About myself, I am a graduate from the University of Chicago and the LSE. Worked as a consultant for a few years before quitting to open my own account with a prop shop a few weeks ago in San Francisco. Just wanted to introduce myself, network and learn.
I read a lot of books on trading, and I am preparing to go live. On the first two weeks on demo, I was profitable every day except the last 2 days scalping VLO/TXU later in the day and going long on stocks near 52 weeks high in the morning. However, I noticed a huge problem on demo, my orders kept getting filled as long as my price hits the bid/ask which makes me doubt that the demo is a good indicator of success since I doubt I can get fill so quickly live. I also overtraded last week to practice getting in and out, but I started losing. Now I believe that I need to limit my trades when I go live and do just maybe 10 a day instead since most of my trades were just going sideways and not making a big move. Most of my trades were about 1 minute or less with the longest being only about 5 minutes.
I enter a position by looking for stocks near a 52 weeks high and look for pullbacks to buy. I shorted by guessing the peaks and this worked few times but I got caught with TXU and would have lost big on a live account. This shook me a bit, and I realize now that it was stupid to try to guess a direction. As a scalper, I don't have much of a strategy, my goal is to trade very small and then get out as soon as two ticks go against my direction. I try to limit my loss to .05 although this still seems high to me considering the commission is about less than .02 and I need to make that much just to break even on a trade. I am thinking of getting eSignal to use their stochastic indicators to help me id an entry point and slowly synthesize Herschey's method. However, at my level, I am thinking of putting this off as my impression is that I do better without indicators. My losses seem to stem from not having a clear entry strategy. Just by entering a position, I feel like the market is already against me. I thought of using S&P futures as leading indicator but I find this distracting. For VLO/TXU, I found $OIX useless. I look at intraday support and resistance, but mostly I go by the bid and ask and orders on NYSE/ECNs for support/direction. I dont look at the chart at all when I am in a position. I noticed there's possibly a delay on level 2, although I am not sure. I trade on the Anvil platform. My goal is to limit my losses at this point when I go live in a few weeks.
The reason I have posted is because my shop is still new although it is established elsewhere, so it does not have many experience trader on the floor to learn from. It's not much of a strategy, and I wish I had something better. It seems really hard to me to only be a scalper, but I don't know any other ways to start as I am having trouble finding a firm that will give me salary to learn and execute. I am still looking for a place, perhaps at a big bank or whereever I can learn a lot. I am willing to relocate (London, Chi, NY, etc) for the right opportunity. I chose equities because I feel it's the easiest to learn with lesser external influences than FX or commodities for example, but I am open to trading other markets. If anyone with experience has any comments/suggestions, please share or pm me I will be in NYC May 7th - 13th for some informational interviews and visit friends at MIT/Harvard later, but I will try to check the forum during the week. Thanks for reading and sorry if this was overly long.
Marbus
I read a lot of books on trading, and I am preparing to go live. On the first two weeks on demo, I was profitable every day except the last 2 days scalping VLO/TXU later in the day and going long on stocks near 52 weeks high in the morning. However, I noticed a huge problem on demo, my orders kept getting filled as long as my price hits the bid/ask which makes me doubt that the demo is a good indicator of success since I doubt I can get fill so quickly live. I also overtraded last week to practice getting in and out, but I started losing. Now I believe that I need to limit my trades when I go live and do just maybe 10 a day instead since most of my trades were just going sideways and not making a big move. Most of my trades were about 1 minute or less with the longest being only about 5 minutes.
I enter a position by looking for stocks near a 52 weeks high and look for pullbacks to buy. I shorted by guessing the peaks and this worked few times but I got caught with TXU and would have lost big on a live account. This shook me a bit, and I realize now that it was stupid to try to guess a direction. As a scalper, I don't have much of a strategy, my goal is to trade very small and then get out as soon as two ticks go against my direction. I try to limit my loss to .05 although this still seems high to me considering the commission is about less than .02 and I need to make that much just to break even on a trade. I am thinking of getting eSignal to use their stochastic indicators to help me id an entry point and slowly synthesize Herschey's method. However, at my level, I am thinking of putting this off as my impression is that I do better without indicators. My losses seem to stem from not having a clear entry strategy. Just by entering a position, I feel like the market is already against me. I thought of using S&P futures as leading indicator but I find this distracting. For VLO/TXU, I found $OIX useless. I look at intraday support and resistance, but mostly I go by the bid and ask and orders on NYSE/ECNs for support/direction. I dont look at the chart at all when I am in a position. I noticed there's possibly a delay on level 2, although I am not sure. I trade on the Anvil platform. My goal is to limit my losses at this point when I go live in a few weeks.
The reason I have posted is because my shop is still new although it is established elsewhere, so it does not have many experience trader on the floor to learn from. It's not much of a strategy, and I wish I had something better. It seems really hard to me to only be a scalper, but I don't know any other ways to start as I am having trouble finding a firm that will give me salary to learn and execute. I am still looking for a place, perhaps at a big bank or whereever I can learn a lot. I am willing to relocate (London, Chi, NY, etc) for the right opportunity. I chose equities because I feel it's the easiest to learn with lesser external influences than FX or commodities for example, but I am open to trading other markets. If anyone with experience has any comments/suggestions, please share or pm me I will be in NYC May 7th - 13th for some informational interviews and visit friends at MIT/Harvard later, but I will try to check the forum during the week. Thanks for reading and sorry if this was overly long.
Marbus
