Well folks, after reading and educating myself as much as I could I moved to the last stage of my pre-trading education: Live action on a sim. A couple of weeks ago, I forked over a tidy sum to e signal fellows and finally was playing with real life data. On the brokerage side, after analyzing several vendors, I went for Open e Cry platform. Today was the big day because I decided to try my old crusty system of scalping ES for 1/4 of a point. I fought the market all day and ....at the end of the afternoon, the account showed 9812.50 in the positive. Of course around 3300 of it is fees to the broker but still that leaves a nice amount to take home. It was done on a 10 lot with 50.000 in capital. Enclosed, please find XLS file confirming the numbers. I realize that doing it on a sim is not the same as doing it with real money but the mechanics are the same. (T28 - I am coming for your $$$$$$$ even if they are inferior Australian Dollars. )
How does your sim properly simulate the filling of limit orders. (You are using limit orders in your attempt to scalp a single tick, right?) -Raystonn
Agree. Sim of fills probably a very poor representation of what will happen in live trading with limit orders.
Are you sure the simulator accounts for the bid/ask spread correctly? I looks to me from your spreadsheet that you are able to buy on bid and sell on ask within seconds. That looks suspicious to me, 'cause normally the opposite happens.
there is problems with ecry sim, if you scalp too fast it just filled you imm, in another word it assumes you are first guy in queue, it seem does better job if you slow down say 1 entry each 2m. Second, keep the number of contracts to be the same as number of contracts you plan to trade for real, pile up paper money is exciting but when it come to real money on the line whole thing will change, the queue suddenly get longer and an order seem take forever to fill. If you could, rent ninja trader, if you can make money on nj sim with live Ecry data feed then I am pretty sure that you can make money in real trade.
While I don't agree with your trading methodology, the sim on Ninja Trader makes it harder than real life. You are last in line, not first in line. You might take a look at that. No offense, but sim trading is not realistic, when real $$$ is traded it's a whole different story. It's really easy to be brave on a sim. When you are waiting for 300+ to get filled on the bid/ask of the ES you won't be as brave, sorry. You better have a damn fast internet connection and fast scalping platform. If I were you I would look at Ninja Trader with the Zen Fire or TT feed. Both are bullet quick. Good luck. I hope you do better than me scalping for ticks. I prefer 2/3 to 1 with a 50% win ratio. Whatever works for you though.