Thanks it makes sense. Very similar to S0mmi. Also it looks like the targets are whatever the market is prepared to give you
Kind of. I take what the market gives me, but it has to happen within a very short time. I dont want to sit 1 hour and wait for a 1 tick profit to turn into 5 ticks. Thats not scalping for me. What many people dont understand is that there are many ways to manage risk. People always think only stops help to control risk, but this is not true and from my view the way most people place and use stops is the worst kind they could control their risk. You can control your risk also for example by position size or by time in a trade. If you do intraday swing trades with 1 lot and scalping with 1 lot, it sounds like the risk would be similar. But I think it is very different. Lets say you do 2 intraday swing trades per day, and each trade takes about 2 hours, so in total you have been 4 hours in the market with 1 contract. Now as a scalper, I might do 20 trades during a trading day, and the average duration of a trade is lets say 30 seconds. So in total, with my scalps I have a position in the market for only 10 minutes. 10 minutes in the market vs. 4 hours. Thats much less risk. So much shit can happen everday in those additional 3+ hours. I like to trade frequently, but I like it even more to be in the market only for a very short time with each trade. The best scalps take less than 10 seconds, they jump immediately to a profit between 1 and 5 ticks. I dont wait for a trade to make more profit. It will make a little spike into my direction immediately after my entry, otherwise I will look to get out with just 1 tick profit.
And one more thing I wanted to add... I mentioned the FDAX because it is one of the most (consistently) volatile instruments out there and gives you plenty of opportunities per day, similar to NQ. But you can do the same style of scalping with almost every major instrument. For me, the major difference is the amount of opportunies the different instruments give me per day. Lets say the FDAX and the NQ are the fastest, they have so many microswings, up and downs during the day that you have 10-50 potential scalps per day. In a market like the FGBL (Bund) or ES, I might only see 5-15 trades per day. But the advantage is, I can trade those with more size. And then you have the very thick markets like ZN or FGBM (Bobl) or even FGBS (Schatz), they might give you only 1-5 good opportunities for a scalp per day. Thats why I said the DAX is the easiest to start building consistent profits, grow your small to medium account to a medium to large one. Because the FDAX gives you the most opportunities per day. You dont have to sit for hours and get crazy because you are so bored. You can stay focused on the market, because something is happening all the time. You get lots of practise, because you will have a trade every few minutes. In the ZN on the other hand for example, price might get stuck between 3 ticks for the whole morning. As a beginner, you might get crazy and desperate, watching a market for 5 hours and finding no opportunity for a good entry. Just open a 3 tick chart of the FDAX and a lets say 33 tick chart of the ZN. You will see the FDAX will do all the movement and gyrations in one day that the ZNs need maybe more than two weeks for. A final note, I would probably like the NQ even more than the FDAX. But a big advantage of all Eurex products are the very low exchange fees. Even as a retailer, you can get your all-in roundturn cost for the FDAX down to 1.50 EUR or even less, 0.90 EUR or less for the Bund (in fact, there is a little known "secret" how you can get your all-in cost for ALL Eurex products to less than 0.20 EUR per RT, but thats another story). So lets compare the impact of these low exchange fees on a typical trading day of a retail scalper. Lets say Joe Scalpalot executes 40 x 2-lot trades, both in the FDAX and in the NQ. He makes gross 200 EUR in the FDAX and 200 USD in the NQ. He pays 1.80 EUR per RT in the FDAX, and 3.00 USD per RT in the NQ, so his total cost for this day are 144 EUR for the FDAX and 240 USD for the NQ. His net result is 56 EUR in the FDAX and only -40 (minus !) USD in the NQ. So because of the low Eurex exchange fees, even with a subpar trading day he is still net profitable in the FDAX, while in the NQ, despite the same gross result, he is net negative for the day because of the higher exchange fees.
It is not that much of a secret, so I will share it here with you, I always wondered why not more traders apply for this: http://www.eurexchange.com/exchange-en/trading/trader-development-program Basically, you just have to trade at least 350 RTS (700 contracts) on Eurex per month. If you do this, Eurex pays you back the Eurex exchange fee for up to 35,000 contracts per month (=maximum of 420,000 contracts per year). Now if you find a good FCM/ broker who will set this up for you and you make an agreement with him (of course you will have to do some volume for this) where you pay only for example 0.20 EUR commission per Bund contract et voila, you can now trade the Eurex treasuries or the FESX for less than 0.40 EUR per RT, all-in. And there you go, scalping strategies or spreading with even very low profit margin per contract finally pay off, you can trade them net profitable.
Wow thanks for sharing that. 0.2 per round trip! Do you mind if I ask what your setup is? Im with IB and I use Sierra charts. I would like to investigate this further for sure.
No problem, happy if I can help a bit. I think I have used most of the (retail) platforms around, but now I am back with most of my trading on the new TT platform. 95% of my charts run on Sierra charts. I love how flexible Sierra chart is, and lightweight at the same time.
Thanks CALLumbus, so you chart with Sierra and execute through trading technologies? Whos your broker?
Yes exactly. I have also used other charting packages in the past, but I am very happy with Sierra Chart now for several years. But like so many other things in trading, this is very subjective, I could do the same what I do with Sierra also achieve with Ninja or Multicharts or most other charting platforms. Same with TT, most of the time I just use the simple MD (DOM) trader and nothing else, could do this also with CQG or Rtrader or Ninja... maybe I am just so used to it, or it is the little details, I am not really sure, I just like this combination. I use more than one broker (or I should better say FCM), I think every serious trader should, to have at least one backup solution in case one is down. Most of my trading I do now with Advantage Futures. I like their professionalism and also their good knowledge with Eurex products (not every US based broker is really familiar with Eurex). But one of the main reasons to go with them (at least for me) is probably the rates they can offer you if you do at least some volume.