<i>"If you use a technique of scaling into a trend market this method can do phenomenally well ... extremely well from a risk:reward stand point ... but you have to be really good at the game, I'm not good enough to do this consistently, not yet at least."</i>
It also takes the right market to make that tactic work.
Today I was short ER 688.50 and 686.50 once initial trade had stop pulled to 688.50 par. The only thing at risk was normal size capital loss AND unrealized gain from first leg short.
Market worked down to the gap fill, covered at 682.50 and out. Blended average on 2x size was 87.50 or equivalent of +10pts gain on normal size.
Afterwards, price action came back up all the way to 86.50, rolled over and chugged lower. There were other sell signals thru the day, but each one went no more than 4pts ~ 5pts before a big retrace.
That's a pattern difference between recent tapes and years' past. Before we would see an initial break lower, flagging = coiling sideways, break lower, retrace - coiling and then break lower or back upward.
Now we see consolidate, drop, retrace, sideways churn, drop, drop, retrace, drop, drop, retrace, drop and strong bounce. The tapes chug lower or higher most of the time, except for fueled ramps like two recent 400pt Dow squeezes.
Trying to average up = pyramid into bouncy markets results in too many stopouts of the whole position. Better to just enter in one spot, ride it out to exit and await next signal. The trend days still rise or fall from A to B, but the path traversed is much different than it used to be.
I'd imagine the various counter-trend bots are shoving tapes backwards all day long. Much more staccato now than ever before, which makes building a pyramid scale really tough. Never know when it's a pullback with trend or v-reversal flying in your face.
Quieter volatility makes higher leverage and pyramiding somewhat safer, if that's the right word. High volatility is a slam-bam game.
Same symbols, subtle to dramatically different behavior. Pity the people who try to scalp for ticks inside these rangy bars now.