Afternoon churnfest! help!

I trade nyse equities by reading the tape and scalp fast movements for 10 to 50 cents. For a while now I can't seem to trade the afternoon at all. I can kill it in the first hour and the last hour is not so bad. However, when it comes to trading in the afternoon, I am completely lost. Other traders at my firm just tell me to sit on my hands and only take the best trades but I can't seem to do this. I know that part of my problem is my lack of patience in the afternoon but I also feel that I just don't understand the changes that occur after 10:30. The setups that work in the morning don't work well at all in the afternoon.

Are there any scalpers that had this problem and were able to fix it? Instead of working on my afternoon game, should I just focus on taking as much as I can in the first hour and then not trade till 3? Any advice would be appreciated.

-spxdes

 

you have to learn how to differentiate chop and trend.

its not the matter of trading only mornings or trading only afternoons, but what should happen before chop, what should happen before trend.

 

Once you have a higher low and a lower high, you have no trend.

So stop.

 

Or change size depending on the hour of the day. It is useful to keep trading for some folks in order to remain "in the groove" and focused. But why not trade 10 shares or even 1 share instead of 1000?

Just a thought...

-eLindy

 

For a lack of a better phrase, you have to "view" the morning and afternoon as separate "sessions" punctuated by a lackluster noon period.

One advantage to the afternoon is BY THEN, you should KNOW whether it's low made first OR....... high made first for the entire day.

 

vix close to all time lows.


enjoy.

 

Its not that I have difficulty differentiating chop and trend. A stock could trickle up for 2 points in the afternoon and I will still struggle with it. The moves are too slow or the stock will go up 5 to 10 cents down and then squeeze people out and then continue the trend. My head is always in the short term scalp so I never get a good idea what the bigger picture is and I dont know how to trade it.

 

Yea I have been doing that lately. I get greedy at times and catch myself sizing up. I have to work on my discipline.

 

I know and I can't stand it. I was so happy in May when it looked like it was breaking out of its dead zone but then it just came right back in.

 

The trick? Don't work at a chop shop where you're trained to only jump at size