Congratulation on a profitable set of trades. I would be interested in the length of time for each trade. From reading ET posts on "scalping", the definition can wildly very from one trader to the next.
Thanks. I actually meant to note down "time to first scale-out" but I'll start doing that in my next update. Now that I think about it, "time to first scale-out" and "total time in trade" would probably be useful to include.
As for these specific trades, total time in trade was:
ZM 10 minutes
AAPL 3 minutes
NFLX 25 minutes
TSLA 3 minutes
Historically, my best trades are in the 1-6 minute range. Outside of leaving on small runners, positions lasting more than an hour are usually me stubbornly sitting in a loser (yikes). Maybe being compelled to include those in this journal will help me minimize them.
since the option spread is huge, how can you overcome the slippage? If you buy sitting on the bid, you will almost never get hit unless the underlying price comes down to hit you,thus you are immediately in a loss.
I plan on eventually moving to a platform that allows for more elegant control over entries (e.g. hotkey to limit at mid, or mid + 0.10, for example). But presently I do typically enter at the ask. The vast majority of my setups are breakout-/momentum-oriented, so I'm looking for a rapid (ideally within 3-10 seconds) spike that will let me scale out at least half, and see if the move is "real."
Of course, I try to avoid options with wide spreads. For me, something like 2.60 x 3.00 would be right on the border of acceptable. For better or for worse, this means passing up on a lot of moves in tickers that I'm watching (e.g. SHOP, LULU).
Knowing the ticker can help a lot, too. Sometimes an option on TWTR or SDC or something might be .41 x .47 for a few moments, but with experience, you'll be able to make an educated guess on whether that's about to narrow down to .52 x .54 on an up move.
