I agree with everything you said, but my point earlier was that no trader has ever produced an average of 1 point per day per contract after costs scalping/daytrading using exchange margin. If you can do that you can make around 700% per year. I have never seen a confirmed 5+ year track record of a trader making over 700% per year every year. If you talk about a swing trader using 1 contract per $15000 of capital then the average 1 point per day produces about 110% per year which is achievable in a very high volatility market, maybe not consistently repeatable but it is possible. For me scalping or short duration daytrading doesnât work and I achieve very good returns with swing trading, but that is just for me, my talents and experience, and my financial situation. I would never say that my way is the best for everyone, or that because I canât scalp that means others canât either.
Some years ago I looked into the simple method of trading the first hourly highs, lows. Fading them more or less. Back then I didn't know enough about how the market worked to have much confidence in it so I dropped the method. I just recently decided to revisit it and I suggest to those that don't believe in scalping to look into just using the hourly highs, lows as action points and going for 4-8 pts a couple time a day. There was also a method I read about some years ago that used 135 min bars. Essentially splitting the day into thirds. While I haven't googled for information about the method this time around perhaps those curious might do so. John
Don't tell him that. He is still ignorant. Watching an ignorant person posting his thoughts is fun (sorry for calling someone ignorant, but a trader can't afford being dishonet). It's usually the struggling trader who posts more frequently. He is searching for the holy grail, he is busy, he is frustrated, he is afraid, he is greedy, he is desperate, he is absorbing everything he reads, he is persuaded by every seemingly insightful post on ET, he wants everybody to contribute so that he will learn something, he is a learning trader. Well, that's all good. I went through all that. If you graduate from ignorance, you will post less. You will pity the struggles of a learning trader, you may not say much, you may secretly enjoy the pains of a learning trader. I hope you graduate, I really do. But it's a very painful journey, full of back and forth movements, it's a very long journey too, longer than you think. But when you get there, you will be surprised that________(you will know it when you get there).
Opt, I agree swing trading is a good niche for retail traders who are serious about making money. I think the key is that to be successful a trader needs to find a niche that fits in with his place in the market. Guys who trade at a retail brokerage and are not exchange members are making trading 100X harder than it should, even impossible, when they try to compete with those who have a vastly lower cost structure and better execution. It is like opening a discount store right next to wal-mart. The result can be like betting a bunch of numbers in roulette: You can have a good winning run collecting a few ticks but still not have an advantage, and that can be tough to see for some time. Swing trading/overnightholds/day holds are good niches for retail short term traders. Grinding out a small daily profit is for those on the "house" side of the game and is extremely difficult to maintain for those on our side of the table. The approach I use for stock index trading is a hybrid of day and swing trading: Day trading grounded in longer term (swing) systems and Day hold/overnight hold systems. I combine my researched systems/strategies with an intra-day tape reading style of trading, often looking to buy little flutters of fear/stop runs or sell after flutters of greed short squeezes. Anticipating these flutters seems to be one of the things that can work for retail day traders who have learned tape reading. However I consider it "making the market cover transaction costs" as you often end up with an immediate few tick or even point or so profit. However it is an arrow in the quiver and not a full or effective strategy on its own. Some periods i lean heavier on one approach than the other. To keep things grounded i monitor the ratio of profit to commissions and other stats like % win, expectation, average profit to loss, holding period on winners vs. losers. All these things keep the trader grounded and focused on what is working vs. what is not working, so you can move away from the bad and towards the good. If commissions start to eat up profit too much or I shift back towards swing trading. If my intra-day decisions are having a "high profit margin" i try to keep pounding it for a while using a bit more leverage than I use on overnight holds. I helps to be relatively conservative in my opinion. for me high leverage is 3 to 1 which I use only for intra day trades, and 1.5 to one for swing trades. Using relatively modest leverage to me is a key to not being a weak hand which creates the well known day trader phenomenon of "moving from losing trade to losing trade", ha.
noise trader?? .......hmmmm, I think you need to relook your strategy and apparerent lack of patience. dont tell me you havent been able to find trades in longer time frames using rsi/stoch divergences, swing highs, lows and/or S&R levels on intraday. LACK OF PATIENCE will drive you into the ground
The key to taking more points is a little bit of scaling out with break even or trailing stops, and the ability to recognize ahead of time chop or trend. It can be done, and if you watch the market long enough will catch this. TT