timratliff

It all depends upon your state of mind... Some days I stop when I reach my normal daily profit level and some days I am totally in the zone. If completely in the zone and getting a great read on the markets I keep trading but decrease size after reaching normal profit level. After reaching typical daily goal I become incredibly selective and only trade ultra low risk / high reward opportunities. I don't have to trade and don't force a thing but am available if the right opportunity is there.

I think it would be incredibly difficult to make a living trading 1 contract a week, however it's not difficult to make a living getting 2 (ES) points a day. Once you learn how to consistently nab a net of 2 points per day, you scale contract size based upon your overall account balance.

No doubt, trading is incredibly difficult but some of us do make significant profits week in and week out. It took me 7 yrs of trading the e-minis to finally become consistently profitable but I am there now. I could write a book on the jouney. I've seen statistics that less than 5% make consistent profits day trading, but take heart, it can be done.

I think you are really stacking the odds against yourself by having such small targets and stops... Transaction fees and slippage will eat you up at that level. I personally find it difficult to maintain stops less than 8 ticks and normally shoot for 10 -20. Your trade needs a little room to breathe as the vast majority of the time there are price flucuations from bulls and bears trying to take control. By focusing on such small windows I would expect it would be easy to miss the "forest for the trees", It's very hard to make consistent profits trading noise as you can easily get stopped out even though you chose the right dirsction within the predominate trend.