First problem: i don't know how much others make so i cannot be jealous. Secondly :Scalpers making money every day? Maybe 1% of the scalpers will make money every day. However, I must admit that at ET everybody and every system makes huge money, so perhaps you are right. Thirdly: do you know if i make money or not? If you use arguments that cannot be stated you sound like an idiot.
From what I have seen here on ET, scalpers are prop traders who have incredible deals, mostly per ticket deals. If you pay .005 per share, you have to be unbelievable to make money taking nickels. Take a look at the Trader P&L thread, some of those traders trade 500K shares a day, and make $1000 bucks or more, but they only pay a few hundred for the trades. If you trade at IB, the trades will cost you $2500. Very hard to make money unless you are paying .001 or less imo.
Successfull is linked with the abilities of the person who trades. If he is only able to enter the market and immediatelly place an order to make 1 tick, then he is successfull because he's not able to do better. Succes is reaching the highest level your are able to reach. So flipping burgers at Mc Donalds can be successfull for one person but at the same time it can be the ultimate failure for someone else. Understanding the market can be mesured by the time someone can stay in the market without being hurt. Scalping one tick requires no understanding of the market, but holding a position for 15 minutes or even several hours requires that you understand the market. You have to be sure about the direction of the market or your account will be wiped out in no time. Why does a scalper take small profits and lots of commissions to be paid if he would better understand the market? Wouldn't it be more logic that he would take 10 ticks in 1 trade instead of 10 ticks in 20 trades? If he would understand the market better he would trade less often and take bigger moves.
Scalping is more than one tick, and often involves having positions for many minutes, hey - even hours. In my eyes NO ONE can "be sure about the direction of the market". I take what the market give. You do not know ANYTHING about the chance of ANYONE elses acc. beeing wiped out, bc you do NOT know anything about the money mgmt. "If he would understand the market better he would trade less often and take bigger moves." SO, everyone who are scalping do not understand the market that good? You are doing the right stuff, and we are doing it wrong? lol You are quite funny. Thank you!
I'm talking in general. Look at the journal Trader P/L 2006. Lots of traders that make less than 0.001$ per share. SO, everyone who are scalping do not understand the market? You are doing the right stuff, and we are doing it wrong?[/QUOTE] No, they don't understand the market as well as traders that hold positions longer. They are not doing anything wrong; they do what they can. Or do scalpers prefer to take 0.00001$ per trade 100 times instead of taking 0.001$ in 1 trade? Do they prefer to trade 100 times the volume at 100 times the cost, to have a net profit that will be only a fraction of what it would be if traded in 1 time? That sounds funny to me.
I believe you are confusing two very different things. You are mixing success and potential. You stated that "Succes is reaching the highest level your are able to reach." That is pretty much the clear cut definition of potential. Two people can have two levels of success. I could get a 'B' on a test and you get an 'A'. We both have levels of success. However, someone with a substandard ability/IQ may only have the potential for a 'C'.
to put wether a scalper can make money i'll tell you little story. in 2000 a little company called freetrade came on the scene owned by amtd. i found it in june 2000 1 month after it opened. THEY CHARGED NO COMMISSIONS AND GOT PAID WITH ORDER FLOW. the fills were amazing as they had an autoexecution fill so it was instant wether the shares were there are not. so i started off doing 100 trades a day then 200,300,500,1000 trades a day. the idea was to keep the orders under 300 shares so they'd be filled autoexec(anything more was held by the mm and i got screwed) so i did some thinking. wha if i had 5 monitors and had 30 order tickets open ? so i did that and filled out 5 stocks every morning on those 30 tickets. what made this possible was the order stayed there after i clicked the go button so i could hit the backspace button and jsut change it to sell. so eery time the futures ran off a ottom i popped out 30 orders in 10 seconds. once i hit all 30 orders i hit the backspace button on all 30 windows and checked sell instead of buy. i only traded fat nyse stocks that lagged the futures so when the futures tunred up i had 30 seconds to get in before they moved. it wa slike shoioting ducks as ge,aol,mmm etc all lagged the futures so i could get 9k shares fast. what made this possible was the market was very volatile those years. anyway in mid 2001 freetrade changed to $1 a trade and tightened up the autoexec to only 100 shares. so i was ery depressed thinking game over thats 1 cent a share. WRONG in 2002 i had several 300k months after commissions. my commissions in 2002 WERE 300K. so the moral of the story is if the volatilty is there one can scalp huge and make big money. the trick is knowing when to not trade
one has to develop a higher strategy and mindset than to just be ruled by short term fluctuations.... I had a departmental head trader that showed me the crossover pattern on 2 SMA'a (simple moving averages) and told me to pace myself and watch for these regular, noticable patterns and then trade, but hold, not flip, flip, flip.... he made more money consistently, and more important, was able to return to the trading desk the next morning without the stress of the prior day..... you might consider a change in lattitude....
spike500: all traders, no matter what style they utilize, are subjected to the same obstacles that must be overcome like emotion, discipline, and money management in order to be successfull. how much a person "understands the market" by your standard is irrelevant. making money is whats important. so keep on believing your style is superior if you want to but keep it to yourself. otherwise you just make yourself look like a pompous asshole. i respect any trader who knows what it takes to make money and does it, regardless of style.