Are you e-mini trader material?

E-mini futures that this article is concerned with are very popular trading vehicles among retail day traders. There are a few good reasons why this is so, two of which certainly stand out. One is the relatively low deposit needed to open an emini trading account, often of the order of only 3,000-5,000 dollars, the other is the fact that emini futures can be traded from the comfort of one's home.

These two reasons alone are quite appealing to many people out there to give it a try at what may seem to be an easy way to make money. Loads of money, as some of them think or are told by the slick marketers masquerading as trading gurus. But can everyone of them really succeed?

Now, since I have been a successful emini trader for many years (7 or so as of this writing) and have inspired quite a few to pursue the e-mini day trading career in earnest, I think I may be qualified enough to tackle this question. Hence that's what this article is primarily about.

The short answer is, that trading, and e-mini trading in particular, is not for everyone. Yet everyone stands a good chance to succeed at it as long as they meet some criteria or are willing to work towards meeting them. Many people meet them quite naturally and these are the people I love to work with as a trading coach or mentor for I think they stand the best chance to succeed. Others may still want to give it a chance even if they are not the perfect candidates because I believe that doing so may empower them to eventually succeed at this business or at least to gain a good deal of self-confidence and satisfaction from pursuing an ambitious goal of becoming financially independent.

This boost in their self-confidence may, in turn, prove very useful in their other endeavors as well, so they stand to gain a lot even if they may not succeed at emini trading as well as the others, the naturals. And nothing boosts one's self-confidence and self-esteem more than pursuing ambitious goals, so all in all, I think, it's a win-win situation. Overall, I do believe anyone who is willing to spend a few hundred dollars for one's emini trading education (as more is hardly ever needed other vendors' opinions in this matter notwithstanding) can benefit from taking a crack at success in this field.

Now, let me tell you what candidates I as a trading mentor look for. I hope this will help you find out how good your chances are to succeed as an emini trader. I admit that my criteria are much more demanding than many other mentors in this field, but I strongly believe that my time and my clients' time and money are best spent if the client is ready rather than when he has to be heavily persuaded to give it a try.

I look for independently minded individuals not afraid of learning, in the first place. For people who are flexible as opposed to those who tend to think in rigid mechanical ways, for the self-confident persons who well understand how much depends on their own work and who are willing to do their best to succeed. Well, certainly everyone can meet these criteria if he or she really wants to, but, as I said, some people meet them naturally and even look forward to the challenge of proving themselves in a competitive field, while others may need to do some more work before they meet them.

My first hugely successful student was a female, Kathy. Yet the overwhelming majority of my clients are males. It is because of Kathy that I sometimes like to tell my prospective male clients, if only in jest, that as long as they have the grit and guts of a strong-willed female they should do well. Otherwise, they should probably take up stamp collecting. Or knitting.