Hi SPT,
I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts about your questions and offer some ways to think about your questions from a different perspective.
Scalping 4 ticks in the ES with a 4 tick stop is possible, but I think you'll find over the long term your profits will be either so razor thin that it's not worth the effort or eaten up by commission and the occasional slippage when you have to cross the book on a stop out.
In essence, this 1 Risk: 1 Return approach (1R trades) makes for a method which requires you to have a better than 50% win rate. That's easy, right? Well, not so much.
Think about that 1:1R system in the extreme. 1 tick. What's your sense of the win rate? I propose to you that it's less than 50%. Here's why: when the -1 tick gets hit (even with a 1 lot) your Stop Loss will trigger. But on the upside, when your +1 tick gets hit, you have to wait in line for a fill. To fix that, you'd need to move your stop to 2 ticks. Now you have a 0.5R system. That will require a 75% win rate to break even before commissions and slippage. Not easy.
The 4 ticks wide scalp give you more room than that example in the extreme, but it's still not simply a matter of doing better than 50/50. You have to do much better than that. So this approach will rely a lot, if not entirely, on your ability to pick those 4 tick turns. In a fast ES market, like we've seen two weeks ago, that's going to fall into the noise as the book snaps back and forth.
How do you feel about your ability to pick those 4 tick turns? You are putting a lot of pressure on yourself for high accuracy as a trader. Why not give yourself a little bit of margin and look for higher R trades like a 1.5R (6T target, 4T stop) or even 2R?
Moving your stoploss to 2 ticks once the market has moved 2 ticks in your favor is like taking a new trade, or you could think of it like resetting your current trade. This one is a 2 tick target with a 4 tick stop (0.5R system again). Not good because you now need a 75% success rate to break even on that adjusted trade. Do you think that the 2 tick move in your direction makes it *much* more likely to continue 2 more? While it will depend on the current volatility, that's really the question you need to ask when you ratchet your stop.
Hello guys
I would like to scalp 4 ticks constantly on ES.
I always debated myself on what to do for stoploss.
Obviously, I will keep profit target at 4 ticks all the time.
Also I will keep stoploss at 4 ticks.
However, will it be more beneficial if I use trailstop instead of fixed 4 ticks stoploss?
Or maybe something like move to 2 tick stoploss once I gain 2 ticks?
I know that if I get into perfect setup then I do not have to worry about this but sometimes I gain 3 ticks and it goes against me and end up losing 4 ticks.
Opinions and recommendation?