Are there profits to be made in the short term price fluctations of stocks in this new hybird system?
where r the short term traders? Is everything biz as usual or has the specialist position been dramraticaly altered by hybird trans ?
seems much harder for us smaller traders, i have to work all day now to make about half of what i was used to
The days of scalping the NYSE min to min seem to be over, take a slightly longer term approach, take less trades but make those trade that you do take, more meaningful. You can make the same (or more) by making more quality trades intraday and churning less. It just takes some getting used to.
Does hybird make the specialist less influential, and at the same time smooth out price fluctuations? Has the time frame for scalping been lengthened. Forget the 1 & 5 min charts?
Yes the specialist is FAR less involved, the price moves are far more erratic and the r/r, the way i see it anyways, is skewed and not in my favor. I have moved to trading longer intraday time frames, identifying more meaningful setups taking less trades and letting trades play out more than I used to. I definitely do not use the 1 min chart, never did anyways but certainly not for what I am doing now. 5min should be fine. When I was actively trading NYSE intraday I almost never posted durting market hours but now I have more time and can since I am trading less. I guess its a blessing and a curse, like I'm not on this site enough already
But the problem with longer time horizons is more risk plus you must take bigger size to make the same money. The whole idea behind scalping is to minimzie your risk with 100's of shots.
one thing that has helped me aliitle bit is bidding dicipline. I noticed that I was allways underwater like six cents a share everytime i opened so now i bid down six cents or so. I miss some but Id rather miss then get a bad price. I am also offering pices above the market on arca allmost as soon as i am in
Its all about r/r. If you are scalping and you are risking 3 cents to make at least 6, you have a nice 2:1. Same thing applies to longer intraday frames. I may risk, .15/.20 but am looking to make .30-.40 (stock dependent of course). The key is you have to know what you are doing when you take a position w/ more inherent risk. You have to have good reasons and have things thought out in advance before the trade is even placed. I'm only looking to place 2-5 trades daily, but each one I do is for a very solid reason (based on my methods) When I was scalping doing 100K+ shares a day, sometimes I would just jump in on instict. Now I have more well planned reasons, I know where I am getting out if I'm wrong and knowing about where I should take some profits, all profits etc. The exit is by far the hardest part I feel (at least for me). I am good at sniffing low risk entries, exiting is more a challenge. I'm not suggesting you cant still scalp NYSE, I'm sure there are new methods and techniques to take advantage of the hybrid, I am just using this opportunity to trade longer time frames. Thinking 5 years from now, would I really want to still be banging in and out 300+ trades a day? Probably not
so steve how has holding gone compared to scalping? are you making the same money or less? you asked would you still be trading 300 plus times a day in 5 years.i'm 49 and i've been averaging at least 1000 trades a day for 13 years. no question its mentally tough but it allows me to trade with the least risk possible and i hate risk. sure i'd have done much better holding long since july but i don't have a crystal ball. some day i'll rev it way back.