Someone in the chatroom I hang out in is trading the orderbook like a madman and killing it. But so far I have not. This is what I do: I just use a fast small range bar HA candle chart with a 50 sma and an ATR "stop and reverse" with an RSI below. My new secret weapon of the last year was adding some volume analysis in the form of a cumulative delta line and volume delta candles. I scalp in the direction of my larger time-frame bias and carefully watch S & R levels. You can see some of my other posts for the larger time frame examples. The light blue line below is the CDelta. While it is WRONG often, I try to not fight it, knowing there are some bigger players hitting the bid or ask. This is the NQ, which I watch for my micro NQ trades, so that I am using full volume data to make decisions. Are you having success scalping Level 2 data?
sstheo,I'm keenly following your impressive performance so far,and want to know if you're still scalping for avg 2 points or going for at least 4 points as target profit.
Thanks. It's fun thinking about where this can go if I can keep it up and keep my risk under control. I actually don't like using the word "scalp" because I think of HFT, going for 1 to 2 ticks. I like to use the term "fast trades," because I really am going for at least $10 (20 ticks) on the MNQ or MYM as stated in my original rules. That micro $10 is like $100 on the regular E-minis. This being said, I have MANY trades that are only 7 ticks on the MNQ or MYM. And these $3.50 trades are really only about $3.00 net. Who in the heck does this? ME, that's who. But again, I am going for bigger trades. I would just would rather get $3 than $0 or -$5 (my quick mental stop) or -$20 (my fixed stop). After conversion to E-minis, each of these 7-tick scalps is the equivalent of $30 on the regular E-minis, and just 10 of those will get me $300 per day or $75k per year. Then if I trade 2 E-minis with 10 good small trades, that could be $150k. Then if 3 contracts . . . Well you get the picture. Its all about being able to slowly scale a working system without modifying it all the time. Stats: I just ran my stats again. I have had 272 trades in 25 trading days or 11 trades per day average. I have had 223 winners and 46 losers for an 83% win rate. And my average net trade counting all winners and losers is actually very close to $3.00 at $2.86 per trade. Since I have only done (mostly) single contract trades so far, this is $2.86 per contract. There are times now where I think a trend is forming, and I am more likely to let a trade run a bit longer than before, so this may help get my per-contract average up to and above $4.00.
Are you using the File>Import function in the PowerLanguage Editor menu bar? Or perhaps you are using the .Net version? And be sure to use the Compile > All Uncompiled function from the main menu.
Flash announcement. My wife persuaded me to withdraw $500 from the account earlier today. I had just crossed $1700 this morning, so it was not a problem, and AMP had the money in my account within just 4 hours. This is a setback for my scaling goal, but I will try to keep up the recent performance and make it a non-issue. My current balance is now around $1200, so I can still trade 2 contracts at a time. None of us lives in a vacuum, and I did not argue with my wife. She is a great supporter of my efforts, but felt we needed the money on the bills. We recently married off our second daughter and are still paying for the wedding!
sstheo,your methodology is working well for you,keep compounding geometrically and scale up accordingly, there is no need to change a winning team.
sstheo,I'm an old school,not a techie and all you said sound Greek to me.I can't even remember how I did the little that I last time.