yes
Beautiful Scalper
- Thread starter BeautifulStranger
- Start date
every single experienced trader/investor i have ever come across, in my experience since 1994, say categorically that scalping is the toughest way to trade.
this is undoubtedly because, of the small profits, you have to be very precise where you enter and exit.
but you can go for it................ if it suits your personality etc
yes ....
but because you have to learn all the rubbish first it is also the most expensive.
if you go this way make sure you plan and budget this amount
Been scalping over 25 years, no sense any more for my style to do 200-300 trades a day when I moved from manual to automation, always a give up. If I was to do over again, never of gone into scalping cause of the hours to learn how to do it, I gave up so much of life in general. Must eventually build up account to be able to do volume, concentrate on risk management as it is only entity you can control much of the time.
I learned how to do long term first in stocks, thought it was much easier, commodities were extremely tougher to learn without knowing programming, leverage alone can mess with one's mind. Took me seven years to get profitable and another seven years to understand well. It has made my longer term much better based on learning when not to take trades and turning many "breakeven plus lunch" trades into making little more. I cannot say for others nor use general statements of what works best or works worst, too many have closed minded thoughts of what one should not do. I have always worked towards of what masses cannot do, so that if I can't beat huge traders, can take profits from retail. So studying entries/exits of retail, to me made sense to learn.
I started in 1978, long term, this started as a hobby and most of life been retail cept last twelve years ramped up. Earned three degrees in Business, Science and Masters in Management, only used for personal uses as more physical type of employment made more sense of being paid to "work out", plus do not like working with people. Having Asperger's may have helped a good deal seeing pattern's that most can't initially see or lack of patterns. In my 20's my IQ was very high, but I often think now it was stumbling block as I relied too often of what made sense and markets are almost always illogical. I still manually trade to test out new systems, but I trade more of fear of losing knowledge as most new systems are rehashing of current models. You just learn eventually what works for you.
I would never recommend to others to scalp, over long haul more to be made long term/swing trading/hedged, reward to risk if far greater and risk tightly controlled whereas scalping R:R is in my case often inverse and show biggest losses when volatility is too high. My style is more of a grinder in controlled price action, so sweep up easier price action instead of trading wild and wolly.
Best to sim and triple three times before going live, best to know the answers before the question. Good luck to your new endeavor.
I learned how to do long term first in stocks, thought it was much easier, commodities were extremely tougher to learn without knowing programming, leverage alone can mess with one's mind. Took me seven years to get profitable and another seven years to understand well. It has made my longer term much better based on learning when not to take trades and turning many "breakeven plus lunch" trades into making little more. I cannot say for others nor use general statements of what works best or works worst, too many have closed minded thoughts of what one should not do. I have always worked towards of what masses cannot do, so that if I can't beat huge traders, can take profits from retail. So studying entries/exits of retail, to me made sense to learn.
I started in 1978, long term, this started as a hobby and most of life been retail cept last twelve years ramped up. Earned three degrees in Business, Science and Masters in Management, only used for personal uses as more physical type of employment made more sense of being paid to "work out", plus do not like working with people. Having Asperger's may have helped a good deal seeing pattern's that most can't initially see or lack of patterns. In my 20's my IQ was very high, but I often think now it was stumbling block as I relied too often of what made sense and markets are almost always illogical. I still manually trade to test out new systems, but I trade more of fear of losing knowledge as most new systems are rehashing of current models. You just learn eventually what works for you.
I would never recommend to others to scalp, over long haul more to be made long term/swing trading/hedged, reward to risk if far greater and risk tightly controlled whereas scalping R:R is in my case often inverse and show biggest losses when volatility is too high. My style is more of a grinder in controlled price action, so sweep up easier price action instead of trading wild and wolly.
Best to sim and triple three times before going live, best to know the answers before the question. Good luck to your new endeavor.
There is absolutely ZERO reason to not start with simulator trading. You are very likely to make mistakes that ain't even related to your read of the market, but related to for example use of your trading platform, submitting/managing trades (increasingly difficult the shorter the time frame), etc.
Tad slower than Scalper here 1 - 10min holds which in this market can get you 100pts, back doing okay, lockdown so no work and need the cash like most.
Only trade Index's, DAX and NQ so far this month, 3 trading days in, made enough to cover all my bills and food, 4 trades, no losers so far.
I wait for high probability setups, so don't get many trades or losers this way, it's when I get greedy and start trying to constantly make $$$'s is when it all turns to losers.
Easy market currently, spot a direction, join it, the strength gets good returns, no wibble to exit for a small profit right before it goes big and no whipsawing around like normal to hit your SL before take off.
So even if you crack this market, don't expect your trading to still work in normal conditions, which are hard damn work all the damn time.
Only trade Index's, DAX and NQ so far this month, 3 trading days in, made enough to cover all my bills and food, 4 trades, no losers so far.
I wait for high probability setups, so don't get many trades or losers this way, it's when I get greedy and start trying to constantly make $$$'s is when it all turns to losers.
Easy market currently, spot a direction, join it, the strength gets good returns, no wibble to exit for a small profit right before it goes big and no whipsawing around like normal to hit your SL before take off.
So even if you crack this market, don't expect your trading to still work in normal conditions, which are hard damn work all the damn time.
I like to clarify my definition of scalping. I can make money scalping for as little as a penny to 10-25 cents on size. This is my normal profit per share but on lots of share to make it work.
However, when a good opportunity comes I hold for dollar moves. So I do scalping and intraday trend trading.
But in my mind it's still all scalping in the sense that I'm not doing overnight or swing trading where people take many points out of the move.
However, when a good opportunity comes I hold for dollar moves. So I do scalping and intraday trend trading.
But in my mind it's still all scalping in the sense that I'm not doing overnight or swing trading where people take many points out of the move.
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Thank you for your detailed and thoughful reply.
Probably the best attitude for me to take is that I'll always be an neophyte, regardless of my experience and performance, to help me keep an open mind to new techniques and changes in market conditions.
Another consideration is to address my commitment level for this type of trading. Spending 5 years of time or more learning something without pay, or more likely, negative pay and forgoing earning "easy" money as most any job clearly makes the expectancy of scalping a negative expectation for new traders in general.
Perhaps even ultimately successful traders may look back and question if there would not have been a better path towards success and overall satisfaction with life choices.
Most of my trading experience is low frequency, although I have had some success in short term fades of extremes in order flow. Due to a recent "Ah ha" moment where answers to many of my long standing questions about trading were indirectly answered after reading another's post, I became inspired to test these new ideas.
Although it may not seem reasonable to most, my expectation for being becoming reliably profitable in scalping is 4 weeks, assuming my inspirational moment and newly gained knowledge have sufficient validity. I can handle a 4 week investment of time and my current earnings power can readily replace losses in risk capital. Even if this venture is not successful, if I add to my knowledge than can reduce bad entries for longer term positions, a net gain may still be realized with this new venture.
I want the pain or the potential pain of financial losses and posting negative results to help keep my trading discipline and wait for higher probability setups rather than getting bored and taking less quality, variance increasing setups.
If my expectation of profitably scalping is not met, I will move on and focus on other areas of trading such as swing trading options spreads.