What are your thoughts on micro-scalping 10 and 20 second charts? I have found that my WIN-rate trading the ES-mini is way higher trading the 10sec and 20sec charts than trading the 5min/15min/60min charts... Maybe it's a fluke but it's been working since the beginning of the year. You have to be on point and your setups have to be fast as hell, but my win-rate is up 20%
it is very difficult to do for any reasonable length of time unless you have very good location for your trading server.
Your win rate being 20% higher is not going to matter. Your avg win to avg loss ratio will DROP by comparison. The higher your winning pct. the MORE contracts you will eventually have to trade to make up for that drop. Said another way, your average net profit per contract traded will decrease. This is high pressure trading. Your margin for error is super tight. Take the other person's advice. Trade the CL, not the ES. It is easier to win only 45-55% of the time. Get used to losing and you can even be great at the 30% winning level (adding to winners in the more volatile periods). When you figure out how to make $600 - $5000 in ONE trade by only risking $120 on the CL with 1 contract add-ons, you won't ever care about maintaining high winning pcts ever again. Let me say that again in question form...have you ever in your life thought about risking no more than a normal loss with 1 contract on the CL but building that trade into a very large winner? Hint: The LEAST desirable way to do this is to add on "significant" pullbacks. This is why you always hear, "I tried adding to a position and it didn't work for me". Instead, think...add...add...add, etc...dump...wait for pullback...add...add...add, etc...dump...wait for pullback. Be aggressive in price advancement LEGS only. You goal is not to add when YOU'RE the obvious sucker for doing so. "significant" = leverage caving in on you. Don't let a bar close against your trading direction take out a profit on 2 add-on positions. The risk of most of your profits going "poof!" is too high. You want the market to make it hard for you to add by consistently wanting to give you fill orders in your intended direction and disappointing the patient pullback waiters with unfilled ones. That being said, I still use LIMIT orders. If it's not filled, then it gets moved to the next add-on candidate area. You can do this on lower time frames by programming the PC to add for you, trail your stop, get you out of leverage cave-in and get you out on a specific money target being reached in a price add-on sequence. It's no secret (with experience) the max amount you can expect to make on a 20, 30, 40, etc. tick target (measured from the initial position). But all these things will happen too fast for you to do it all by hand during the heat of real-time (3-5 min chart, no problem though).