POLL: Intraday trading.... Who scalps, who holds?

[profitseer]

Originally posted by gnome


LOL... That's a good one! I thought most anybody on ET would like to "mention" ridiculously high returns. (Shoot, I've even heard of people EXAGGERATING!)

becuase ROE only means something if you can do it over and over again on a larger and larger scale.

So if you can only scalp with a set amount and the rest is sitting in Tbills, then the true roe is what the whole wad is making combined, so your point is well taken.

the scalping part comes to 1% a day minimum and 6% is not unusual, and 10% is very good for me. And a day often means 8:30 start 10:30 end. Any where from 4 to 24 r/ts per contract per day. Average time in mkt per trade about 1 minute.

That's the good part

The bad part, tbill rates are not too high, so you spend a lot of time thinking up crazy systems.

 

[dafugginman]

trading for beer money???? please. that's pretty narrow minded, and naive to think that your way is the only way to make money, if you're making money. maybe 300-400k a year is beer money to you, but if so, please contact http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/. this may be an intervention.

profitseer is indeed correct. you can get an astronimcal % return on capital used 400-500%/year (several people in my office have this), but your total $$$ return potential is much, much, much lower.

the consistency with scalping over intraday trend trading is perhaps the best attribute. for example, i've only had two days in the last two months where i've loss more than $100, with my best day being +3400. BUT, it'll be very tough to for me to make more than 30k/month with my current strategies. intraday trend traders can make 50k in a day, but have terrible drawdowns. this is my first year, but i would like to gravitate at least some of my trading, if not all, to longer term day trading with some overnights since the dollar potential is so much higher.

 

[candletrader]

The fact that the highest % is currently for the third category does surprise me... as I mentioned in my opening comments, this latter category of person has, in my view, got a very interesting psychological make-up, somehow being capable of quickly resolving the diametrically opposed personality traits required in successful scalping versus successful trend trading.

 

[daniel_m]

candle, i picked your third category. although i'm not sure i'd really fit into any of them. other people probably feel the same way, hence the its popularity.

i aim for about 20c on naz stocks (you only listed NYSE!). this kind of gain can usually be achieved on what i'm gonna loosely call the "first thrust" of the stock after i enter the position. what i mean by that, is that the stock will fluctuate the customary 5-10 cents, but make a strong move in one direction whose momentum generally carries 15-20 towards my target.

sometimes (and with increasing frequency lately), based on my assessment of the conditions at the time (and based on how well i've been trading that day/week), i'll hold it for a larger gain, and sit through a retrace of 10-15 cents because i'm expecting further movement. when i'm right, i usually get another of those "thrusts" i spoke about and will usually exit there. on rare occasions i've held through a couple of these pullbacks and made some very nice gains (compared to my initial risk (about 10-15c) and profit target) of 70c-1.00. but, for the most part, i don't consider what i do to be "intraday trend trading" , but not pure scalping either.

i agree that scalping and trend-trading (sounds like that infomerical), as you've defined them, would require some differing psychological traits, but "diametrically opposed"? i'm not sure about that.
perhaps you could list for us the character traits you believe are possesed by both groups so that we can see exactly how they are in opposition.

 

[candletrader]

Originally posted by daniel_m
perhaps you could list for us the character traits you believe are possesed by both groups so that we can see exactly how they are in opposition.

Hi Daniel,

In my opening post to this thread, I listed some of the motivations for each of the styles e.g. does the trader require a high frequency of wins --- positive reinforcement, is the trader more concerned about letting the big move get away without him or about the current profit in a trade retracing to nothing, can the trader handle large drawdown periods, does the trader need continuous action or is the trader capable of standing on the sidelines for considerable lengths of time, etc etc.

Candle

 

[daniel_m]

oh yes, so you did. my mistake.

still, i don't think those qualities are diametrically opposed, more a case of variance in degree. in that case, i don't think it's too surprising that a lot of people would have a hybrid style, using more of each strategy as the conditions warrant. i think an approach like that is vastly superior to being locked into one frame of mind and only trading one style. i think it's known as 'adaptability'.

(of course, the scalper is never at want for opportunities to trade, but is limited by size, and by probably gaining less than a "trend trader" during trending periods.)