I'm up to a level where I can make gross profit consistently by scalping couple nasdaq stocks, but my net profit is close to 0, sometime even negative. The net profit = gross profit - (execution fee + clearing fee + sec fee + activity fee + gateway fee). The gateway fee is what kills my net profit the most. Yestoday afternoon, I made 145$ gross profit, but the gateway fee is 111$, plus other fees, my net was -6$. My major problem is that I use market buy or sell all the time because I need to be fast. And the average gross profit I made on a single trade is only around 2 cents per share. I know some people would use bid and ask, instead of having to pay the gateway fee, they get credits back from the ecn. Today I try to bid/ask rather the entry or the exit in my trading, but I totally fail it. Many time the price just run away without filling my entry order. And for exit, it was even more terrible...At the end of the day, not only my net profit is negative, my gross is also negative. I have some questions for those who scalpe active nasdaq stocks successfully. How do you deal with the order fill? and the gateway fee? Any cheaper ecn? I read somewhere that MLX(ISI) charges only 0.0005$ per share for Nasdaq stocks, that's like 6 time cheaper than ARCA, INET, BRUT etc which charge 0.003$ per share. Somehow I don't see MLX(ISI) on the level 2. Please give me some advices. Thank you!
Does NYSEKiller trade Nasdaq? I assumed, because of the name and one time he listed a couple of his stocks, that he stuck to NYSE.
Can someone answer the below question on scalping? Thanks. Based on tape reading, I can see that the price is going to rise (note at this time, the higher price has not started printing on the tape). However, before I can place a buy order, the higher price has started printing on the tape (usually the time difference between when I notice that price is going to rise and higher price starts to print on the tape is less than 0.5 seconds). For this scenario the price will usually rise by more than 2 cents Question: 1) In this case, am I considered too late to place a buy order? If I'm not too late, then should I go for a market order? 2a) Is it usually the case where scalpers notice that the price is going to rise and able to place a buy order before the higher price is shown on the tape? or 2b) The price has already started to rise but they can still place a market order as they believe they can usually get a gross profit of 2-4cents? TIA
According to my tiny experience, no, if the price go straight forward to 2 cents higher, your bid won't be filled. I have tried something like placing a bid as soon as the last ask become bid, but if the price is to go straight forward to next level, my bid won't be filled. Mostly my bid gets filled becuz the price is going backward. I'm trying to figure out what to do with this. But it depends, I don't know how other scalpe, I use mainly level 2 and the tape. Maybe other have better stuff to look at to make their decision. Anyway, can anyone give us some advices on using bid and ask to scalpe?
Thanks for attempting to answer my questions, although that was not exactly what I meant. Guess I didn't phrase it properly. Anyway back to staring at the screen. My 0.02 cents suggestion: Why don't you try having a S&P futures chart also. The larger moves for stocks (when there are no news) are those when the market is moving in the same direction also. This should give you more than 2 cents of gross profit. Best of luck to you.