Are you serious? :eek: You could go with VelocityFutures. They charge E 2.80, per round turn that is, and is in the "highest" brokerage bracket. E 2.80/RT vs E 20/RT, that's a saving of... 86%! And if you're worried about whether your money'd be safe with those guys - check this out man: http://www.velocityfutures.com/velocities_data_center.html Quote from the site: Complete Generator Backup Power Loss is not a concern, our generator is equipt with enough fuel for at least 2 weeks without power. 24 Hour Monitored Security Built for 24 Hour Trading on US and Foriegn Exchanges. Power and Security issues will not be any issue during times of increased market instability due to wartime or terrorist activities. Baruch, I am indeed worried you might not be able to take any losses with your rate... It's very dear indeed. I am already quite disadvantaged with my commissions right now... I'm thinking of going through a serious, non-introducing (self-clearing) broker, like GHCO. But, they want me to run Win NT etc for getting a VPN, which I don't necessarily like. Ah well. It doesn't have to be IB, Baruch. There are many brokers out there. There's also AdvancedFutures, Velocity, ProEdge, etc, there's plenty around - particularly for a low-volume trader, why not get a self-clearing one? And besides, every broker (even IB) is negotiable!
The problem is not my losses, but that I take my profits too soon. But I suppose you have the same problem?
You monitor on a very fast fractal; should you choose a slower one, you will notice right off that you have a "context" for what is going on. The single most important important thing you can add to your "medium loss" strategy is to handle the trend process. Market pace and volatility are the clues to focus upon. In trends, according to their pace (start with three ratings for simplicity), their either are or are not traverses within the trend. Get that straight as a first step, then do not exit on right to left traverses. This keeps you in the trend with a less than medium loss or no loss. The resumption of the trend occurs on the right to left travers where you make money. corrently this stuff is beyond your scope of vision as a consequence of your monitoring technique. This level of consideration is a parallel to the type of sacrifices you make to not get rich along the lines that yopu have to deal with in your selection of brokers and their rules that defeat a medium loss strategy. the above will do two things for you: cut losses that you now lock in; cut the number of trades you waste commissions on as well as improve your R/R ratio. Once you get the "context" and market pace in view, then you can go to work on volatility skill utilization. It will come up for you in about three weeks once you get market pace understood. Sometimes what you have to deal with is called a "hair trigger"
"The problem is not my losses, but that I take my profits too soon. But I suppose you have the same problem?" Here is how I solve that problem when I do have to follow a trade: ie. when the price is NOT trending 1. the 20ema in 2 mins is a very strong barrier to shorts and longs. Unless monetum is vertical always close longs when hitting from underside , shorts from tops 2. I manually trail stops in Button Trader, putting them below the last swing low (when long) / above high (when short) - I refer of course to the tick chart on BT... I also have a 3 ema colour coded in the 1 minute chart.. if its blue we are going up. red = down.. add all that togeher and you only have to worry about consolidations.. and we know dax always usually falters once just before the end of a trend, then continues a little and then dies... usually ending on a spike up or down.. (I'm still long as i write from 4052.. now 4064.. and ema is blue
Thanks, but my problem is that I don't like the market going against me when I have a nice profit. I go out - too early, because the markets then sometimes resumes its trend. I got a nice profit, but I could have got more, many times a lot more. OK, this is not a problem for scalpers, I suppose.
is that the DAX tends to move from Pivot to pivot and if it breaks through one strongly often stops and reverses to touch the pivot again before continuing on.. I tend to look to sell at pivots unless the monetum is high.. and use them as targets.. (others do as well
Just stopped trading. Lunchtime is it for me. Today was the longest DAX session ever for me, I traded all the way through from open (over 6 hours), with lots of tiny tick-trades and market chases, and just finished. Total RT: 216! :eek: About 3/4 of went to my broker, particularly during the slower post-open times. Lots of false moves and little action, ergo a low R:R ratio indeed. It just doesn't seem to pay well enough trading during the more quiet DAX hours, but they're very typically patterned, I think I could almost write a system for it and automate, maybe it would be worth it then. I like the action and volatility, though. I think I should really only focus on the D and US opening only, at least until more range comes back. IMO the best times are D open 2 hours and US open 2 hours, total 4h a day. Sounds like that's enough, anyway. As for Baruch and the questions, I'll get back to that soon.