Just wanted to make a survey on how scalpers cut their losses and how they take profit, do you use: 1. absolute terms to cut? if so how much? 2. %-tage terms to cut? what %? 3. chart pattern 4. others? pls specify. Thanks. Just trying to see how you experienced gurus make the best out of the spreads.
The system is simple: Figure out mental resistance and who's the axe. As soon as you see you're wrong - get the f*ck out. If you don't, you're looking at a several thousand dollar loss. In absolut figures: no more than 15 - 20 mills. If you trade 50,000 shares per side: don't loose more than a penny. 5,000 - pennny is ok 2,500 two pennies are fine
Limiting yourself to a penny or two loss per share is ridiculous and absurd.You'll get stopped out almost every time.On losing trades,I generally prefer no more than 1/2-1% of the stock price.If i'm focusing on a $30 stock,i look to lose no more than 30 cents and look to make at least 50 cents,sometimes less.
naztrader, then you're not scalping are you... as for wcomtrader, i'm not sure which planet he's on...but if he's serious, that's some interesting shit..
I'm not a scalper but I've experimented a few time. I agree that you have have go in and out rapidly and and 1-2 cent loss is large enough. But everyone has different views about what scalping is...
First of all, true scalping is trading at least over 10,000 shares. so, a penny loss on that is 100 bucks. If you trade for larger swings: you're trading momentum. And I am on the planet that makes $$$.
WCOMtrader, IMHO, you should qualify what you are saying, lest you confuse the inexperienced. AFAIK, the only way you can do this kind of trading is on stocks like WCOM, ENE, KM, LU [maybe] and other "penny" stocks that used to be seriously huge companies. To say that scalping this way on MSFT, or AMAT, or KLAC, or QLGC, is just nearly if not HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE. I know you said no such thing, but I think it is best to make it EXPLICIT. nitro
I agree, it would be impossible to scalp stocks like MSFT, but then again, you cannot scalp them. The higher movers, lower price (such as INTC) you can - whith less shares: i.e. 2000 - 6000. (which i wrote in my first post). However that is not true scalping already: its combining momentum experience (they move), with scalping techniques. By no way am I implying scalping 50 dollar stocks with 10,000 shares.. although that would be interesting lol.
Depends on your definition of scalp. I view scalping as anything under a one point move so you CAN scalp MSFT. Trading for one or two pennies with 10K shares of penny stock is scalping to the most extreme and it's a waste of time (to me). You just can't accurately see the move and any daytrader can screw things around if they have enough buying power.
lol. wtf? one whole freakin point? you would have to be the only person in the world that defines scalping that way - in which case your definition is useless. ("i just took a quick 70cent scalp on JDSU!" LOL) anyway, wcom's got his own special definition too - scalping means taking 10k share positions... never heard of that one either..