For those of you who know of successful scalpers I have three questions: 1) How many trades a day would you say they make? 2) Do they trade a system and if so is it automated and did they design it themselves? 3) Any hints as to what triggers entries, exits? Thanks.
500K/ year....You are out of your mind. I know hundreds of traders, and no one, I mean no one is making that kind of money. Get your facts straight before you open your mouth. In 2000 the best scalpers I knew including myself made multiple 7 fig. In todays market, the best scalpers are lucky to make 150K. Most are in the 30 to 60K range that are actually profitable. This is a very different market with moves for no reason against the futures. Taking 15 cents is a great trade. Not like the old days where a 1/4 pissed you off, and wasn't worth the time. Trading as a whole has progressively gotten worse and worse. Everyone I talk to (guys who run some of the biggest and best know shops in the country) have been saying for the past 2 1/2 years, "It'll get better soon". I just hope it levels off soon. Even the OO guys are having a tough go of it. Bandit
that's who you know, i know of a couple people who make 500k+, you make it seem like it's impossible to make that kind of money, i've seen it done, literally, i also own my own mortgage broker firm and i refinanced their homes in Chicago, i've seen their returns, the ones i know of make that kind of money. just because the people you know don't make that kind of money, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Bandit: Why are you so bitter? First of all there are a few , and I mean very few that actually make a good living doing this. The rest are liars! There are actually people that "swing" trade positions and day trade/scalp in between. The good old SOES BANDIT days died the day decimals came out. No reason to be so cold! PS: I guess the "Seven Figures" you made was pissed away learning how to trade in a Decimal environment without IPOS or order flow to run ahead of! ebo
"PS: I guess the "Seven Figures" you made was pissed away learning how to trade in a Decimal environment without IPOS or order flow to run ahead of!" Hey Ebo, show me your returns, and I'll show you mine. You seem to be very upset at the old Bandits, did you have your ahole handed to you by us back in the day, or did you miss it all and are mad about it? BTW I kept it ALL, and still make a decent living today. Hey BLB078 Why are you even on this board? You don't even trade full time! So you saw some returns from years ago. Trading has changed....that is a fact. If you want to post something of fact, trade full time first. bandit
who the hell made you the trading king? i do trade full time, i own my business from my home, if someone doesn't trade full time, they can't be on this board, just because you pissed away your money, doesn't mean you have to take out you anger on other people..and the returns i saw were current, since they refinanced their homes this year.
blb talk about trading... I am not being an ahole here. Seriously I know traders all over the country, and none are making great money right now. We don't see the big moves we used to see, that is a fact. If you know some traders that are killing it, great. I just have not heard of anyone trading stocks making it big, and here is why... In the past follow though was a given. The futures would make three handle moves all day long. You could get short and make a point quickly. In todays market, we never get follow through. Look at today. One good move down, then nothing. Flat to up for the rest of the day, then a small move down at close. It is to hard to take that big position that will make you 1 to 2K in this market, because you almost always just have that one move. The fact is that it is so difficult to just make money in this market, that pumping up a new trader to say you can make 500K in this environment is setting them up to over trade. In my 13 years of experience in this business, a realistic trading goal of 100K is attainable, but trading has to get alot better before we see follow though intraday. BTW I did keep it all. bandit
i wasn't "pumping" noone, he asked what the good traders make, i told him about a couple people i know of, i never said making that kind of money was easy, he wanted to know about the people at the top, so i told him.
I'm completely with bandit on this one. I read what you said and you need to get more info. First of all, you are bringing up what traders made from last year. The market has changed significantly in the last few months, forget last year. Guys in our office were making at least 10k a month last year. There were 2 or 3 that were actually making about 300k a year. Taking this month into account, all of that has changed. It is very tough. The top guy is making 250k a year, maybe at this point. This month has plained sucked for scalping. With the specialists realizing that their days are numbered, they are much tougher. There are many more new traders doing scalping (thanks WorldCo) that have no clue what they are doing and only mess up trades. All of that is fine, but the volume is not there to make up for it. Whether it changes or not, no one knows, but there definitely is no room for even more scalpers.