In a normal tarding day (not like the ones we have for the last week or so..) what will you consider an ok/good tick accumilation per day per one car? 10-20? 20-40? >40? I am happy to bring home 20-40.
I like having multiple charts open so I can look for a trade based on my setup. Finally found one on GC which is gold, and I was able to take a scalping profit. Time wise I did not want to trade during lunch hour for east coast, and when I woke up today I said to myself I don't want to over trade so that good or bad I was going to just take 1 trade today, just like I did on Friday. I thought about trading Sunday, but decided not to do it, and did not watch the markets. I also am buying a vertical put on oil based on the USO. I have bought the 39 put and sold the 36 put for April. This contract will make me money if oil falls before April expiration. Thought on this trade is that some good news may come out of Lybia before the end of April.
On Friday's option action on CNBC, they were talking about selling a vertical call on oil for a possible $ 150 profit and $ 250 risk. However, as most of you that traded oil know, that good or bad news can push oil hard and fast one way or the other so while I would respect their trade more on a stock that moves very little, I think on oil, its kind of silly since one is going to be right or wrong, and if I am right my risk is only around $ 100 per contract with a possible $ 200 profit per contract.
Day trading off a 5-min chart from NYMEX open to close, you should be able to capture 60-80 ticks without too much trouble. If you've spent hours on end coming up with rules to keep you on red alert during indecisive chop, then you will make significantly more. Since oil recently went on meth and steroids, you can easily make 40 or more ticks per trade, even during a grinding mid-day mush up-channel Just playing breakouts of levels and nothing else should get you 60-80 ticks a day. Look at the break through 97.82 today, which was a well-tested support level and became a 60-min bar low. That was a very fast "scalp" for a test of 97.25 or a fairly fast "hold" for a test of 96.74.