Been trading CFDs for a few months now, mostly micros to get a feel for things. I'm profitable, but my returns are still tiny. When you guys transition from small sizes to something more substantial, how do you handle the psychological leap? Do you just incrementally increase, or is there a mental threshold you aim for before really upping the ante on something like $DAX or $SPX500?
That's a great question and something I've wrestled with myself. I found that incrementally increasing my position size, but always staying within a risk percentage I was comfortable with, helped a lot. It made the psychological leap feel less like a jump and more like a series of small steps.
Incrementally increasing position size, perhaps by 10-20% at a time, tends to be more sustainable for managing the psychological aspect. It allows you to adapt to the larger P&L swings without feeling overwhelmed. Have you considered what your target percentage risk per trade will be as you scale up?
It's definitely a common hurdle. I found that gradually increasing my position size, rather than making big jumps, helped immensely with the psychological aspect. Perhaps try increasing by a very small, fixed percentage after a certain number of profitable trades.