The daily range has been dying. Here's the ND daytrading range (high - low) for the past few years: 2000 - 163 pts. 2001 - 78 2002 - 40 so far in 2003 - 29 Daytraders of Nasdaq stocks will have to shift to futures if this keeps up.
I don't think it's impossible but it's certainly very difficult. I was able to pull 6.25 points out of the ES today and have been profitable every day this week. However, last week my discipline and patience were terrible and I had my head handed to me on a silver platter. I think a good system and tons of discipline is key. Every time I enter a trade outside of my system I get killed.
Your going to have to adapt and make adjustments...once you do that... you'll no longer have that feeling that daytrading is becoming impossible. Instead...you'll be more focused...more disciplined. Also, try very hard to forget about yesterday years...if you don't...you'll more likely to try trading outside of your system in attempt to capture as many points as you use to... resulting in a poorer trading performance. NihabaAshi
Given that range is often a function of price, are these numbers consistent with the decrease in the price of the index? If I didn't say it correctly, I mean this... higher priced stox tend to have wider daily ranges than lower priced stox. As the value of the index has come down, is the daily range decrease consistent with that. I recognize that the index is lower and so is the daily range. But simply to say the index is about 1/4 what it was and so divide the daily range by four just seems too elementary for all that stuff you do.