phinspections... I too am an intraday trader, YM and ER my primary instruments. Sorry mate, but Im calling your bluff! 1) A scalper will do 10x or more the number of daily trades. You are no scalper. 3 or 4 trades a day... you are merely a trader who takes a handful of intraday scalp trades. btw, the true define of a scalp is 1 to 3, maybe 4 pts per. But that's info only, nothing to do with me calling you out. 2) 1 to 40 contracts depending on what your system says? Cowpies! According to that, a 20 car trade would have less than a 50/50 system probablity, presuming no system and no trade has a 100% probability. No consistent trader has that kind of variance per trade. LOL 3) Your "Weekly Summary" is nonsense. On a single contract basis PERHAPS you extracted 152 and 196 YM pts respectivly. You just forgot to mention the -4 loser on 5/22 had 40 cars on followed by +18 with 2 cars on. Or the -12 loser on 5/15 had 15 cars on followed with +7 with 5 on. And that of course opens a whole other topic... You are showing us a 16:1 W/L ratio, or something like 93% accuracy. Why the hell would you EVER trade only 1 contract? A system defined max size of 40 cars (and an account able to support such) with 93% accuracy, -12 biggest loser, +18 biggest winner. Yea right, trade 1 car because the system says so. please. Osorico
sandygray66, between 1 and 20 cars on initial entry; An equal number of cars for adds, if there is an add on that trade. The trade results are based upon an initial entry and, sometimes, an add. If you see an add in the results, that means up to 40 cars are live. Justin222, the list of recommended reading for scalping is long, but I recommend none of them. I am not eluding to my system here, but to learn scalping, you need to watch price action and learn tape reading. The reason scalping presents much less risk most of the time is that your market exposure is limited to seconds or minutes per trade. AdvancedTrade, I am weaning off the ER2 lately, as my record shows, for the reason you stated. The ER2 moving to ICE is like futures on an FOMC or OEX day... patterns for the instrument change, and it may not behave as it has in the past. It's an unknown. My YM profit target is 7 points on the initial entry and 11 on the add, because that is about half of the normal range that I judged from the instrument. That is why profit for trades in my record are usually either 7 or 18 (7+11) points. Thanks for your note.
osorico, I define my scalping as short-term moves of 5 seconds to 5 minutes. Others have their own definition. Some call it short-term intraday trading. OK. Not sure where you get the 50/50 probability, that is not my experience and is contradictory to my profit record. If you are talking about slippage, my initial posts reveal my order types, mostly limits, so slippage is zero. The only place slippage may become an issue is with my adds, because I use MIT orders for add entries. If I get a bad fill on my add, I adjust my profit target. Regarding my weekly summaries, all is explained previously. Regarding my record, the 4 pt loser was on 5/20 not 5/22 and it was 10 cars only... same for the 12 pt loser on 5/15. Remember that each + indicates a profit (or loss) number per trade. To find how the record compares to yours, since that it the apparent goal, multiply the one or two contracts in each record trade by X to get your normal trading size. If you usually trade 20, and the record is for one contract, multiply by 20. If you normally trade 40 everytime (insane) then multiply by 40, or by 20 if the record indicates two cars traded. As previously explained, +7 indicates 7 points profit on an initial entry only, while +18 indicates an initial entry plus an add for that trade. If I should clarify something else, please be specific. And yes, there are market conditions when my system tells me to trade extremely light... that means just one or wait for the next train. Thanks for calling. Happy trading!
50/50 probability... if your system works on probability, and your system has a 40 car max, one could deduce each car is worth a 2.5% higher probabilty of success. So 20 cars in your system would have only 50/50 probability (actually less because there is no such thing as a guarantee in trading) Now then, I did not mention slippage at all. Or order types. But now that you've mentioned order types and MIT in particular... let's see here; if you are long, an MIT order for an add would be lower, meaning the price has moved against you. If you are short, an MIT would be higher. You have clearly stated your initial target is 7 pts. Hardly enough space (or time as you've also clearly stated your 3 or 4 trades last only 5 seconds to 5 minutes) for an MIT order with it's "unknown" fill price to provide price improvement on any consistent basis. And of course only cream of the crop traders adjust targets based on "bad" entry prices. LOL You are trying to talk the talk. And failing. So sorry. Osorico
pshin, I define my scalping technique as the least time in the market to make a consistent profit. Although the setup occurs throughout the day, I have found that the first 2 hours has the highest rate of return for me - and I prefer to bank the profit rather than giving it back in the afternoon. I've coded my strategy and tested various times of day - confirms my experience. Have you tried to code your strategy to backtest results?
Scalping is a trading style specializing in taking profits on small price changes, generally soon after a trade has been entered and has become profitable. It requires a trader to have a strict exit strategy because one large loss could eliminate the many small gains that the trader has worked to obtain. Having the right tools such as a live feed, a direct-access broker and the stamina to place many trades is required for this strategy to be successful. Scalping is based on an assumption that most futures contracts will complete the first stage of a movement (a contract will move in the desired direction for a brief time but where it goes from there is uncertain); some of the contracts will cease to advance and others will continue. A scalper intends to take as many small profits as possible, not allowing them to evaporate. Such an approach is the opposite of the "let your profits run" mindset, which attempts to optimize positive trading results by increasing the size of winning trades while letting others reverse. Scalping achieves results by increasing the number of winners and sacrificing the size of the wins. It's not uncommon for a trader of a longer time frame to achieve positive results by winning only half or even less of his or her trades - it's just that the wins are much bigger than the losses. A successful scalper, however, will have a much higher ratio of winning trades versus losing ones while keeping profits roughly equal or slightly bigger than losses. The main premises of scalping are: Lessened exposure limits risk - A brief exposure to the market diminishes the probability of running into an adverse event. Smaller moves are easier to obtain - A bigger imbalance of supply and demand is needed to warrant bigger price changes. It is easier for a contract to make a 5 tick move than it is to make a 50 tick move. Smaller moves are more frequent than larger ones - Even during relatively quiet markets there are many small movements that a scalper can exploit. Scalping can be adopted as a primary or supplementary style of trading. Primary Style: A pure scalper will make a number of trades a day, between five and 10 to hundreds. A scalper will mostly utilize one-minute charts since the time frame is small and he or she needs to see the setups as they shape up as close to real time as possible. Automatic instant execution of orders is crucial to a scalper, so a direct-access broker is the favored weapon of choice. scalping can be seen as a kind of method of risk management. Basically any trade can be turned into a scalp by taking a profit near the 1:1 risk/reward ratio. This means that the size of profit taken equals the size of a stop dictated by the setup. If, for instance, a trader enters his position for a scalp trade at 800 with an initial stop at 795, then the risk is 5 ticks; this means a 1:1 risk/reward ratio will be reached at 805. Scalp trades can be executed on both long and short sides. They can be done on breakouts or in range-bound trading. Many traditional chart formations, such as M and W formations can be used for scalping. The same can be said about technical indicators if a trader bases decisions on them. A trader enters a position on any setup or signal from his system, and closes the position as soon as the first exit signal is generated near the 1:1 risk/reward ratio Conclusion: Scalping can be very profitable for traders who decide to use it as a primary strategy or even those who use it to supplement other types of trading. Adhering to the strict exit strategy is the key to making small profits compound into large gains. The brief amount of market exposure and the frequency of small moves are key attributes that are the reasons why this strategy is popular among many types of traders.
Nice post. Time in the market i.e. exposure is extremely important to me - that's why I prefer to scalp than to sit staring at the screen for hours waiting for a trade to develop. About risk/reward, I've found it difficult to maintain a 1:1. I compensate by having a high win/loss ratio i.e. better than 85%. pshin, what are you using for your stoploss?
MIT orders, as already described, are used only for adds and, depending on the speed of the market, are usually filled 1 pt away from the last print. Not every trade gets an add. And, adds do not have a 7 pt profit target. I have answered your questions as nicely as possible, but your predilection toward troublemaking instead of testing the profit record is a waste of my time. With regret, you are done getting answers. Have a nice day, and good luck getting out of the sim.
AdvancedTrade, yes I backtested the system over a number of years, but most importantly over the last four contract cycles. Congratulations on coding your own system - not easy! Gargantuo, sounds like my system happens to match your scalping definition, with exception for larger profit targets in the same time frame. AdvancedTrade, my system suggests hard stop exits for each trade, by market conditions, usually around 20 pts.