I like scalping and have been trading scalping for the last three years and now I want to shift to swing trading. How to adopt the new trading technique? Will you please share some ideas?
change your chart timeframe from say 2 mins to 15 minutes change from staring at the chart continuously from 4 hours per day to just 10 minutes every hour widen your stop loss from say 15 ticks to 45 ticks similarly, widen your target profit from say 40 ticks to 120 ticks. the number of trading opportunities will be reduced by ~ 5X. technical analysis / price action studies - not much change
For swing trading, you have to set big targets for which you have to analyze the market both technically and fundamentally.
It's a process like anything else, and does take time. Took me over 6 months to change my mindset from scalper to swing trading 3 to 5 days, because dealing with drawdowns is not easy. Technique to analyze daily charts is a most. Trading off technicals support & resistance is helpful. I use volume cyclic analysis for entry/exits. There's a lot of different strategies. Trend following, Mean reversion or using channels like Keltner or Bollinger bands for entry/exits. I can't remember all of them, I just know it's better than scalping. JMHO.
At first mental preparation is needed then learn how to set big target. Don’t jump directly to swing trading rather go step by step. You can gradually increase your target size and time and see your capacity.
You didn't menttion what you were trading. The first question is why? If you like scalping why switch to swing? You move time frames. I'm assuming you are trading off charts. If you are trading off DOM or T&S then I can't suggest anything. You might start as a scalp and hold the trades moving in your direction a little longer or overnight.
Monetize open trade drawdown (adverse excursion) by hedging being on both sides of the trade simultaneously. Hedge minor temporary retracement while remaining in core trend. When the trend resumes, peel off the hedge and your PnL will be higher by the amount of the hedge @ prev high watermark, hopefully positive. If original trend reverses, the hedge now becomes the new core trend as original core trend is unwound.
You just start to make research on higher timeframes and look for patterns that will likely be observed by other traders on chart. This will make technical analysis to work. Also you reduce lot size and increase stop loss size. Profit targets should be also raised since you will make less trades, hence profit target per trade should be higher.