Theyre both good questions (especially the second one) and both difficult to answer. (I realise you weren't asking me, anyway). For myself, before trying to answer, I'd want to know details of your profit factor, trading frequency, and other parameters, including the overall "type of trading" that you're doing: most markets and charts are broadly fractal, give or take, but even so not all opportunities present themselves enough to justify increasing the hours. (I'm thinking of trading "opening range breakouts" just as an example of something you clearly can't "duplicate all day long"). I approached the issue from a different direction, myself, as I've only ever really done relatively fast-moving intraday trading, and my "way forward" at a perhaps-equivalent stage was to increase the number of the days of the week that I did so.
my profit factor is over 2, trading frequency varies, there comes times where signals are fired every other day and times where one signal is on for 2 months, the overall type is technical systematic, no discretion at all at least not in the individual trades, position size always the same across what ever asset it is, no bias long or short, it used to be i only trade a selected pairs of the 28 currency pairs of the majors, however after being able to automate my back testing, instruments are tested from futures to forex to stocks and ranked according to best ROI on annualized basis and top 4-8 (could change) are selected to be traded, regardless what market they are from. the back testing results are presented in a format where every hand was played, thus is the limit to amount of instruments that could be selected because when one is selected iam always in either long or short, never flat untill order entry is automated this might change,,,, also the position size is large enough where commission and slippage is never an issue, but of course this might not be the case in day trading, since signals are more frequent
on ur point of trading opening range breakouts, i see where it cant be duplicated all day long, but couldnt it be duplicated in other markets as well as whether same time or not for example if ur referring to es opening range, cant we duplicate it in dow, russel, forex (which has multiple openinigs) commodities futures etc,, of course assuming they are worth the trade,,, question on ur approach, u said u increased the hours/day spent by increasing the amount of days of the week that u participate, i would assume the days you "work more" you do the same thing as whats working, what about increasing the days to research something that works better? what led to one path versus another if thats the case?
%% Best way is learn to trade- invest SPY; SPY pays dividends, most derivatives do not pay many or any dividends. Wisdom is profitable to direct . IBD{ Investors Business Daily= 200 day moving average-dma} line is much better than WSJ, with their odd 65 dma LOL. Wisdom is profitable to direct,kashill;.
Not enough capital for futures or mini-contracts IMHO. Trade SPY and when you become consistent, lever SPY. Develop consistency and the trading world will be your playground.
Have you ever tried sim trading your swing trader system to intraday Emini Nasdaq or ES? A good day trader method should work on larger timeframes. At least mine do. One problem seldom touched upon is one's memory, charting takes huge memory, you need to find dozen patterns that will halt you from taking trend trades or stop you from counter-trend trades, it is the dumb trades to not to be taken usually from not identifying patterns to left of now, and you have to be able to identify quickly whereas Swing trading you might have hours for one trade. Most of those who been profitable for years have spent years studying charts, the left and dissecting price swings into waves, and even labeling each bar which can take years to have a label for each, but the cool thing is what you look for on intraday data works on daily/weekly data. As far as 40 hours, the learning years are closer to 80 hours a week.
I have not yet tried my ststems in day trading but will be backtesting it for such The trades NOT to be taking as u mention are the ones i fear when it comes to day trading, my systems on swing trading require i take every signal, i know in day trading that might be deadly,
By taking every signal, you might have not factored in rules of when not to take some trades based on back testing of them not working well.
%% True dbp; but worse than that ,he mentioned futures, as if they predict LOL!! I have used that word myself , so not nitpicking LOL. If one is still learning, ES would teach a lot faster,LOL-LOL; but if a beginner goofs up on SPY@ least he may get dividends?? LOL. Not sure i would agree with the 4 lot ES comment for a beginner; but it could be 4 times faster.LOL- m T Turtle
in order to preserve mental state of mind, exp traders typically risk 2% of their account per trade. assuming u day trade dow minis where a typical stop will be 10-15ticks × $5per tick = $50-$75. u will need $25-37.5k usd in trading capital to risk 2% per trade.