Your post makes the assumption that new traders are SUPPOSED to be making money right away, which is so very false. Scalping is a great way to make money trading..if you are GOOD at it. No one says anyone will be good from the get go. My advice is to watch the market a bit and find what YOU think is a good fit for your personality. There is no reason to stay away from any style just because someone else says so.
Avoid scalping Avoid TA indicators, Gann, Elliott Wave, Fib, volume based, etc. Learn to trade price action. Beyond that, neither myself or others here on ET will spoon feed you profitable methods - we have bled through the nostrils getting where we are. You need to be willing to study on your own. You have to put in the screen time. But if you avoid what I said above, you will already be above most traders, who waste a lot of money and time learning the hard way.
true, investopedia says scalping is: trading strategy that attempts to make many profits on small price changes. Traders who implement this strategy will place anywhere from 10 to a couple hundred trades in a single day in the belief that small moves in stock price are easier to catch than large ones.
Bid-ask spreads? You have no concept of market structure and are in no position to provide advice to anyone on scalping. Be very weary of whom you take advice from on these boards. As far as the issue of scalping from home, I'll give you empirical proof. http://cognitivefun.net/test/1 You'll find that it takes about 200-250ms if you're quick to react. A typical ping to your server, if you're located in new york, should be 15ms. If you're actually at the trading firm, it should be 1ms. Figure the data takes an extra 14ms to get to you, and then when you respond it takes an extra 14ms. As you can see, that extra 28ms it takes you to react to changing market movements is in the normal range of variation of your reaction time, and approximately 10% your reaction time. So the issue is your own neurons, far more than the connection, if you're talking about home vs. work.
I actually did the test with my mouse AND my space bar the fastest was around 219ms with the mouse, with the space bar I was getting it as fast as 187ms, thanks as always for the good info
Cool test, My avg time was 474ms I do scalping and do pretty good at it although I have only been doing it less than a year. I have had 6 $1000.00 + days in the last month and a half... have also lost some money. Avg day is $200.00-$600.00 I am still learning...lots to learn.
Don't scalp. You will lose. Make points not ticks. 2-3 points risk with 6-12 point profit targets. 1-2 trades per day. Use S/R levels and pivots. The scalpers here are pros...you are not a pro.
Scalping is the good place to start. Don't go random at it - make educated guess based on the 25 tick/3 minute/15 minute charts. You'll also need level 2 data to get the unnecessary guess work out of the equation.