You are right. I'm a scalper. Not a super high freq scalper but a scalper nevertheless. An intraday trend for me is 30mins to 1 hour. Most of my trades are minutes to tens of minutes at most.
Made a lot of progress, but feel like there's so much more to go...
- Thread starter trader99
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You are right. I'm a scalper. Not a super high freq scalper but a scalper nevertheless. An intraday trend for me is 30mins to 1 hour. Most of my trades are minutes to tens of minutes at most.
yes, otherwise it wouldn't make sense, trend riding is for deep pockets and greedy people ha ha. we are happy with 3-5 points. and add multiple trades a day and with a good win/loss ratio we can be in green with quite a handsome reward. Only drawback we miss out on some nice juicy moves due to early exit, but that is part of the play. Be a coward when you scalp, and will live long to tell the tales.
Look at NG. Low margins. You can easily swing 5-10 lots get a few points per move. Adds up quickly. GC , NQ, etc. all juicy and good for scalping.
But one gotta NOT hesitate to get out and cut losses fast when you are wrong. Else you'll be in deep red fast. Especially with size.
I just got out of scalp and it's now zooming up. Oh well. Not chasing it. got my chunk of it.
I've trend trade with ETF holding for months. It was one of my best trades. I don't have the stomach for it anymore. But from purely numerical P&L perspective, I should do more of it since it was one of my best trades.
But I had a "view" of where that instrument should be going. Nowadays, I tried not to develop a view. Predictions can be costly. Just trade in and out. We'll see if that will get me to where I want by end of year.
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I think if I make myself hold onto a good intraday trend(30mins to 1 hour) with size then I will make really good coin. So far, that has not happened yet. I get out winners too soon. Still working on that.
%%Took a bloodbath today!! Something really strange about my psychology. It has nothing to do with trading. For normal trends I can ride. For supertrends, I automatically think countertrend. It has to reverse. It has to reverse. Fck! I get run over. Normal trend I can ride it up and down.
I thought by now I have gotten rid of my countertrend bad psychology. Nope. It rears its ugly head on supertrend days. I would go long and enjoy a nice ride. Then get out with nice profits. Then later I see it run up even more. Then I have this stupid idea let's go short. It has run its course. Then it proceeds to run even more than I get totally destroyed.
Sad sad day. After all these years, I thought I got rid of this disease. if I can't get rid of this thinking then I should stop trading period. Because I'm only 1 supertrend day from a huge losses.
Or just do nothing and watch. Make my profits on the initial part of the trend. Get out and sit through it. Don't trade at all. Until I can fix this psychology and get back in and go for an even bigger ride.
Of course, those losses were in futures. Fck it!
You are partly right, Trader 99.9595 a super trend does have to reverse;
but the/your fatal flaw is this= average superTrend bull market up trend is 3-4 years. BUT dont short automatic@ 3 or 4 years. A ten year bull Will Kill you for sure, dollar wise.
I've made more money shorting quicker but lost more quicker also; so trading smaller on short size makes more sense.
As far as selling early or late?? Depends on if you are collecting dividends or paying dividends; +profits + plans.Plenty of times i buy tech stocks or QQQ early, not this year. TQQQ is to wild for me with a summer jump/slump to the downside likely. I do have a problem with people gettting long trash like TSLA/trash,LOL. I dont have a problem with other$ long TQQQ , Up 75% YTD but no thanks, now.
,Yep.
Finally things are coming together! Yay! I traded futures and made money on all of my trades. Very nice profits for scalping. I could have made a lot more with more size and holding slightly longer with almost no risk.
It took me a long time to figure out what kind of trader I am and should be. With this experience in holding GC overnight(https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/gold.87604/page-15#post-4895244), I realized I can't really stomach the pullbacks on swing or position trading. And swing and position can and does make more money. But I rather have a smoother equity curve with smaller pullbacks and steady climbing up curve.
I don't mind being an intraday trader. There's enough action to to make tons of money for the account level I have. There's definitely no capacity issues. lol. I can trade multiple futures with size, options, and equities. Plenty of action to go around. And close everything before EOD. No need to swing trade to make a lot of money as I erroneously thought.
Now, before I said I hated futures and want to just focused on stocks. It has NOTHING to do with futures. It all has to do my strategy as OP (@Overnight and others have pointed out). I just needed a few tweaks to my strategy and thinking about markets.
Well, maybe I shouldn't trade NQ. I have not been able to consistently take money out of NQ. But for NG, GC, ZW, and CL(sometimes) I have no problem making money consistently. Finally positive on NG and ZW for the year. Once I corrected the errors of my ways, then money comes rushing in.
Over the weekend, I added one more edge to my playbook. Today I executed on that edge with just 1 lot. Ka-ching. On 5 lots it would have been substantial profits(at least for me).
And on the equity side, things are going well too. But today I ran out of margins! Thanks IB! IB margins are so high that when I trade futures it consumed a lot of my available margins. I have a Universal account that can trade both equity and futures and options. I would fall under the PDT rule thus it wouldn't allow me trade equities. So I missed out on even more good ideas and edges.
I have more ideas and edges than available capital(in this one account) to execute! Whoa! Love it! I have significantly more capital outside of IB accounts but I want to organically grow the account to make sure I have a consistent edge.
I've been playing more size now using the modified strategy. However, I think my next big leap forward will be to play with size AND holding longer on good trends. I mean even an extra 10-15mins longer on winners with size will be a significant jump in my P&L.
As @ironchef noted here(https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...et-is-going-to-end.334286/page-4#post-4894555), hopefully soon my trading will exceed my professional job salary.
Wish me luck!
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You could always divest some of your funds to a second broker for individual memes. Like for futures, AMP is a great choice, and they do FOP also on the buy call or covered put side IIRC.
And then there is OMM (Rob Morse), which has a very dynamic slew of options, if you have 25K to give them for your account.
you need luck to make money trading..but being in the right place at the right time should be the only luck you need..if you don't..or can't.. capitalize on the opportunity..then..the problem is you..and no amount of luck will make you money
I am happy to say I am just about done testing all the platforms..have spent many hours trying out most of AMP's top free platforms..the best was CQG Qtrader..with Motivewave coming in second
Qtrader was first due to Excel integration..but after many hours of testing excel integration setups I decided that it was really a waste of time..I was just about to sign up for Qtrader with AMP..and the only thing holding me up was that Qtrader only allowed 1 chart with 4 tabs..which can not be floated..this is a big big drawback for any type of trading..so I decided to have one final look at AMP Global..as I am in Europe
All I can say is that some things never change
.. I finally found what I was looking for..even covers my Dom requirement..which I don't really need now as I won't be using the DOM for placing trades..just for visualshave started account opening process with AMP Global..and they only have one platform to use..which is Metatrader5..but it has everything I need for the way I will be trading..and the MES commission is 37 cent per side..cheapest that can be found for small account for testing purposes
no hurry to trade ES yet..in fact..I will prob not trade it this year even..as AMP global also has all the other mini contracts available for trading such as Gold and EUR.USD
you are looking to make big..been there and done that..several times..now..I am looking to make small.. consistently..before I even try to make big
It’s good that you feel like you’ve made progress, but even though you’ve been in the market for years, there’s always something to learn that you need to change to be more effective in your business. For now go well, do not get too excited because the excess of confidence can lead you to make serious mistakes that you will regret and can lead you to leave the market, so take it all very calmly.
I've been very consistently profitable. What I realized recently is that I don't need to know how to trade everything profitably. I was all over the map. I traded stocks, options, futures and option futures(once). Crazy man. It was so distracting.
I've learned and gained a bunch of edges. But what kept me consistent was focusing on a handful of instruments. Apply the edges I know work with SIZE. Now profits roll in consistently.
Of course, I will always be learning and discovering new things about the markets and adding the new edges into my bags of tricks.
But the most important thing I learned is applying what I already know(which is a lot after all these years) with SIZE. Ka ching. Now making more money than my normal job(at least on a daily basis). I'll know at end of year if it ends up being more than my annual salary. hehe.
And the best trades are the most relaxed trades. Excitement is the enemy of good steady profits. In the old countertrend days I would try to fade a fast moving markets with disastrous results. It might be exciting to try to ride a wild swing. Sometimes it works and quick cash. Sometimes it doesn't and can hurt my P&L badly.
Now, I just apply my edges with size and good risk management. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Wish me luck on my continued journey of successful trading and learning.