Journey to the Center of the Trading World

[tim_nn]

Originally posted by astrosmurf It helps living in England, as you catch the highest volume throughout the working day.

It also helps because you can do some of your trading by spread-betting, on which all profits are absolutely TAX-FREE (at the moment, anyway).

[RealFX]

Thx guys,
Perhaps the type of market makes the difference. In FX there's not really a centralized place, so I suppose you could move a million from Trinidad as easy as London- assuming phone/internet execution.. Not so sure about futures though.

Autofx,
You certainly know a lot more than me, but from what I am reading about traders, they dont like to risk more than 1-2% to make around 20++%.. So to make 12k a month you'd need a 700k account under that risk model.

Perhaps these are way to conservative traders??

[astrosmurf]

Originally posted by tim_nn
you can do some of your trading by spread-betting

er, what's that then?

[autofx]

Originally posted by jtb790
" How much do you need to live your desired lifestyle?"

About $5,000,000 a month.
_____

So, let's say someone has a $100,000 trading account.

Each position then would be how many units?

1000 units?
10,000 units?
100,000 units?

(thanks for the spreadsheet link!)

It depends on the stop interval and what amount of money it
represents.

With 30-pip stops and the desire to lose no more than 1.5% on
any given trade (a stopout loses $1,500), you can trade 500K lot
sizes if your account is 100K.

If you want to trade 1,000K lots and a stopout loses $3,000, you
want $200K in the account.

If you want to trade 10,000K lots and a stopout loses $30,000,
you want $2M in the account.

If you want to trade 100,000K lots and a stopout loses $300,000,
you want $20M in the account.

[autofx]

Originally posted by RealFX

Autofx,
You certainly know a lot more than me, but from what I am reading about traders, they dont like to risk more than 1-2% to make around 20++%.. So to make 12k a month you'd need a 700k account under that risk model.

Perhaps these are way to conservative traders??

What amount of $ are you assuming gets lost on each stopout?

[autofx]

Originally posted by KPcurrency
while you don't have to move to Chicago or New York, It is good to adjust your trading day to theirs.

In my time zone, it works well to trade from 5:30 or 6:30 AM until
around 9 AM. That puts us in sync with early NY trading.
We (Arizonans) don't change our clocks per daylight savings time,
but most everyone else does, so the way it works out is
half the year we're two hours behind NY and the other half,
we're three hours behind them.

It doesn't require too much patience, either, because some lovely
moves often unfold during the first two to three hours of NY
trading. It can also be a wild ride, and there will be order fill
delays at times. But it's worth it!

[KPcurrency]

autofx; what timeframe do you trade?

I agree with your times and find it interesting how forex, which is 24 x7 follows the electronic markets. And most traders wouldn't really recommend trading the evening or overnight sessions. Even the 12-1 pm EST is a good time to stay out while the big boys are on lunch.

[autofx]

KPcurrency,

The strategies I run start at 2:00 AM NY time early Monday
morning and can go until the end of trading on Friday, with
the following exception: if two stopouts are seen in one day,
then trading is halted until 2:00 AM the next morning.

Other than that, they run 'round the clock.

I trade the 15-min timeframe.