Would you tell me what you used to backtest your system? I've never done any backtesting, but your success has convinced me that scalping is not the way to go, which is what I really believed all along but I've been trying to scalp anyway. Congratulations, but with your work ethic it seemed sure that you would come up with something that would work for you.
I began to backtest by hand, charting trades daily in EXCEL... wore my fingers to the bone. Then I got TRADESTATION. Saves a lot of time. The difficulty is that TRADESTATION is not 100% accurate. I try to employ a little discretion on the entry/exits based on TRADESTATION's trigger. Then backtested (back to Nov 2000) and manually reviewed the signals, making sure that they were legit.
jonesy, haven't seen you in the room lately. The market is giving away dollars, I'm glad you see the light with scalping. Not that it can't be lucrative, but it is a lot of work. And commish. Try a 40 sma on any time frame chart such that the usual length of one bar is within your risk tolerance. I don't know about tradestation, but with excel and a data link you can run stock after stock in any time frame and find ones that fit your criteria for risk. Then when the price crosses the ma, get in. Use close only as your trigger. If it reverses and closes on the other side, so do you. Check out all the charts you want, any time frame, and you will see that yes sometimes the price seems to be glued to the average, but usually it tracks well away from it providing you with a nice profit opportunity. The longer the time frame the greater the profit opportunity overall. Even a whipsaw will usually give you an opportunity for a profit, or at least a scratch. Of course, the longer the time frame, the larger the average bar range is, thus increasing your risk. Check it out. Any stock with good volume will do. Some are better than others. Use the 40 sma as the objective trigger. The rest of the trading world does. Why not go along for the ride?
Not for anything joboyd, but how is a snaphot of your days overall P&L going to help anybody??? What happened to the charts and the actual trades??? PEACE Publias
Another question, if you don't mind. Would you tell me how, if, you use a stop: trailing, mechanical, discretionary? Also, would you give your the range for long/short on your stops on ES and NQ, if you trade it. I guess this sort of sounds like I'm asking for like a term paper on stops, but thanks in advance for any reply.
I now use a "system" that I created. It gives me entry and exit signals. I have just added stops to my system, 8 ES points.