small amount. -you need to develop a strategy and a trading plan which fits your psychology, otherwise you will burn your account. good trading and do not give up! R

Looking back to the time I started to find the edge in daytrading, I was similar optimistic as you are now. I could not image then how difficult it would be to find a system which would fit my psychological profile and my willing to accept risk. I tested what I could get my hands on, always when it came to real money I dumped it in the end because it did not suit me. What I mean by that is that I could not stand either the draw down (in fully automated systems) or the execution when I traded manually, meaning I made mistakes by waiting too long for confirmation etc. Finding out the own needs was one major step. I ended up with cci trading according to woodies principles and patterns. Now, after about 8 years of very intense research I use a modiefied system with following characteristics: 1. very early entries in trends 2. early stops if it goes against me 3. let profits run if the trend is established by using a trailing stop That system gives me a win/loss ratio of about 2.5-3, a winning rate of better than 60% and is very robust, meaning that it works with futures, stocks etc. I am trading range bars, that is an decisive advantage because a lot of noise is filtered out. And yes, I back tested the system manually on as much data I could get backward. In my opinion the robustness comes from woodies patterns on the cci. It is amazing how exact they are. But you need definitely to practise. I developed an indicator on the cci to help me spot the entries better, because that is the edge I have. I do not need the price bars, only looking st the cci. The rest is managing the trade when I am in the trade. By the way, my initial stop is no more than 3 points per contract, typically 2 points. A good strategy only comes with controlled risk. I only trade the first 90 minutes after the opening in the morning because of the movement. You can see that in the attached screenshot. good luck d

Hi catsrevenge, all what is said about the hope mode above, applies. I only want to add a chart which I usually uses. It is based on the CCI as woodie uses it. There is a lot of free stuff around in the internet and even free chatrooms to learn more about the method. After my humble opinion you entered the long right in the moment when th short trend started. The overnight gap is even a short entry sign for candle stick traders. Of course it can always flip around back long, you never know. There is unfortunately no certanty... regards d987