My current system that I am practicing with has revealed something. It has a very high winrate because it only goes for 1 tick. The stop loss is always very close and is getting hit every 7-10 trades. But I have discovered that after a SL is hit to double my contracts to (2) to recover in time to reduce them back down to (1) for the next SL. I have a daily loss limit set globally at TradoVate for $250.00. Do any of you trade a metric like this and can you add anything? ES
Michael, Michael, Michael... are you out of your ever-loving mind? Trying to scalp the "noisy" ES for 1 tic? You should be risking "a few points, with the reasonable hope of making a dozen".
I don't know how to tell you "how". You need to study TA to find the places where "risking a few points to possilby make a dozen" applies. I can't imagine anyone being successful trying to scalp the ES 1 tick at a time. (I don't doubt that a couple of ETers will chime in, "I scalp for 1 tic and make money". For those who do, hope they include their "net return on capital". If you trade all year and end up + $200, you're only technically "making money".) Should be the same principles as trading FX like you formerly did.
in old days big sp when it was trading in the 200's - a female broker i had started making my stops a stop and reverse because i was just that bad at trading and it worked very successfully. then i started letting that influence my picks and it took me darn near 10 years to get back on track.
"Scalping for tics" would be hypertrading. Don't think that's the best approach. If you can learn to be a "day-swing" trader, you could have 1-2 good trade plays per day... maybe 6-10 if you tried to catch "most of the wiggles". Both are valid. I hate to admit I this missed play... not because I didn't understand it, but because I didn't bother to look... poor discipline on my part... didn't see it until the weekend, and "the horse was already out of the barn". BUT... The SP/ES essentially made a "matched high/double top" last Wednesday @ ~2845. You could have reasonably shorted it with "good TA reason", risking a few points, and be sitting on a 40+ point gainer right now. (Shoulda-woulda-coulda.... constant theme in all of our trading frustrations.)
Hello ElectricSavant, I do not want to discourage you, cause you may make money consistently and you may not. But trading for 1 tick seems a bit small. All you can do is sim test and see what happens.
I'd go for a few more ticks. I set limit orders at what I define as short term extremes that are likely to snap back a few ticks. You can then take half off after a few ticks and let the rest ride for longer, in the case of strong trend. Today: Reentering after SL is a good training exercise for the longer term. You just have to be disciplined enough not to snowball the losses when you get a strong trend against you. The daily loss limit may help you with that. My entries now are where I used to have my stops when I was a noob.