I trade stocks intraday because fear and greed show themselves more clearly and dramatically in "news" stocks and the momentum resulting is stronger then any index whose moves are tempered and momentum slowed by the mass involved. That and because I can't figure out a method for the minis so they must be silly and useless. Also I hate small things. Maybe if they were e-maxis.
Advantages: Emini's lead stocks, so to profitably trade the emini's you have to be really good; to trade stocks based on what the emini's do, you have a larger margin of error and a bigger theoretical edge. I tried the mini's and got whacked around like a pinata, I know there must be some successful guys doing it but I definitely am not one of them and don't know any personally either. And to the contrary, I still can at least pull out a decent living in stocks, nothing of course like the numbers a few years ago, but enough to more than pay the mortgage and cars and still have some fun money left over. But it also may be that I never had anyone show me how to trade the mini's.... I always believe that to make money consistently over the long-haul, you need a definable edge -- for the Spu traders on the floor trading the big Spus, they get the other side of customer orders, I see the edge there -- but I can't for the life of me find the edge in mini's... There must be one somewhere, someone enlighten me please...
I'm with you, TraderJim. I have yet to find, or hear from, an S&P trader who is booking the kind of profits I enioy from stocks. I've asked...even offered to trade system alerts...information, whatever. I may well be wrong, but I just don't see consistent profits in it that are equal to the risk of a serious market event if you are holding a huge position, even for minutes, in the S&P. But, there certainly is a lot of hype. So dear readers, TraderJimR and I are open to being enlightened by anyone who is making serious dollars trading the S&P, and who isn't scalping for pennies with their net worth leveraged to the hilt. Just doesn't sound like much fun. What are we missing here? [/B][/QUOTE]
My and i work in the same office, he scalps i use Don Miller. He trades both listed (NYSE) and Nasdaq stocks, but when he scalps, his minimum goal is 15 cents per trade, and he usaully gets it. The longest he is ever in a trade is 3 min, but usually he is in and out much faster. Still scalping, only he scalps for bigger gains. So far he is very successful and consistent.
I agree with you on the big cap stocks both NYSE and NASDAQ, so I've started experimenting with others that are not in the limelight as much and had a fair amount of success. Sometimes I go with a stock of the day and because of the very heavy volume the entries/exits are manageable such as NVDA last Friday or in lieu of that the Chinese internet stocks have been fun to trade-NTES or SOHU or SINA. All three average between 1-3 million shares/day and usually have good movement throughout the day. If trading listed, I try and stay away from the Dow stocks; those specialists with a couple of exceptions tend to be especially brutal.
Dow specs brutal, I wouldn't know first hand, but how could it be any other way? They are in everyones 'sights' so theres probably not a second during the day where they let thier guard down. The easy money is made picking off someone when they are not looking, if they're always looking, you are wasting your time.
I think "program scalping" refers to the automated market making being in OTC stocks done by the big firms now (Schwab, for instance). It is implied that computers instead of humans doing the trading is somehow superior and makes it tougher on the daytraders out there. Even saw in Active Trader where a Schwab person brags about how they got rid of their MMs and just "tweak the computer programs" when they need to make some extra cash. This ignores the fact that a daytrader can pick up on what these computers are doing and use that to their advantage. Don't believe the hype that automated trading is "more efficient" or even a good substitute for a good human trader.
Besides the MM there are several firms that use black box trading/scalping programs in Nasdaq stocks.
There is hope, and I think safe to say, new opportunities for the daytraders here, since one can learn from what these computers are doing and adjust to take advantage of it. It being more difficult to predict the actions of the "live" human traders making arbitrary decisions. I'm all for computers, maybe the NYSE will get into the 21st century and get rid of their specialist system, however I don't think this "automated MMing" in OTC stocks as successful as they hype it up to be. Trading is about constantly adjusting to current conditions. The market is going to adjust from whatever strategy is working, and a good live trader can make that adjustment quicker than a programmer tweaking the program will do.