You can't put my trading into definitions, sometimes I go for 1 point,sometimes for 4 - 5 points and sometimes for 30 points, it's distributed all over the place If the market moves 30 points in a staight trending way, you go with that move, the key in all this are low-risk entries, all my losing trades are closed out with a maximum loss of 3 ticks,as fast as possible I move the stoploss to break-even. Another important thing is not limit yourself to a certain time frame, all your trades don't have to be under 2 minutes or whatever, BE FLEXIBLE I think Yoohoo understands me perfectly And leave that "boy" thing, I could probably be your father
Nick - you're right. I call it morphing - my term. When a buy is the right thing to do but within seconds smart money sellers hit the market and I reverse for a breakeven or few ticks profit and let the short run. Took me years to catch them do it. So I trade anything from a scalp up to sitting on a trade for a few hours, but entry is usually very, very close to the actual high or low and I need the smallest timeframe to catch it. So back to the weekend - I'm a scalper!
Pekelo, the real point is that each trade should be the result of a swing/wave that allows 10+ points (YM). Now some will end up as 2 points but some will be 60 points. If there were 40 trades then yes, no question, I'd be way out in front of buy and hold for an hour. If it's a trend day then the challenge is to identify it as soon as possible and run with it. But even at that there will be several swings to capitalise on. But on a choppy day I'll be real busy while a longer term trader is doing his head in.
For example ; good trend moves in the S&P tend to happen in the beginning and at the end of the session, adjust your style accordingly. During lunch hours more range trading, adjust your style to that... And so on...
Looks interesting as a thread on a method. I do not scalp primarily because of how money can be made in markets. I am oriented to optimizing money velocity of profits. The scalping, as pointed out in the thread, has a component that limits the tonnage of money being shipping from the market. The flow meter of money extracted by any particular strategy fluctuates majorly as a function of what is available to take out when the take out moment arrives. MP (market profile) is a good descriptor of this opportunity function. Optimizing making money is not a function of assessment of extremes particularly the ends of bars of given durations. I had trouble connecting the two illustrations. The latter showed 33 trades for 1200 bucks over some tme period. An average of a little less than two points per trade for a total of 61 points in the nasdaq index over some time period. The other illustration was a three day period. Are all data related to one contract? And what is the assumed margin for that contract? TIA.
jack, he's trading a fixed 5 or 7 contracts depending on what instrument he's trading, and he scales out thus your average will be out. As for the rest of the details, I've been so occupied with what I do that I have not been so interested in these. Partly because I work out my own margin and couldn't care less what anyone else works theirs out to be, and partly because all I have done is to... 1. look at how the entry/exit points match my own and 2. look at his total net profits for the day The returns have been excellent, the trades called live and I know whose style of trading it's based on and he is exceptional. When this is released I will let ET know and try for a free trial for members.
Quite an interesting thread fellas... speaking of Wikipedia here´s an article on the subject. Enjoy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping_(trading)