I don't use 5 minutes or ma's. I look at the weekly/daily/hourly Strength to me would be a wide range bar or two in the opposite direction followed by a pause and or some sideways action. This is usually followed by a continuation. But not always
I posted the fundamentals but it was deleted by a bully mod cop. Perhaps he thought it was a slight on surf but it was not intended that way. Reserves are hitting historic levels and if they break oil will probably tank. Winter use is dropping and there is a move into natural gas that is further diminishing demand. Technically the really simple major MA - PA cross signals that a lot of money rightly or wrongly follows has given bearish signals so technically and fundamentally this was considered a heavy market. That doesn't mean you can't buck the general consensus and that is something I usually do, but if you do buck the broad market opinion, you need to have early evidence you are right or get out of the position before you get run over by something very big and nasty. Hanging in on an opinion is bad trading. Hanging in because the system says so is not the same as you have to play your system. If we hit the lows we might get a bounce before it goes lower, or if surf is right it will continue up. We might have a black swan but you can't try to play that or you'll go mad with all the noise about what might happen and when. Widen your stop surf, get an ice bucket and a few beers (no wine, your trading is not posh enough for that) and put your feet up as the next few hours could be very interesting
One more reason to go delta-neutral and long-side spreads/straddles. Worst case your loss on a trade is limited no matter what. Historically, if straddles applied, every trade called by Surf since end of 2012 would be profitable or not a severe loss at very least.
I tend to scalp, generally speaking I'm pretty good at it. When I do try to stay with a position moving in my favor I'll manual trail a stop. 1) I get out "too soon" all the time. 2) While sometimes annoying the truth is I'm not going to catch every move or all of the moves I do catch. Why lament over it? THAT is a significant factor for scalpers. In fact I'll admit to having gross positive years in the past that were net neg due to commissions. Provided you mind the math though and make sure winners are sufficient to over come them then who cares? I can't imagine holding on to the magnitude of losers you do though just to avoid $50 in commissions. You were down $47,000 at today's low. Is that worth saving nickels and dimes on commissions?
Just so everyone is aware, I don't support any type of deletion on the surfer alerts other than for personal attacks, or what I see as rude--or violations of TOS--- thanks for the post and info! but I am sticking with my plan .
Good points, Lucrum. I do much the same (basically scalp for a few ticks) and all the time exit "early" or get hit by early moved b/e stop. Also commissions are serious cost. But... who cares about all above if in the end you come out well ahead? We trade to make NET profit, not to count the pennies spent in the process. Any business has it's expenses, no biggie.