tst the odds are against you as the hft's are picking off the scalpers,gives tst top odds of keeping your dough, read up on this journal before trying it...http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=127338&perpage=6&pagenumber=2 works best with an empty head,one of the luxuries of youth,as time goes by you accumulate a lot of useless junk in the attic
If you are a short-only trader, you may get lucky, but price shocks can swing both ways, so a short-only trader can get smoked as well. There have been quite a few very violent upward surges during the last years. Stops are are always triggered, but where they execute is a different story. Liquidity tends to dry up during fast price movement and especially during the overnight session when the mini flash crash occurred. Probably not that big of a problem during RTH as liquidity normally is very good, but it depends again on the size you're swinging.
Is it a market profile journal? I don't really see myself competing with HFT. We're in different market segments. I go for at least 2,5 point targets. If I can average 3 points per day, I'm very happy. On my last Combine, I was up around $6K at day 6, but the pressure to complete it within the deferred timeline was the main reason why I failed. With up to 30 trading days to hit a $10K target, it should be quite realistic to achieve it, IMO.