No, I don't have a number. But I've been doing this for twenty years. As to your other questions, finding answers, even if they're only tentative, is what testing is all about. The chief question is whether or not you can stop trading long enough to search for them.
This is an excellent question. In post and hindsight, some trades just look too good to pass up. If I see this trade in real time and I understand what I need to see and how to act on it, I will be inclined to take it. But I would like to think that I will in no way be taking a trade that is based on anything other than a well thought out/tested plan. I'm certainly not trigger happy given the rough end to the week though. Thanks so much for your time tonight and I'm delighted that something really good came out of this messy discussion in my journal today.
NoDoji - when you are trading your scalping system with stocks (probably it varies) but what's your typical position hold times? Many Thanks!
I haven't traded stocks this way for a long time, but I'm pretty sure my holding time was less than an hour on most trades.
Just posting a chart here from the notes that 40D provided in Db's thread as I don't want to mess up his thread with my stuff. I no longer have access to tick charts with the free version of MultiCharts, but a 5 sec chart from IB will be good enough.
My most important update is that I spent quite a bit of time reading over the section from Db's book, section 23 on trading naked at the suggestion of emini. I never liked this section before because too many ranges overlapped. When I made careful notes from all of 40D's stuff, he too had lots of lines everywhere. But given his most recent posts, and reading all of Db's stuff, and putting it all together, it just seems like all that needs to be done is to look for trades at all of these potential areas of support or resistance. Then we either bounce off or penetrate, and then watch to see what happens at the next level. So I've got new stuff to look at, or rather, just in a different way, and also importantly, figuring out what to do about it. Most important of all, I'm still moving forward as you can see!
Charts are cumulative, and they culminate in whatever the market presents you at the time you're ready for your session. I draw weekly, daily, and hourly charts. I do not drag all of that forward to whatever it is I'm using to prepare for the day because I know it, and the more junk one has on his charts, the less likely he is to take the right trade. Or any trade. Therefore, before the open, the only thing I was looking at was 4246 and 4254. Unless and until price broke out of that, nothing else mattered. If and when it did, an hourly chart is a click away. I suspect that 40d had the same sort of focus. Without it, one dithers.
Thanks for this. A follow up question if I may. You mention 46, which is obviously the low for the overnight, and the bottom of that range we were in. But the high of 54 was already penetrated a half an hour before the open, and a new potential level of R seemed to be at 58. Now you made your post this morning about the range being quite clear, which at this point was at a high of 54, but given that we made it to 58, twice, right before the open, does this in any way change what you say about having your eyes on 46 and 54? If anything, given the way I draw my potential S and R lines, at the open we have a poke below that range of 46 to 54 and come right back up, as if that overnight range was now rejected.
I posted all that at 0845. Price then broke thru 54 but fell back into range (whether or not this pullback is a high probability long trade is determined by testing). Price then rose thru 54 again to 58. This might have been worth maybe three points. Price then fell back to 54 and held, but the open was less than 10m away. In the meantime, it hit 58 again. In any case, there was no long, unless you've found through your testing a way to enter parabolic moves or you entered at the open. The trade is the short at 72.