Great work QTrader20, Thank you for your post and your words of encouragement from someone in the day-to-day trading trenches try to get and stay consistent profitable. Yes, scalping has its pros and cons, but it makes the mental happy day to day from my experience.
I believe that part of learning curve for everyone is to struggle so one can identify where his weakness or strength lies. Some will give up while others continue to find ways to improve and you are one of those in 2nd group. I've seen you are improving over the years and about to trade better and better. My judgment is based on your stats you showed on ET months ago and then a few days ago.
Hello QTrader20, A few questions regarding your scalping: 1. Why do you lean more towards scalping vs intraday swing trading? 2. If your RR<1 (Risk greater than reward per trade) in your scalp trading, how do you calm your mental from the traditional trading standards or "keep your reward greater than risk". Thanks,
Thanks QTrader20, One thing along my journey, that others traders may not understand is the time commitment to study and trial and error all for free. Free meaning no money is made during this process. It is sort of like research and development project.
1. Less exposure to market moving news or unexpected events like Trump tweets while scalping and therefore less risks, especially true for someone who is a momentum scalper like me who loves to follow HFTs. 2. Unless you make random trades everyday like a gambler, you don't mind to keep Risk:Reward @ 2:1 (yes, risk is twice more than reward) if you're trading high probability scalp setups. That's because you make money most of the time as soon as you enter your trades (an example here is in my blotter, you can see that there were 21 consecutive winners which is equivalent to 6 to 7 days of trading.) It usually takes less than 2-day to recover previous losing trade which is why I keep risk twice bigger than reward. However, I'm still a human who makes mistakes sometimes especially when I'm directional biased. I'll enforce double stop loss rule @ 3:1.
For those who are under locked down due to quarantine, if you are interested to watch some videos to learn some basics about quant stuff, please pm me and I'll send you the link. p.s. what you see from the screenshot is just one fifth of the video materials archived on there from someone in quantopian community.
I can't edit my first post on main page anymore and so, I'd like to address few things to newbies who'd like to consider getting into this business because I don't want to mislead you guys. 1. Trading is a very risky business. It's not like what those click-and-bait youtubers/twitters trying to tell you how easy it's to make few hundred bucks a day. 2. If you really have passions and still wanted to get into this game, you must sacrifice many years of learning, researching and data mining. Let alone times it consumes forward testing and refining your strategies if you ever find one. In my case, it took me almost 13-year right out of college with degrees in math and etc... 3. You must have a tough mentality to endure years of failure, frustration, loneliness and loss of money. In my case, I was lucky to have an understanding gf and then wife all along. I had a boring job working as an IT guy in financial industry for years which gave me tons of time during those years to learn the craft. Then, I was lucky to buy a very cheap house a decade ago and sold it with more than 5x profits few years ago due to suddenly booming housing market in my region. With extra money sitting in banks to earn high interest rates to pay living expenses, I were able to keep my mind sharp and clear to trade as a full-time trader. Those are the things that I can think of at this moment. My advise is to think very carefully before you make your decision.