Time frame is just one aspect of a trade. There's entry, exit, stop, and how much to bet on a particular setup. Sometimes I'm in a daytrade but I see that there's more to be had down the road. But usually I just get out and watch. In the currencies the game keeps going anyway, so if I miss a move there's always the retracement. I think it comes down to your basic makeup, your nature. Again I've learned the hard way to stay within.
A saying I once heard," You have to be lucky just to be good in this game". Best of luck with the semi
Thank you. I've dug myself a nice hole due to perfectionism. You know when the neighbor is yelling at you and telling you to get it on the road that you've probably gone too far. My attention span is about 3_hours. Good for daytrading but bad for vintage trucks.
On the issue of randomness and lower time frames, Al Brooks states that each tick on the ES futures market matters, each tick on the ES has meaning to be deciphered.
Each tick is not relevant, many of these ticks are just erroneous orders/fat fingers. I'm not sure about why this Al Brooks is getting so much attention, traders need to develop their own methods and stop listening to people who write books.
99.9999% of the day trading strategies fail, the reason is the edge from most day trading strategies will not sufficient to cover the cost ( commission and slippage). Big institutional (which has ample resources and more smarter people that you and me) already have tried this without any success, this is why their main income still from commissions and market making. I refer to the real BIG institutions here, not those scam bucket shops or prop firms that with the main intention is to make money from you and NOT from market. This is reality but unfortunately no one (especially the new traders with the naive dream) want to accept it. No different that no one want to admit that you can't make a living in gambling, house always wins. From time to time you still see some self proclaimed successful day traders here, but most of them are either : 1. Fail trader in real life, just to come here to find some fake and self inflicted glory, serious mental issues 2. Vendors try to sell something 3. Troy or professional poster linked or sponsored by Broker or bucket shop. The best income from broker/bucket shops are those dump day traders gamblers, so it is important to continue the marketing and keep the fake dreams float around. No different from the lottery tickets company 4. Con man that claim big success in trading, targeting those naive and rich folks. Those con traders normally claim unrealistic return ( 30% or something), in reality they are using high risk high reward strategy which enable them to make this type of return for a few months but will blow up eventually due to the nature of the this type of strategy. The aim is to collect enough "fee" from the short term profits from the dumb and risk followers before the account blow up. 5. The list goes on.. Add yours
Okay, enough! Let me answer this. I'm talking about retail trading in all the below points. 1) You CANNOT day trade more $10-20 million in a market, unless it's T-notes without moving the market. (Some markets and some specific days are exceptions). Ofcourse! you need a team(or an algorithm) to do this because you're going to place multiple orders for a single large trade. Which by definition itself makes you a professional trader. 2) You CAN swing/position trade (as much as you can ) in a market,especially if your setup takes days or weeks to occur. You need the top 5 brokers in your country to provide you with a lot of margin (approx 50-200 mil depending on the leverage). Create an account with each of them and 'divide' your trade. (That 'CIS' guy did it in a similar way.) 3) It's always better to divide your bet by trading similar and opposite markets. For example, that 'cis' guy shorted NIKKEI (possibly S&P too) and yen (paired with different currencies), futures and options. A $400 million bet can EASILY be traded positionally in 5-8 different markets. Finding the margin and keeping track of your trades (if you're doing it alone) is the harder part. 4) Prop firms don't provide 100 mil margin to a retail trader, unless you're a professional which itself contradicts the statement OP mentioned. 5) If you really want to obtain a margin of 200-500 mil or more , it's always better to approach a prime broker (or a sub-prime ) to get what you want. I always assumed that large traders go sub-prime because it solves most of the problems a professional faces. Myself- I am not a professional trader. I trade reasonable amounts (500k-2 mil) IF AND ONLY IF my confidence level is off the chart. I think 100k-350k is okay and reasonable for huge profits for day-trading. You can easily make 3 million per year(again, depends.) by doing so.
This is a good reply. I think a trading account should only have about a million in it, tops. You should however, I feel, throw Confidence out of the equation or picture. Just when you think you're Right or confident...the market seems to humble you. Always have a somewhat neutral, unbias, mind -- like a judge,