Quote from John47:
I don't know, i barely even watch equities, but stuff like that changes alot. A year and a half ago and some times in between crude was a great indicator for ES, now something else is probably leading the way.
Something else you'll come to realize if you follow this far enough....prices matter less when your scalping in this way, you're looking at orders and trying to figure out whats real. If 1330.0 bid on 1000 comes in and for whatever reason you know its legit, you might be buying 30.25's just because you know its gonna take alot of selling to get through that order and before it does you'll probably be able to get off 30.50's. But you're damn sure not gonna miss the evens. Learning to lean on specific orders and stuff like that is what a mentor is vital for.
As well, to be successful your gonna have to forget the idea of a .25 stop. Forget stops they're not for scalping. You have to be good enough so that your losers are scratches, and taking a 1/4 tick loss is what happens when a trade goes absolutley dogshit. To do that you're gonna have to figure out how to price orders well...when is somebody offering something that you know is about to go bid hard? When is somebody on the bid and they need to buy bad enough that they're gonna have to start lifting the offer? Where have the resting orders been all day? Say we've been in a range all day suddenly ES gets sold a handle and everybody gets nervous, but your watching your indicators and know this selling is probably one guy/house getting out of something, cause nothing else moved...you gotta be the guy that takes the offer on the ES right as the rest of the locals are geeked out because you know w/ where the rest of the markets are, there's no way ES should be offered....and then if you lift the offer on 10 lots, it goes bid 20 times and thats it, you gotta be ready to hit the bid immediately for your scratch. Or if it goes bid a couple hundred times your leaning there waiting to sell higher.
There's ALOT involved in this style, thats why I say its incredibly difficult to learn on your own. Thats not even including the other overhead...fast enough execution, being able to call the floor/broker to get out of shit gone wrong fast....a great newsfeed....remember a few months ago it was a quiet afternoon and suddenly markets went crazy because maria bariromo said she had an exclusive with bernanke? How would you like to have 100 lots on and suddenly its in your face a few points and you don't even know why? Stuff like that is a scalpers nightmare. Just a week or two ago something came out about a fire in Philly and markets shook a bit cause we didn't know if it was terror related...I don't know how much es moved but even something that stupid, if it drops 1/2 and your long and don't know whats going on, your week is done.
Thaks for the enlightenment.
