Oddly enough I look at your 10pts from yesterday and think to myself that I wish I could trade that style.
So I got into this because I tried to distill trading down into something I could entirely automate. I had a moderate amount of success doing it but realised that to build something that genuinely could weather all market conditions, I would need to learn how to trade all those market conditions and then code it up. I have never gone back to coding it up. I have a background in software development/system engineering for the record.
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trading-polls/151840-automated-vs-discretionary.html#post1876112
I read lots of books on trading. I decided that swing trading is what I
should be doing. I eventually got it to work but I found that I really struggled holding positions overnight. I managed to do this but it didn't feel right. I did this via a spreadbetting account as my thought was to learn on spreadbetting and then scale up to DMA. Every now and again I would splurge out and day trade but because I didn't know what I was doing, would just blow money. I thought I was just impulse trading.
I would read the conventional wisdom that you needed to find a trading edge/style that suited your personality. It took me about 18months to realise that my personality was geared to very short term trading. This is why I would revisit it again and again and blow money doing it.
So I was faced with a dilemma. Intraday was apparently notoriously difficult. You would chew your way through your cash very easily. Overtrading was definitely on the table, the horror stories plentiful about those that had tried intraday and failed miserably. I thought I would try it on the spreadbetting account. It didn't work. The size of the spread and lack of visibility of volume information was a killer for me.
I went back to reading again. I figured TA wasn't where it was at for me. I read noBS (John Grady) stuff and also started looking at FT71. I then decided to just go for it as the conventional wisdom stated intraday is not really possible on on SB and switched to DMA and never looked back. It took me about 4 weeks to move from losing to BE and then about another 2 months from BE to +ve but it was shaky and full of over-trading. It took some time and a good sample size before I started filtering out the less than optimum trades and applying some discipline. I also started to get a nose for what may happen and how far to run trades. It is a continual process and my trading continues to evolve. The main difficulties I have had are psych related rather than anything else. Moving up in size also had effects on me too.
It is a lot of hard work for 4 ticks a day and frankly, it is the only way I can trade with any degree of consistency and success.
You should also be aware that I came into this game well capitalised to endure the cost of my education which has not been trivial.
My recommendation intraday for 1 ES contract is $5k. It's what I feel comfortable with. I was $20k per contract swing trading. These are entirely personal choices and your risk tolerance, trading style and edge will determine how much leverage you can safely use.
Good luck. Be kind to yourself especially when faced with your failures. Embrace these failures and learn from them. One last point. The fantasy of trading bears little resemblance to the reality if it. Set realistic goals and expectations. Don't be disappointed if you don't hit them. It's a hard game.
