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Full-time Pro Scalpers: Steps for learning the profession? (feedback needed pls))

Hi there. As maybe some has noted, I was asking a lot of technical questions the last couple of weeks.

I´d decided to change from discretionary momentum scalping to Full-time high-volume rebate sensitive scalping. The main reason: Can´t concentrate anymore tracking 15 charts and waiting for some opportunity. It pays well some times, but lately I just lost the feeling of the market watching charts and just lose the focus trying to keep an eye on everything (I do not know, maybe i´m getting old).

So I prefer to do something that I like more (from the early 2000, when I traded based on NYOB and TnS only and used statistical imbalance trading). And rebate sensitive scalping is the more aprox. strategy to that that i´ve tried in the last 2 years.

So I decided to leave my current account for a while, and start studying all that I can get my hands on. I've 6-12 months for this. The steps that I set are:

1. Gather and study all the info on routing. (routes, strategies, darkpools, rebates)(google it, buy it from the brokers)

2. Refresh some tape and volume reading knowledge. (re-read classics about tape-reading, the edwards&magee book on TA (have a lot of volume reading and crowd behavior), read everything about electronic markets (old market making, ECNs, some basic knowledge about algos and other HFT strategies, old edges)

3. Watch 2 hrs/day (maybe more), the tape of some high volume stock (BAC,SIRI), create 2-3 separate T&S windows for it, sort every one by volume (all, >20k, >50-100k). Look for patterns when a level is being taken, watch what ECNs are printing more.

4. Study Lvl2, active ECN's, walls, their creation and destruction, the change in volume, order cancelling, and other possible patterns.

5. Combine 3 and 4, study it for a while.

6. Study the charts of high volume stocks and see how can I divide the timeframe into high/activity low/activity periods, and the behavior of the stocks during these.

7. Brainstorming, Brainstorming, Brainstorming

(8)(optional) Give some $$$ into a scalping course like the Afinitytrading one and learn something that maybe I haven't saw in the previous stages (it's the one that looks decent for me).

9. Once everything is my head, start to implement it into the markets, from 100-500sh lots, check the divergences between my hypothesis and the reality, fix it, and start again.

I'm in the right path??? My first target during the trading period will be like 100$/day to begin with, trading max 5k lots. As far as I can see from my inexperience I find it pretty realistic for this given trading strategy.

Need feedback please. Here, or by PM.


Thanks everyone .

every one is running away from this torture and you planning to go in? kind late, isn't ?

Maybe, but if you search for "scalping" in ET you will find posts from late 90s and early 2000 that said the same..... and it's still alive.

But thanks for the comment, will take any feedback to recheck the original idea .

judging by this(and other trading related) forum's activity i can safely say that trading is dying. that in general. retail trading is dead already.
i'm talking active day trading,not some buy and hold stuff.
everything is possible and i know some people who still scalp,but it's ain't easy today, to complete with those bots,who can do pretty much whatever,while you on every level will face many many various constraints..good luck anyway!

yeah, I've that feeling too. But it cannot be the end of a whole industry :/ (maybe yes, who knows, hope not). I just cannot accept that.

The market have some bad times from time to time, and I do not believe that this will be the definitive one.

Ok, the machines are pretty fast and all. But now that every second Joe have his quant running from his basement, it will not take a long time to make it inefficient. Program trading has been on the street from the 80s as far as I know, but trading didn't end then i'm I right?.

There where a lot of "trading crisis" the last 20 years (decimalization, death of bullets, MOCs...) a lot of traders just give up when times gone tough. But I doubt that money stopped being made in the market all that time.

Same this days. I traded directional momentum strategies from 2006, it is gone as far as I can see today. The movements of more than 50c are rare today (but still happens, as today in most stocks), but there are a LOT of small 10-20c movements, just a LOT. I'm sure that a lot of people are making money in those small up/down swings.

Heart says "let the biatch die", brain says, "no way, you will find a way to take some air from it, you greedy bastard".


There must be a way... maybe not sclping, but with all this small swings, it's the only strategy (ex-edge) that can have some methods to deal with them.....

learn to swing trade the extremes ,1/2 day ,1 day ,3 day moves

I wanna something that I have control of. I personally know a lot of failed swing traders.. gaps, gaps, gaps. I like intraday or long-term, but do not have enough capital to be a long term trader (not investor).

the whole thing is a waste of fucking time unless you're one of the bad guys

only the pimps running brokerage and seminars will tell you different

__________________
"Those that know ain't saying, and those saying don't know." - E. A. Neumann

A bear since 1958 and proud of it.

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Quote from ronin266:

I wanna something that I have control of. I personally know a lot of failed swing traders.. gaps, gaps, gaps. I like intraday or long-term, but do not have enough capital to be a long term trader (not investor).

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Although been trading over three decades, I would not recommend to anyone to go into scalping as I did long ago. It is torture the amount of hours/years one has to put in by yourself. When you add up the risk to profit, long term is best way to make 100-200% plus a year and so much less time staring at a screen. This past week, I averaged $47 bucks a trade but was risking an average of $161 per trade on first entries and not averaging down trades. You have to concentrate totally on not losing.

Now those who day trade going for bigger profits can have a bigger losing %, but scalping you have to be able to figure out how to get in before all the others, and let them push the market in your direction.

I hate to say this, but the lure of cheap margins and sky is the limit for day trading ES attracts young traders, but almost all fail within a couple months, Sheep to the wolves. AWOOOOOOOO

from my limited expirence, retail scalping is a contradiction in words.

the slippage just doesn't give any room for peace of mind.

if your system breaks down, or the market reverses and your system only works well in one direction (long or short), you're cooked because you'll only have a couple of ticks of profit once you figure in initial slippage.

if you do have a system or idea, you must run it live - real time or in some kind of market replay, before you even being to consider putting real money down. backtests, even at bid and ask, won't cut it due to slippage.

why not just focus on larger timeframes and do several or a couple intraday trades, then take your unrisked capital (probably above 90%) and put it in swing trading stocks instead of the dollar?

I don´t see my future scalping as a mechanical system. I wanna learn to trade the moment. Figure out what is the present momentum, play it, feel if it change, play it in the other direction and repeat the same all day long. In other words, I want a "universal" trading strategy that will fit ANY market. That´s why I picked scalping.

One of the reasons I do not believe in systems are reasons you mentioned above.

I do not want to have a random trading neither. So I will have my "signals", but want to learn to have them as a relative indicator of the possible future trade.

That´s why Im asking scalpers that are scalping right now as their full-time job. I know they exist. But looks like theyre working instead of posting and reading ET .

I do not like swing trading as mentioned before. I´ve seen many gaps that dried a lot of accounts (2 times happened to me when I was trading for a prop firm and forgot to close a position at the end of the session).

Anyway, Im not asking for an advice about what trading style chose. I´ve already done it, and I´m sure of the damn thing . hope a scalper leave me some feedback.

Now that I think, I should had named the thread "BATS plans to pay for adding liquidity" .

I´m gonna do that right now btw. That will get some scalper attention

... Ok, big fail, cannot edit the firs message, nor delete the thread. Damm....

The only true scalpers are the brokers, who scalp your account every time you trade.

__________________
"Those that know ain't saying, and those saying don't know." - E. A. Neumann

A bear since 1958 and proud of it.

I have no experience with stocks, but if you want to scalp futures I would recommend getting marketdelta or ninjatrader w/ either the gomi indicators or the marketbalance from fin-alg.com. You must have IQFeed data, don't even bother with anything else. Watch a footprint (bid/ask volume by price) chart for the DAX market and the CL market. Watch both markets every day they trade. In 2-4 weeks start trading with 1 contract using TT X-trader. Build from there.

Re: Full-time Pro Scalpers: Steps for learning the profession? (feedback needed pls))

---

Quote from ronin266:

Hi there. As maybe some has noted, I was asking a lot of technical questions the last couple of weeks.

I´d decided to change from discretionary momentum scalping to Full-time high-volume rebate sensitive scalping. The main reason: Can´t concentrate anymore tracking 15 charts and waiting for some opportunity. It pays well some times, but lately I just lost the feeling of the market watching charts and just lose the focus trying to keep an eye on everything (I do not know, maybe i´m getting old).

So I prefer to do something that I like more (from the early 2000, when I traded based on NYOB and TnS only and used statistical imbalance trading). And rebate sensitive scalping is the more aprox. strategy to that that i´ve tried in the last 2 years.

So I decided to leave my current account for a while, and start studying all that I can get my hands on. I've 6-12 months for this. The steps that I set are:

1. Gather and study all the info on routing. (routes, strategies, darkpools, rebates)(google it, buy it from the brokers)

2. Refresh some tape and volume reading knowledge. (re-read classics about tape-reading, the edwards&magee book on TA (have a lot of volume reading and crowd behavior), read everything about electronic markets (old market making, ECNs, some basic knowledge about algos and other HFT strategies, old edges)

3. Watch 2 hrs/day (maybe more), the tape of some high volume stock (BAC,SIRI), create 2-3 separate T&S windows for it, sort every one by volume (all, >20k, >50-100k). Look for patterns when a level is being taken, watch what ECNs are printing more.

4. Study Lvl2, active ECN's, walls, their creation and destruction, the change in volume, order cancelling, and other possible patterns.

5. Combine 3 and 4, study it for a while.

6. Study the charts of high volume stocks and see how can I divide the timeframe into high/activity low/activity periods, and the behavior of the stocks during these.

7. Brainstorming, Brainstorming, Brainstorming

(8)(optional) Give some $$$ into a scalping course like the Afinitytrading one and learn something that maybe I haven't saw in the previous stages (it's the one that looks decent for me).

9. Once everything is my head, start to implement it into the markets, from 100-500sh lots, check the divergences between my hypothesis and the reality, fix it, and start again.

I'm in the right path??? My first target during the trading period will be like 100$/day to begin with, trading max 5k lots. As far as I can see from my inexperience I find it pretty realistic for this given trading strategy.

Need feedback please. Here, or by PM.


Thanks everyone .

---

Stock trading is alive and well. Pristine.com taught me everything I know, and now I drive a ferrary and live in manhaten.

Maybe spend 12 months paper trading your scalping strategies. It's important to get very comfortable with the various types of algorithms (if you aren't already).

You might also want to consider a hybrid approach where you're entering trades around levels where the stock might actually run a bit, and then just scalp out some of your position right away and scale out of the rest more slowly for larger gains.

Regarding scaling, you should read Gary Smith's, "How I Trade For A Living," page 220 to 221.

"Over ten years I've become acquainted with many futures brokers. One is even the president at one of the larger trading firms. And you know what? I hear the same story from them about the futility of scaling the S&P for a living. None of their clients are succeeding over any sustained period of time at scalping the S&P intraday."

Gary also warns against paying big dollars for expensive S&P 500 day trade courses.

---

Quote from thehitman:

Stock trading is alive and well. Pristine.com taught me everything I know, and now I drive a ferrary and live in manhaten.

---

__________________
"Those that know ain't saying, and those saying don't know." - E. A. Neumann

A bear since 1958 and proud of it.

---

Quote from ronin266:

Figure out what is the present momentum, play it, feel if it change, play it in the other direction and repeat the same all day long. In other words, I want a "universal" trading strategy that will fit ANY market. That´s why I picked scalping.



...

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I pictured it like a swamp full of piranhas and alligators . But your example is valid too

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Quote from thehitman:

Stock trading is alive and well. Pristine.com taught me everything I know, and now I drive a ferrary and live in manhaten.

---

---

Quote from stock777:

The only true scalpers are the brokers, who scalp your account every time you trade.

---

---

Quote from stock777:

the whole thing is a waste of fucking time unless you're one of the bad guys

only the pimps running brokerage and seminars will tell you different

---

---

Quote from stock777:

is this you?

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---

Quote from stock777:

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you know people that putting stock777 in my ignore list a year ago was one of the best decitions in my life?

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Quote from ronin266:

you know people that putting stock777 in my ignore list a year ago was one of the best decitions in my life?

---

Well, you would need an edge. For example something that has a high win% which suggests with high probability the direction of the market over the next 10 min or so.

Now, its very unlikely that someone who spent many years and money finding this edge is going to tell you what it is for free.

However, remember the edge is only 25% of what is need to win at trading. You need to determine how much to risk vs reward for each trade, be able to not over trade / revenge trade. Have a trading plan, and keep at least when starting out a journal of your trades to be able to review and see what you are doing right or wrong.

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Quote from ronin266:

you know people that putting stock777 in my ignore list a year ago was one of the best decitions in my life?

---

__________________
"Those that know ain't saying, and those saying don't know." - E. A. Neumann

A bear since 1958 and proud of it.

---

Quote from thehitman:

Stock trading is alive and well. Pristine.com taught me everything I know, and now I drive a ferrary and live in manhaten.

---

---

Quote from JustinTrades:

I feel like you'd know how to spell FERRARI if you drove one... and you'd know how to spell MANHATTAN if you lived there.

---

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Quote from oraclewizard77:

Well, you would need an edge. For example something that has a high win% which suggests with high probability the direction of the market over the next 10 min or so.

Now, its very unlikely that someone who spent many years and money finding this edge is going to tell you what it is for free.

However, remember the edge is only 25% of what is need to win at trading. You need to determine how much to risk vs reward for each trade, be able to not over trade / revenge trade. Have a trading plan, and keep at least when starting out a journal of your trades to be able to review and see what you are doing right or wrong.

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