Trading /ES: Do impressive practice accounts accounts carry weight when applying for a trading position at legit prop firms??
I am interested in trading the /ES at a proprietary trading firm because I could benefit from a team oriented environment would like to learn how other professionals prefer to trade. Though I have a lot of experience trading equities on a short term basis I am relatively new to trading futures with a high-frequency intraday strategy. In the past few months I have developed an obsession for the /ES and began tweaking indicators I had previously used for equities and backtested their results. The accuracy was better than I anticipated which may be due to the high liquidity seen during regular trading hours relative to the equities I use to trade. In order to practice my strategy I started two virtual accounts a few weeks ago, both with 100k. The first one has no commissions factored in and unlimited leverage, and the other has $3.5 a side commission and no leverage. After a couple of weeks of part time trading sessions and about 12 hours of cumulative trading, I had the first account (w/leverage) over $1 million and the second up to 140k.
Then I had to stop trading because I needed to focus on the CFA exam in my spare time but I plan on resuming next week. I was planning on trading live with real money after a couple more weeks of practice and more indicator tweaks. The question I have is.... are my existing practice accounts with thinkorswim considered trading history when applying for proprietary trading positions at legit firms? Or should I focus on trading an account with real money, but smaller denominations and volume. I figure that only a few weeks of results is not enough to prove long term success, what is the minimum duration I would need to have legitimate history? I am also aware of the one hit auto fill flaw in the trading account and realize that I may not always get filled and that this has skewed my results positive. I am usually correctly anticipating moves larger then one or two ticks so I do not think this flaw will unravel my strategy. TOS has excellent records and I could print out the thousands of transactions if I needed to authenticate the results... I would greatly appreciate any input. Thanks
If you made 10x your original capital in 12 hours of cumulative trading then you are seriously over-betting your book. Mentioning that result in an interview would be ridiculous and make u sound absurd. If you seriously start a paper-trading account, take it seriously, come up with a realistic result, and are able to speak inteligently about what you learned from the experience then I think it would be good. You havent dont that by trading for 12 hours and returning over 900%
I was making huge bets just because I was confident and wanted to know what it felt like to be so leveraged. I admit that my bets were absurd and it looks like I am unfazed by risk which is not a great feature. However, I would never trade like that in real life, I was just having fun with that account. The other account I am getting charged large commissions and can not use leverage but was still able to return 40% on it in a short time period. If I continued along those more conservative lines would the resulting history be considered legit? Thanks for the input.
Remember on your trial account you arn't giving your positions away to other traders
Trading history for /ES... Do impressive practice accounts carry any weight at legit prop-trading firms? (Originally Posted: 05/30/2010)
I am interested in trading the /ES at a proprietary trading firm because I could benefit from a team oriented environment would like to learn how other professionals prefer to trade. Though I have a lot of experience trading equities on a short term basis I am relatively new to trading futures with a high-frequency intraday strategy. In the past few months I have developed an obsession for the /ES and began tweaking indicators I had previously used for equities and backtested their results. The accuracy was better than I anticipated which may be due to the high liquidity seen during regular trading hours relative to the equities I use to trade. In order to practice my strategy I started two virtual accounts a few weeks ago, both with 100k. The first one has no commissions factored in and unlimited leverage, and the other has $3.5 a side commission and no leverage. After a couple of weeks of part time trading sessions and about 12 hours of cumulative trading, I had the first account (w/leverage) over $1 million and the second up to 140k.
Then I had to stop trading because I needed to focus on the CFA exam in my spare time but I plan on resuming next week. I was planning on trading live with real money after a couple more weeks of practice and more indicator tweaks. The question I have is.... are my existing practice accounts with thinkorswim considered trading history when applying for proprietary trading positions at legit firms? Or should I focus on trading an account with real money, but smaller denominations and volume. I figure that only a few weeks of results is not enough to prove long term success, what is the minimum duration I would need to have legitimate history? TOS has excellent records and I could print out the thousands of transactions if I needed to authenticate the results... I would greatly appreciate any input. Thanks
One thing to point out that you may already know is these test accounts generally fill your order immediately, essentially no slippage. But in real time trading your order may not get filled as quickly the test account, so do factor this in. It may be worth putting this to the test though with real money.
If you're using algorithmic trading, have you considered using lightspeed? I've never used their alog trading platform, but I use their trader platform and fees are good (~30 cents per 100 shares, normally 40 cents per 100). They offer discounts if you do high volume (I was doing about 3 million/month scalping to put the discount in perspective).
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