Hi everyone, I have been itching to start a journal for sometime now. So, here it is. I have been trading for 8 years. I exclusively trade listed stocks. Once and a while I will trades the SPY's and the QQQ's. I have always been profitable. Although, it has been extremely difficult for me to make money since the summer of 2001. I still continue to be profitable, just relatively small profits. The lack of momentum and decimalization has made scalping difficult. But, I can still grind out a living. I have to stick with what I know. Although, I continuously try to adapt and learn new methods, as long as they are "somewhat" similar to mine. On average, I usually trade 50,000 to 150,000 shares per day. The market has been relatively quiet lately, so my trading has been on the lighter side. When the market presents opportunity, I usually trade around 150,000 to 250,000 shares each day. I will post my P+L at the end of the day. I believe that other scalpers can appreciate this. So, I hope this journal will be beneficial to others. I also hope that it helps me. Maybe we all can learn something?? Good Trading to everyone, gotta_trade
Hey Gotta, Where do you trade? I assume prop because retail (even with IB) would way too expensive with your style. I have heard that this style (large size scalping of NYSE big caps) is not working very well anymore. Maybe you need to focus harder on adjusting to something new? Good luck! Axe
gotta trade, I hope you will include some explanations about what you are doing, as P and L alone is a bit boring. I know you can't detail 75 scalp trades each day, but maybe take us through a few good ones and bad ones.
MIDDAY UPDATE: +982 before commissions, +429 after I traded 79,000 shares so far today. I did not catch any big moves in my trades. Many small moves. Didn't lose much, didn't make much. But, it's better than nothing. In the old days, the moves would have been bigger. That's one of the reasons why scalping is so difficult now. But, I am an extremely consistent trader so the gains add up and I "usually" keep my loses small.
Every trade that I make is based of the S+P futures. And how the stocks react to the futures contract. Most of my trades are entered by buying pullbacks, shorting rallies, and fading overextended moves. In this market, I rarely buy breakouts. I don't hold on the the positions very long. Unfortunately, with the lack of follow thru and momentum, the moves are not very big. I only wish I could hold on longer and refine my methods. That is one of the things that I am working on. But, until then I have to trade this way.
Perhaps you could provide some specific examples with charts of what you're doing. Otherwise the best comments you can hope for are likely to be limited to "too bad" or "good for you", assuming that you're looking for suggestions to improve your strategy. --Db
I don't know why I am writing this journal. I have been reading posts on ET for quite a while. I rarely ever post. I enjoyed reading Hitman's journals, and I still check them out every day,(on that other website). I guess I use them as some sort of benchmark. Just to see how other traders are doing. I don't expect to teach anyone how to trade, an I am not really looking for direct feedback on how to trade. I am always curious about how other traders are doing and if other people have the same curiosity, they can check out my journal. Maybe other scalpers will like to see how a fellow scalper is doing?? If not, or if this proves to be a pointless journal, then I'll stop. (no harm done)
End of Day: +1083 before commissions, +242 after I am not happy with the way I finished off the day. Lost money shorting late day rally. I feel that I overtraded. Tomorrow, I will make a point to be more selective.