I never joined any or actually be in a chatroom on a live trade but these are making me a little nervous. I don’t know how much of it is actual strategy and how much a group pump via the chatroom participants. Hard to gauge how much buying power beginners actually have. I won’t know where I am at until I at least paper trade alone for a while whichever strategy I end up with at the end. Because it is a zero-sum game, it is hard to contemplate that dumb money would never run or why would big players not place a trap for them. Ross got eSignal with Lightspeed and I checked one video of this other guy you mentioned and I saw he has DAS Trader and uses TOS for charts but not sure if that is also his broker. I have an account with IBKR and their TWS software, but I am not happy with TWS and I also dislike that I have to pay for market data from account funds instead of credit card while I paper trade. When I finally paper trade, I want it to be in the same platform and with same tools that I’ll use live. Right now it seems that is going to be eSignal and Das Trader and running all that for paper trading is not cheap. The shitty reviews eSignal has been getting lately makes it all more uncomfortable to get in plus I get charged VAT on top of it all. Also looking into some other platforms that provide both charting, market data and broker integration. I also don’t get why is Ross using trade-ideas as stock scanner? Shouldn’t scanners be part of any platform that already utilizes market data feed or you just paid for same data twice?
You are overthinking it. Use TOS for charts and paper trading - all free. If you make money with TOS, you most likely make money with faster platform. MadAz uses limit orders only while Ross mostly market orders, so advantage MasAz, IMO. Spending the time in their chat rooms would be worth your time and effort. Good luck.
I guess I am overthinking it. Except TOS is not an option because I can’t open an account with them (not from US), so that is 1 good free paper trading option less. Same with Webull.
First of all, scalping is a difficult way to go, especially for a beginner. That said, if your strategy is well tested to show a positive expectancy and has clear signals and trade management rules then it's not overtrading if you have 10 or 50 signals. If on the other hand, your trades do not meet the above qualifiers, one trade is overtrading.
My trading career started out scalping in the CBOT Bond Pit. There you had about a one-half second time advantage and you could make a go at it. In the very late nineties into the early 2000's in Chicago there were about 15 to 20 proprietary futures trading firms where scalping on the screen was still feasible using external data sources as an edge. All of those firms went away by about 2005 or so, with the exception of a few that I am aware of that made the switch to automated trading systems. The reason they went away was the advent of ATS, algos, and bots. It seems like everything we do in society is being challenged by computerized systems. In trading you need an edge and you need to eliminate or minimize outside advantage over you. Personally, I do this by swing trading. The turbulence created by the bots and algos isn't really concerning for me. But to start out directly competing against the Bots and Algos and the plethora of ATS armed with a mouse and routing your orders through a discount broker - good luck with that because you'll need it.
So you're going to trade the US equity markets from Europe using a discount broker and you want to scalp? Probably the first thing you should do is make a list of advantages versus disadvantages to that scenario. Hint: the disadvantages are not minor.
Maybe I should have said momentum trading instead of scalping. Goal is to pick a chart pattern and/or some other technical indicator and then time the entry by matching a signal from the pattern/indicator with increase of buying on time and sales table. Setting a tight loss and 2:1 take profit goal. Yes, I will trade from EU with IBKR Pro. Round trip latency probably in 150-200ms range. Direct ECN access so don’t think that’s a discount broker. Obviously, there is more to it but that’s a start.
This is for "the believers": If our trading/scalping results are impacted by speed, we will lose. I live near Miami, to far from the exchange, I don't have the best software and hardware, I am slower than algos and HFT, etc. You got the point. So, I see only few possibilities: - Never enter with a market order, they are manipulated to say the least. The slippage will kill any hope of profits. Limit oders only should be the rule with only very few exceptions. - A traditional close hard stop will be hit a lot of time. - A hard stop should always be an emergency last resort kind of stop, and really not as close as people think in general. - A stop order should be used only when the reason we entered is now wrong. - A daily Profit Factor < 2 and we lose in the long run. - A daily PF > 5 should be the norm. - A daily and weekly max loss should be fixed per contract. - 2 losing days in a row should be exceptional. - To expect gaining 1 or 2 ticks a day is not (anymore) sustainable. - Any news, fundamental, or classical AT and indicators, based strategies will not make us successful. These strategies are for swing trading and investments. - Reducing the cost of doing business should be one of our priority. - Thinking risks first and how-not-to lose is the priority. - Any profitable scalping will probably not be scalable, at least not enough to trade OPM. Last but not least, we should have no ego, right mindset and good attitude. I am sure 99.9% of the believers as much as the non-believers will disagree with me, which is just fine Hope to contribute to this interesting thread. Good trades!
It’s not a matter of being a “believer”, it’s a matter of risk versus reward. I would make the case that if you are manually trading - you’re better off taking 3 highly selective trades per day instead of 50 “scalps” per day. If you want to take 50 trades per day: that’s what automated trading system platforms are for.