I agree patience and discipline are the keys. The setups are there everyday but unless you have these 2 factors in your trading plan you are history.
IMO the problem here is about trading ONE contract versus trading TWO (or multiple) contracts. if you enter a winning trade with only 1 contract, you finally get stopped out at some point, because you need to protect your gains (in other words, you are feeling "fear" of losing your profits). thats ok for 19 out of 20 trades. BUT there is 1 out of 20 trades, that would have moved far beyond your projection/imagination...you HAVE to think about a way, to get that profit. the main goal in trading is described quickly: the sum of losses coming out of your losing trades must be smaller than the sum of gains coming out of your winning trades... think about the possibilities you have to achieve this... happy trading
Originally posted by vulture Agree, but I also believe that trading in this micro time frames is a necessity for the under funded traders â they just canât afford to be wrong on the larger time frame â preservation of capital. The only chance they have of escaping that â1 minute trading hellâ is this slight possibility that the trading skill and the increase in capital will be obtained sufficiently enough in order to afford the larger time scale.
The average true range on the 5min frame tends to vary between 1.5 and 5 points. 3 points would be easily achievable, so why not set a profit target of 3 points? When up 3 or more pull up your stop to +3, and from there start trailing by 2 points. Occasionally you will hit a big move. Regards, Ditch
with small funds, i believe, you are better off by trading the smallest timeframe available with 2 or 3 contracts, than trading the highest timeframe possible with 1 contract. and you dont have to ask yourself that kind of question: is 950 the turn around or not...??? when you trade on 1min, you dont need any kind of preparation or analysis of historical charts for anticipating the market most probable course of action (and that kind of crap), you could stumble right in, day by day...
While there is a lot of noise on the one minute time frame I believe it is playable. I actually switch to the quote board when I think something is going to happen. There are patterns in the way the quotes cycle and I am getting better at reading them. You can see momentum building or fading. Timing is everything. If you miss the change you cant chase.
I just reread the thread last night. this is better than anything sitting on the shelves at Borders or Barnes and Noble. THANKS GUYS
I used to scalp intensely on the emini and I still do from time to time. However I find it extremely involving and i can consistently make money IF i limit the time doing this each day to 90-120 minutes max. One little 5 minute lasp of concentration can wipe out the whole days work.
Didn't even look till 12:30. No trades today, but here is the 5 minute chart. Going to the pool, then to the movies. All have a good weekend.
No trades today. Did not finish my expectancy spreadsheet, or rewrite my business plan over the weekend, so I did it today. Didn't even look till after 2:00. Net for the Day: 0 Net for the Week: 0 Net for the Month: +171.20