by way of example, may i suggest you reading tony oz's books as journals of succesful day trading OR speak to nitro, a very succesful day trader on this board. systems cannot be tested when daytrading stocks ?? this is absolutely not accurate. big drops are difficult to short due to the uptick rule ?? PLEASE !! day traders use bullets to short stocks regardless of uptick rule.
I would like to see Tony Oz's daytrading journal post nasdaq bubble... Slippage is really unpredictable intraday.. maybe you can get away with it.. if you trade really big caps... but it can make a big difference when doing testing... I am not saying that there arent any daytraders making $.. I am saying that the daytrading game has the least probability of success over any other type of trading.. --MIKE
As I said, slippage is not an issue if you enter with a stop-limit. And there is no uptick rule with futures. As for intraday trends being more difficult to trade than extraday trends, I suppose that depends on the trader. --Db
Mike, I could try it with SPY daily bars since I have that data available. When I get some more time. It shouldn't take too long. Thanks
Slippage is an issue with testing stocks... because you are working with a small risk to reward to begin with... I agree and stated earlier it is possible to successfully test a intraday futures strategy... slippage and liquidity is a non issue. The problem is limited time for big gains because you have to be out at the close.. trends are usually short lived... and huge trend days are very rare.. you have to contend with a lot of market noise.. --MIKE
Kernol, actually i tried it about 20 different ways. wide stops, tight stops, target equal to stop, target 2 times stop, target = 1/2 stop, trailing stops, trailing stops after it turned profitable by x amount, varying sizes of trailing stops, etc. etc. so i am not sure what you are suggesting. it lost every way i tried it. thanks,
You are missing my point.. I am talking about comparing bar to bar.. Count the amount of bars in an trend on a 5 min chart.. and count the bars on a daily chart... The bar trend lasts much longer on daily charts... --MIKE
The "problem" has to do with leverage and management, not with time. As for "noise", someone who focuses on monthly and weekly charts would consider daily charts to be "noise". The only difference between daytrading and swing trading is that one relinquishes control when swing trading. --Db