This is some hilarious stuff. Go take a look at a 5 min chart on the ES. If you can find areas of REAL support and resistance each day and look at what happens when those areas are taken out you get moves of at least 1.50+ points a high percentage of the time before it goes back to .50 vs the breakout price. As far as if someone wanted to execute this strategy? All you need is TT with their OCO plug-in. It's not rocket science. Once you are filled your target and stop orders are instantly placed in an OCO order. Finally, quit whining about HFTs. I find it pretty funny how people who could not hack it day trading (like yourself) always look to blame someone else for their failure. It's the HFTs It's the Floor brokers It's my software It's the specialist cry me a friggin river.....
How do readers know you have succeeded as a day trader? Your antagonistic bravado suggests you're either a regular dong or you're struggling somehow.
Actually the fact that I come on here and am antagonistic towards failed traders like yourself and others who whine and bitch it can't be done is a huge tell. Sorry you can't figure it out. Also the fact that I am constantly on here trying to pass on info I have acquired with my long experience trading and am encouraging others to get into trading is another huge tell. If I wasn't succeeding wouldn't I just come on here and post it can't be done, just as failed traders as yourself do ? If you look through my posts, the ones where there is good conversation about trading going on there is zero antagonism. It's when I see ridiculous whining, absolutely false statements, lying, etc is when I do call out people. There are only a select few who i give crap to, but they always deserve it. You fall into that category as all of your posts are basically saying trading can't be done. You failed at it so now you want to dissuade others. I learned one thing a long time ago about success in the trading world. Never get emotional, leave your ego at the door. If you were on a desk with me you wouldn't know whether I got killed that day or made a fortune. So to base any of my success on the mood of my posts on here is a waste of time amigo.
I don't think you're coming on here and telling your day trading method, most of your posts consist of bragging from what I just skimmed. I found one interesting one though, "Here's an idea. Quit scalping and do more of a swing trade. A lot of former scalpers I know adjusted and are doing great swing trading. Either change your ways/find new strategies, or get crushed by computers who are much faster....ergo...better scalpers. Whining and crying about it isnt going to help your P/L. #51 Mar 29, 2011R" I guess you've gotten better in the past four years and lowered your timeframe so you can now find 6-tick scalps with 2-tick SLs off the 5-minute chart while beating the faster and better computer scalpers? I look over months of ES backdata and usually see 1-minute bars breaking below a previous 1-min bar's low in a breakout before going higher.
In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. do you wanna know more?
Bragging? Really? Show me some posts where I brag. Would love to see them. I am very private as far as what I do and how I do. The only tooting of my own horn I do is mention I have a lot of experience and can pass on on things I have seen/learned. But to say that is bragging is a bit much. This is just a plain fact. My advice to that poster, who was a notorious whiner, was that if scalping doesn't work for you, change your ways. Try longer term trading. I traded around day traders/scalpers who started to not do well for various reasons. So they switched to a longer time frame and did better. The guys that were working the bid/offer and trading for a tick were definitely impacted by HFT. No doubt. They had to change. But that's not what this discussion is about. We are talking about a guy who wants to trade using a 2 tick stop and a 6 tick profit. When you trade breakouts and volatility kicks in/stops are hit you will get moves where this can be done. I think your problem is you are basing it off of 1 minute bars. To me that's too short a time frame. Again with the computers. Honestly, the HFT's have zero impact on my trading. At times I'm sure they push the market into my profit targets, at times they are pushing the market to my stop.I really pay zero attention to what they do. Trading is trading. Failed traders always find people or things to blame. HFt's....floor brokers....specialists......I have heard it all.
In general, high prob strats require tighter stops. Low prob strats require looser stops to realize the payoff. If you find the optimal parameter for the given strat and it remains robust, you make money.
You either changed in something you're doing or markets have changed that you've been trading. You need to determine which occurred and only then can you start looking for answers. 8 months of losing...you should have been on the sidelines (no trading) about 6 months ago until you determine if its the markets or you. I'm very bias against continuing to trade in hopes of trying to figure things out after more than a few months of losing.
The magic is the law of large numbers. When you figure how it caught up to you, then you have a deeper understanding of what the market is doing and whether your strat is still feasible. Back of the napkin factor analysis may be all that is required.
Very good post. The law of large number. Indeed, most of the strategy will work in certain time flame (e.g. breakout strategy will do well in trending and less "noisy" market, while fade strategy works better in chop market), but if you do back test on each of them separately in long term (law of large number), the result will looks like this: 1) No commission & slippage (unrealistic case) - almost break even 2) With commission & slippage (real world case) - P/L goes to south. The key to make money is to find a way to understand the market you are in - chop or trend. This is no different as the Options trader have to find a way to understand the market volatility that they are in.