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Unfortunately there's no easy answer, because it depends how much you are willing to risk. Day Trading is a function of risk and reward: The more you risk, the more you can make. Here's an easy example: Let's say you start with a $5,000 account and you're willing to risk $1,000. Now you could place a trade to go long at the opening, set a profit goal of $1,000 and a stop loss of $1,000. Let's say you investigated the market behavior in the past couple of months and realized that your chances of achieving your profit goal are 60%.

Unfortunately the trade you just placed is a loser, and you lose the whole $1,000. Since this was the amount you were wiling to risk, you close your account, transfer the remaining $4,000 back in to your checking account and that's it for you. Now let's assume you wanted to risk only $100 per trade and you adjusted your profit goal to $100, too. Now you can make at least 10 trades, because only if all 10 trades are losers you'll lose the $1,000 you are willing to risk. I don't want to become too mathematical, but statistics says that the probability of having 10 losing trades in a row is less than 1%. Therefore it's highly likely that you will have a couple of winners within the 10 trades. If your trading system shows the same performance as it did in the past (60% winning percentage), you should make $200: 4 losing trades * $100 = -$400 + 6 winning trades * $100 = $600. Make sense?

Compare these two options:

· The risk of losing your money in scenario 1 is 40%. But if you won, you would have made $1,000. · In scenario 2 the risk of losing your money after 10 trades is less than 1%, but you have a fair chance of making $200.

Therefore you need to define first how much you are willing to risk, since the amount you can make is a function of that risk. Make sense? I'll give you more specific examples later in this chapter.

Keep in mind that there's a difference between the amount you need to trade and the amount you're willing to risk. Your broker is always asking your for a "margin", and you need to fund your account with that margin requirement + your risk. In our previous example you funded your account with $5,000, but you only risked $1,000. More on that later. What to expect when trading a system.

• There's a common misconception about what to expect when trading a system:
• Trading a system does NOT mean having an ATM in your front yard. There will be months when your trading system is over performing, making more money than your expected, and there are months when your trading system is underperforming. Don't assume you'll get a check at the end of each month!
• Here's an example:
• The performance report of our e-mini S&P Trading System Coin Collector shows an average profit per trade of $36 over the past 733 trades:

In between March 14-21, 2005 the system was over performing and we realized $963 in profits with 17 trades. These yields to an average profit per trade of $57, way above the "expected" average profit of $36 (see below):

• When daytrading system you have to keep in mind that you are working with averages:

If your back testing shows an average profit per trade of $36 then you can be almost sure that the system will not suddenly jump to $57 average profit per trade.