You may belong to a select majority of special traders who at every point in time end up in positions on the wrong side of the market, and reverse when the market reverses. Best known remedy is to cease trading altogether and instead earn ze big bucks through coaching and psychology classes!
Lowering the time frame to trade more frequently for increased profitability, is actually destroying profitability..!! Aren't there safer ways to increase the trading frequency..? Go for more/other markets ...!!??
Try using range bar charts rather than time based charts and see if this provides a bit more of an edge?
I dumped the better part of a decade and six figures down the hole trying to compete in manual 'scalping' which was gross positive but lost due to fees. Needed a further 20% improvement in performance to get to even and a bigger bump to make anything worth talking about. And some of that time was doing decent volume (back in the day) with member rates. Much much harder in retail and unless you're doing 5k+ lots/day its hard to get the cost structures you need. My error was the drive/passion to compete and improve, losing sight of the goal which should have been profit not incremental improvement towards zero. Now undercapitalised - do you have any recommendations for a sub 40k account trying to get exposure to swing trading in multiple products with 2-5 day hold times? The vig in the futures options is horrible but I don't see another good risk control method which allows enough leverage to grow that account to something meaningful.
I would try your swing strategy with MICROS as you try to implement a solid/ strict money management.
Thanks for the reply, but I don't think this works. There aren't tight/liquid micro sized contracts in metals or energies; the CME index micros have absurd costs (works out to around 7 ticks per contract traded - if I could net 2.5 ticks / contract traded in a liquid product I'd be seriously wealthy in 18 months). If you're that good to overcome a 7 tick spread with relatively frequent trading you should borrow the money to trade minis rather than trade micros. I ain't that good. Some of the highest volume independent traders I've talked to or met manage 0.8-1.5 ticks/trade before costs. Maybe ETFs are more cost effective for smaller size.