That is extracting 9.25 points out of the market in a narrow range market of 3 to 3.5 points when basically the market is going nowhere. And maintain a high win rate AND not give back paper profits on BE trade that went my way then against me. Of course, afterwards it Broke out to the upside and there I would have used a different tactic but this is how I traded this narrow range with 1 measley contract and made over $400.00 for less than 2 hours work. Now if a body were to say like get REALLY good at doing this on a SIM executing like a machine..trading size that doesn't matter if you lose then going live they might just do OK. Once they got really good and made some jack then bumping it up to say 5 contracts or 10 or averaging in up to 5 or 10 then some steaks could be bought instead of bologna (or so called round steak by some poor people) from the local supermarket. A trader doesn't have to swing for the fences to make money. Of course my broker got his 45.00 or so for a cheese sandwich. A win/win Mr T outlook on life LOL..NO ROFL..BETTER ROFLMAO. Just get really good at capturing small profits and up size and do it over and over while others are sitting on their haunches wringing the sweat out of their hands getting drunk on coffee and hoping..hoping..hoping.. for the homer instead of a base it. Believe me it is easier to get the direction right on 1 to 4 point moves than 30 or 40 point moves. These trades on different sizes RENDERED: 1 contract = $462.50 5 contracts = $2,312.50 10 contracts = $4,625.00 All within a 3.5 point range.
It is just as easy to get those small 1-4 point moves WRONG, every single time. On 10 contracts, those mistakes are very very costly. 1 contract = $-462.50 5 contracts = $-2,312.50 10 contracts = $-4,625.00
Of course one can have it go against them. That is what sl's are for. But if one has an edge just 60% then the losses or BE on the other 40% WON'T hinder the over all profit especially if one can have a high win rate. Anytime I enter a trade I know that I could be wrong 40% of the time. But I am willing to play the game. What kills scalpers is they don't take their profit when the market gives it to them in the form of paper profits. I maintain A high win rate cause I fight against greed. Traders Get greedy and in seconds or minutes the market whips back away from their paper profit and before they can whistle yankee doodle dandy they are stopped out with a loss. Especially in narrow ranges or narrow channels. Look at the trades I posted. I follow my rule of scalping 1 point on a 3.5 point range. I didn't try to follow a short down to bottom Of range or a long to the top. Greed is the undoing of many traders and then the gurus hammer it on with "let your winners run" .I say Hogwash. The algos can turn your runners onto a crawler before you can spit and into a turd before you can finish your coffee. I am a scalper and I grab quickly what the markets gives me. I don't listen to the gurus quotes that sound good but most of the time are BS. WHY do most traders lose? Listening and acting on that sort of crap. There is a tiny place for letting ones winners run. In a strong BO and too in what is called a small pb trend like in yesterday ES believe it was or the day before that. See bo's are about 10% of typical days price action. Rest of the time Pa in some sort of channel or range. I can't get greedy there.
See by taking a smaller profit I increase my win rate which is the most important metric imo but not in the guru's. Many of them foam at the mouth and say you can have a low win rate and do better than a high win rate by going for bigger moves. Problem is it is harder to assign probabilities of success on a 40 or 60 point move than a 3 or 4 point move. So I had rather up size on a smaller move instead of swinging for a homer. I say a trader can have a high win rate and do better than a low win rate. And like mr T. I enjoy winning over losing. Lol
Enjoy it while you can. I've known of people who do relatively well scalping (according to them...I've never seen audited returns). And I've seen automated programs that do well...until they don't. Once we have a bear market or regime change, their subjective "feel" of the market goes away as volatility, routine patterns, etc are disrupted. That's to be expected. If you could really scalp successfully most days (that's 200+ per year) you'd compound a few thousand into multi-millions quickly....but there are no retail scalpers on the Fortune 500. Put another way, people who could scalp successfully in 2004 were out of the game by 2008. Those who profited in 2008 were no longer making money by 2012, etc.
that is because you cannot scalp big positions......like 50 million...so how would you make enough to get into a fortune 500 but there is no trader who is in fortune 500 because in any sort of trading you cannot make a lot of money but you can make a good living out of it
trade yes but scalp no....there is limit in scalping to position size.....what it is, i do not know but obviously there is a limit in any market you cannot scalp in and out in size IMO