Sorry Trader Neal just saw your response to me. When the dealers frown upon scalping its more geared to the trader who arbitrages the delay or pricing on one feed to another and literally takes a pip or 2 difference all day long. They dont like that. And it happens in mere seconds. When I scalp in the minis(futures) I do the same in forex, its more or less of a 3 minute chart and using the price action and giving what the market gives me of s/r and things like the. So I am in for a few mintues to 10 or 15 mins or so. I keep my R:R 1.1 or better So they do not frown on that at all. And just so you know you do not need a lot of money with MB ecn, i think I looked and the minimum is 400 usd. They use a basis of mini lots. So this way if I want to standard lots , I can scale into a trade if I want with say 5 mini lots at a time. But I am not a big trader or anything just gotten off them demos and went live. I trade with 5 mini lots to a full lot and look for 20-30 pips, at a time. So you can start there with a little money if you want. I looked into IB as well but never liked them for me personally. I was trading at tradestation, but I do not like Gain. So I just still trade my futures at Tradestation for the charting software and use MB and gft for execution.
rsikit thanks for sharing the informations. activity following forex for about a year now and it's great to learn new thinks. i also trade with the price action but i never use stops. i sit there right by the screen lol. for some reason i don't trust the system to trigger orders and like the feeling of doing it manually. i hate staying in a trade too long even if the trend looks good. so i rely on watching the bid tone and the backing & filling of the pattern. of course i have my own techniques other than that but if the bid tone doesn't look good it means there's not good liquidity and/or the market is uncertain. i guess with an ecn there's better liquidity at all times which is another plus to scalping and getting good fills.
rsikit your a great source of information. i truelly appreciate your time to post.. i used gain as well and didn't like them either. i'll have to look into mb 400 is reasonable. i thought you had to have in the ball park of 10k for ecn's.. never used tradestation but heard alot a good about it. i'm really into my charting so that is a must. thanks for boosting my level of knowledge.
No problem Trader Neal, I do the same thing. I use PA to determine a good place to trade. So thats why I can keep the stops tight. I use a candle chart as well on the 3 min so I can see whats going on. I also do not put my stops in with a dealer just another safe guard so I dont tip my hand to the dealer. I use mental stops and hit it when it gets near. I stay away from news and just trade the reaction to it as it settles out.
The MB platform is basic and i like it becuase it is quick but there is no charting with that. Remember I am new to FX but not new to trading. I have researched fx for almost a year, there is so much confilicting info out there its hard to get a grasp on it. But I have gotten better at find out truths and finding out the myths of FX over the year. I still trade futures but am looking to make the full transistion soon.
news is the killer. i've lost more money watching news and listing to people trade recommendations than anything else. with the exception of the bank decisions i stay away from any news as part of my trade but i do keep up with it to gauge the economic state (ie contraction/expansion and other factors) and economic cycle. when tobacco and alcohol are the best performers you know the economy is on it's last legs. prings books are really good about cycles but there not good for spot trading. i still try to trade with the big trend but all that goes out the book when a move happens on the chart and there's real opportunity. 35min is my favorite time frame. i messed with shorter and longer time frames but i've found i can get a better feel from the 35 but i also watch other time frames. what ever works is the golden rule.
I agree I use the 3 min to enter and 15 min for trend. I also look for candle formations on the 30-35-40 min charts. I find they work best on the long term. So thats what I do in my gft account the longer ones and then MB for scalping
i'll get into futures one day. i'm going to start with gold and perhaps some others. i also like wheat but i might stay away from oil especially natural gas. i might look into gasoline though.. gas seems easier to follow because you can just watch the refiners. oil is very volatile/unpredictable at times and natural gas can be crazy. i think crude is the most manipulated. i've traded of and on for many years. i lost my personal business many years where i got framed into a bad contract so i had to hit the road for work for many years. my business was to become a corporation but everything folded on that bad deal. that's how i got my feet wet in the business world. it's easy to start a business but running it and protecting it are a whole new ball game.
I am with you I started trading 10 years ago and made a ton day trading equities and thought I was great and wanted to slow down and not trade everyday so I switched to trading naked options and basically went bankrupt and lost my business. So I had to start from scratch again with no money and slowly build back up and trade with better risk managment. So over the past few years thats what I have been doing. Basically slow and steady wins the race. I used to try and make thousands everyday as I did in stocks but this time I was using 1/20 the amount of money I had and that doesnt work well with money management so I basically had to change my trading personality. Now its much better and trying to take a peice of the market every day what ever it gives me I accept and do not try to push it to what I think I should make. Now I treat it like any other business venture. Staying power in the industry, money management , preservation of capital, good business decisions, and investing in my self. Better road to wealth!
the only way we learn is through our mistakes. if we repeat them that's when were not doing our homework. i wouldn't know what i know without failures. it can make one timid but we have to learn from them.