Any full time scalpers here? What stocks do you guys usually trade? How long untill you made a nice profit? What indices do you guys watch besides for time&sale/level2/QQQQ/composite? Howmany trades a day do you perform? Howmuch volume/day? I started trading (scalping) about 6 months ago and am still not profitable.. Everytime im about to get there, i get sucked back into the hole.. I would just like to get your input so i could see where i stand..
You need another 4-6 months experience imho. If you are breaking even/losing a little/making a little right now you are on the right track. Keeping your head above water while you learn is a good sign. At some point, if you constantly evaluate and learn from mistakes, you'll start to find profitability.
I used to make between 2 to 7 points a day scalping up to 200 times a day. Then lost my edge and traded even for 2 years. Closed my IB account 13 months ago and began working on my strategy. Still don't have what I would call a real edge. Maybe I'll never get it back but I'll keep on trying.
I scalp but am very cautious. You ask what we scalp. Why not tell us what you have been doing, the stock doesn't matter as long as it has the volume. What are you looking to gain, how many shares what time of day etc? What's the size of you account approximately? are you a daytrader or swing. You don't give us much to go on. don
You started scalping 6 months ago. Is that also the same time you ever traded?. I would just like to know, because I'm curious why you chose scalping. One thing to consider is that your trading should fit your life style. Dont think you can hold down a full time job and scalp on your luch break... probably not the best idea. good luck cm69
i was wondering if any scalpers out there scalp for only 0.5 - 1 bps? is catching profit so small a bad method? i guess it matters if you are scalping on trends or small volatility.
Well, as an answer to Donkell and cashmoney69 I scalp pretty much full time on the nasdaq, but like i explained before I havent been able to be green yet and so im working another job during nights untill i can manage to be profitable Yes, i started daytrading about 6 months ago.. before that i had a few investments and a few speculative stocks but they were not daytrades... Donkell, I trade usually high-volume stocks like sunw, siri, lvlt, cnxt, chtr, etc The problem i am running into is that my losses are always much bigger then my gains Some days i will net 150$/200$ other days i will lose 300$/400$ My net losses for the past 6 months arent much.. about 1.5k Ive come close to being flat before but im starting to believe im cursed.. every record daily gain brings me record daily losses
If this is true, thats fantastic! Only down 1.5k after 6 months is nothing in the grand scheme of things. If you are a full time trader, trading 5 days a week, 20 days a month for 6 months and you only find yourself down 1.5K you should really be proud of yourself. I think you'll find profitability in a month or two. Honestly, a lot can happen in one months span. Personally, after 6 months I had my first green month (couple hundred bucks). Next month after that I was flat. This made me worried. But the following month I was up 5K, the month after that 8K. Had about 5 months btw 5-10K and then had 10 straight months of +20K months. Things can really snowball in this business. So keep you head up, you seem to be almost there.
I have that problem too with losses and gains, but do you know what days, or what time of the day you make the most money?...200 a day works out to be... 4,000 a month..not bad. I guess you'd be bored after only 1 hr of trading though. cm69
i scalp dow minis.oil minis and spu minis,its kinda like rex grossman in the super bowl,you have to take what the mrkt gives you,never force the mrkt or you will give back your profits and your acct,if there isnt an obvious setup then dont trade,thats just as good as trading....trade the setups not the money...never trade for the money