Just to respond to the overtrading remarks on their own. I realize I made more trades today than is "wise". However, I was aware of it the entire time and chose to continue not with a mindset of revenge. I was actually rather relaxed as I went, all things considered. I was trading to learn and learning to trade. Right or wrong, time will tell. I do know I am not going to learn to scalp any time soon by just making three or four trades a day.
I trade most of the time without looking at the volume. My trading charts are simple. They have 20 period moving averages and 200 perioud moving averages. I look at 7 charts all the time on one 19" monitor. I watch the 2minute, 5, 15, 30, 60, 120, and Daily charts. I watch them act in concert. If I were to take a 5 minute setup without knowing first what the 15min and 30min and 60min charts were doing....I think I would be getting killed too. Take a seriously look at knowing what the slightly larger time frames are doing than just the one you are trading on.
Agreed. Very backwards. I had 1:3 instead of 3:1. That is a big problem with my initial plan to pick up two ticks at a time. That obviously was a bad idea, because it is nearly impossible to give an wiggle room to the trade and accomplish even a 1:1 ratio. Though, I had honestly hoped to have a very high win/loss trade ratio to partly offset such bad stop (lack of) system. True, buy I can't live on 10K a year. I would be perfectly happy with two points a day if I can scale up to at least five contracts. So maybe my goal should initially be to just make two points with one contract. Good philosophy, which I agree with. I just need to come up with my definition of the best setups. Hopefully time and experience will render the answers.
Hmmm.... My 5 minute bar chart has a grey background with red and green candles. The tick line chart has a red and green backround, where it is green above a 2000 tick moving average and red below the 2000 tick moving average. Maybe that's my problem? I would respectfully disagree. I do have what I consider to be a good understanding of the markets. I new it would be choppy today, hence the scalping and the ignoring of my possible trend system. I would agree that my knowledge (or maybe better, "feeling") of scalping itself seems to be weak. Early on I had considered not playing today, but the urge to get some practice did convince me to give it a shot.[/B][/QUOTE]
At one time I did have a lot of charts like that, but for pure scalping I would think it would be way to distracting. I would love to trade a pure tick chart and nothing else. That is my ideal. Will it happen? We shall see.
Nice color selection - so that's not the problem. But just a thought - scalping works best in a trending market. Always has, always will...
Somewhat on-topic... would you trade a system that wins 80% of the time, loses 20% of the time.... but winners are 2 points, losses are 5 points. If the percentages are correct it's profitable, but what about the streak of 3 or 4 losses in a row? (or only 1 or 2 wins in 7 or 8 trades) Lastly, a poster above stated that after the gap opening the last 3 days it was a range bound market. Isn't this just hind-sight? Couldn't the markets just as easily started to sell off today (or prior days) after the gap opening, thus creating a downward trending market after the gap opening? Thanks for answering the above.