Moving to ladder trading from position trading.

timdug

timdug

Hi all,
I am recent to Elite trader. Joined mid 2017 and wanted to engage more with the community.
I started trading on spreads and long investment positions about 7 years ago while I was also running my own company. I loved it however I did not have the time to work intraday trading spread betting but was more comfortable taking long investment positions - knowing what I didnt know in order to be successful at day trading.

Trained with a great prop firm over a year ago and decided to go full time intraday trading. Using CGQ and a great broker I did pretty good. I was really enjoying trading and executing on the charts, but still had a lot to learn. Aggressively reading all books that I could find or that people mentioned were great for certain aspects of trading. Far beyond Reminiscence of a stock operator. The main thing is, is that I enjoyed and was trained to take position trades intraday, no overnights.

Anyways, I am now faced with moving to ladder trading and scalping as part of my next learning phase. I have never really seen scalping as something I wanted to do ie. grabbing 1,5,8 ticks on size or even no size but I have to look at this at this time for reasons I can not elaborate on.

I am hoping that I can reach out here and see if anyone has gone through this transition before and would like to share some thoughts? Key learnings from moving form position chart intraday trader to ladder trader.
I would say I am 50% fundamental/ 50% technical trader.

I am reading up on market profile and finding value at the moment.
Should I be looking to now trade the market profile on the ladder?
Thanks all in advance.
 
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I tried orderflow trading and found it very difficult. There is no fundamental analysis involved so you become 100% technical. You will be playing on the absolute bleeding edge of the market against HFT. Sure you can watch for imbalances, icebergs, pulling and stacking and other things, but thats where the problem is - you have to be watching all the time.
Also, there is a limit to the number of markets you can watch, you cannot just causally flick back and forth between multiple instruments once every 2 hours because ladder trading is a very demanding discipline and requires your full and undivided attention. Instruments need to be correlated in some way ie treasuries and bonds so thats another limitation.

I found it really hard to sit there and watch numbers flashing up and down. Some can, I couldn't and I am glad I ended that exploratory path early on.

Profiling and value areas is straight forward with the ladder but you can achieve exactly the same thing on a candle chart.
 
This has the earmarks of becoming an interesting and educational thread.

First, a warning: You're going rapidly down the "Rabit Hole". This is the track and evolution, generally intelligent folks have in trying to achieve trading success. Too much book learning, youtube and participating with others who may be trying to help -- but maybe just the blind leading the blind. Surprise, trading profitable is not difficult. So, use of lots of different approaches. such as market profile and poor understanding of the problems associated with profitable trading lead to pain, strain, and losses. The first step is to simply phrase the questions Simply. Well defined questions will produce the correct answers.

With that, I look forward to you and others making some valuable contributions...
 
almost all traders in broker houses are doing scalping and spreading.
they look at ladders to scalp.

going from position trading to scalping is big change.
u have to decide what suits you.

If you have been doing well in position trading, then there is little reason to change to scalping because both are the extremes of trading.
 
I was wondering if we can discuss right here instead on pm so that we can also take benefit from the outcome.
 
bublu said:
I was wondering if we can discuss right here instead on pm so that we can also take benefit from the outcome.
More...
I doubt you will get anything from those 2 Einsteins. I had a laugh out loud moment this morning - clown#1 thinks trading is"seemingly impossible" and clown#2 wants others to make "valuable contributions" whilst keeping his own opinion private. :D
 
I did find it strange that MCAD wants to PM chat. But okay.
@algofy eh, yeah, trading isnt for schoolgirls.
If you are not willing to
- open your mind
- dedicate yourself
- blow up and account
- keep your head
- climb the steep learning curve and everything else that comes with climbing a mountain to only see another bigger peak in front of you, then trading is not for you.


"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same"
If - Rudyard Kipling.
 
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