Because it worked great when it worked. And I was chasing BO, based on 50 days of data. The famous ET saying: It works great until it doesn't work.
Frankly I am used to big swings in options, on the buy side, the premium I paid is the stop, i.e., all of the invested capital. To put things in perspective, a $2K a day loss, out of the trading capital of $50K is not that significant in the grand scheme of things. For options, daily swings could sometimes be 10-20% of $50K but I am aiming for a R:R of > 10 there.
@ironchef what are you testing? It looks like to me you are two things. 1) no SL 2) averaging down I ask because 99.999% I in my scalping I have a SL in place. And while I utilize averaging down that averaging down is not without proper context. Using no SLs and averaging down indiscriminately just to see if probing will pull a position out of a loss ...well both are recipes for disaster. In addition not being able to short means that trying to use in a SIM (Sim it takes a lot of practice to get good at this) trading concepts I discuss in my journal then a scalper is put in a position that reduces the effectiveness of the techniques. A scalper like myself WILL get it wrong at times and he has to have an "out" and an option to recover a loss quickly. If one can only trade long then he, after taking a loss, is hamstrung to WAITING for another long opportunity to come along to then size up to recover from a loss. If the general trend is down then that opportunity make not come for the rest of the session UNLESS one is really good a spotting and executing long multiple opportunities in downtrends AFTER allowing a previous SL to execute.
I was referring to the aspect of playing the market like a video game, taking frequent trades with no standard SL/TP and judging the effectiveness of the strategy by evaluating your trading results. Those results being such a small sample. What perplexity has to say: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/in-trading-what-is-the-distinc-1x7RQi7hRRq0ja8kxK2Ebg What Grok has to say: (more option centric) https://x.com/i/grok/share/aK0E3wRl9kKsvXs6RYrAe4GB1
LOL that famous ET saying is true for ALL strategies at all times and will always be true! A scalper has to protect his account and himself from himself. PRUDENT RISK MANAGEMENT. If I recall correctly there is an entire thread on ET dedicated to that one concept.
Scalping and big swings occurring over multiple days are two different things. There is a way to mix the two but it requires getting really good at scalping. From what you say you must be looking at BOs in a far different way than the intraday BOs that I discuss in my journal.
Yes, I was experimenting, changing some of your methods just to see how they might play out. On Friday for example, if I could short, I would have rode the short from near open to close with "averaging". That is from reading @Laissez Faire.