emini scalper's question

Those of you who are principally scalpers of e's, how many points do you typically shoot for, and how long do you hold an average trade?

 

I typically hold for 1-5 minutes. Usually look for 1 or 2 points in this market.

 

se the yellow brick road (Attached). As a spread sheet you can play with it to get acquainted with making money.

The market efficiency and player efficiency are adjustable and you can also rearrange how they are applied to the maths.

The potential of a type of trading can be related to the H/L of the period or the value the cycle swings.

The best operating point is determined by the design of the approach used to make money. It seems to come down to a multiple of the period H/L as measured on a daily basis.

I can see about three fundamental basic money generating techniques applied to each period. They would include techniques for strong fast trends, for slower steady gains, and for congestion (lateral stuff).

Scalping is a fringe activity for making money and comes closest to congestion type trading and isn't too practical in any trend because of fewer opportunities to do rounds.

For ES a slow scalping op of 2 points three to six times an hour would be a conservative way to play with unlimited # of contracts (Less than 10% of the market using block sizes on the T&S).

Going to more profits per trade, the take would increase to about 5 points per round and the round would require nominally about 10 minutes. Doing these requires considering the time of day: for am and pm you get two an hour and midday you would not attempt any in the ES.

Special situation scalps like BO's, opening gaps, retraces can occur each day and you can count on nailing each one for the period of the "failure" related to each. Most scalpers cannot see the difference between a "failure" stuation and a non failure situation;therefore, they usually blow about half of these opportunities. Among scalpers different ones are blowing different failures. Tape readers probably are good for one of the three only.

Set your chart to the fastest fractal and use the T&S volume to play ahead of the herd of scalpers.

 

Jack, I am interested in your knowledge but can't seem to open your attachment.

 

I usually try to Scalp Nasdaq E minis for 3-4 points and S&P E minis for 2-3 points. I usually have a "core" position that I am always trading around. It really depends on what your M.O. is.
I make most of my money on much bigger moves on longer term positions.

 

I tried opening the file too and excel came up but with nothing in it. Can you try attaching it again.

 

First of all you need XL to open it.
I opened it and it is blank.

 

Same problem here

 

Jack, thanks for the thoughtful reply. Curious what you mean by scalping being a fringe activity. Also, I wasn't able to open the attachment either. Any suggestions on how to open it, from the posts that follow it appears I must have Microsoft Excel. Thanks again, and to others who responded also.

Alan

 

Perhaps that's the idea. :