So it occured to me that I'm a swing trading scalper

[Jones75]

I realized that even though I use patterns to swing trade off of momentum, I'm sort of a scalper. If I can make a decent profit quickly, I just take the money and run to the next setup. I don't hold for more, even though I'm using 3 month charts. Anyone else doing this?

SM

Not really sure what you're asking, but taking profits will never cause you to blow up.

If I'm holding stock that is substantially gyrating north, instead of taking profit immediately, I use delta neutral puts to lock in profit and milk it for all it's worth. If suddenly the setup won't do anything, collapse the whole trade, start counting the beans, and move on to the next trade.

 

[bone]

Not really sure what you're asking, but taking profits will never cause you to blow up.

For most mere mortals that is simply not the case, as they have clearly not put in the effort towards trade (money) management as you might have.

 

[fordewind]

I'm not sure what you're asking. I like to look at charts of at least 2 months because I can see a decent amount of past history, but I'm still zoomed in enough for my old eyes to see detail.

I thought you were using monthly chart for entry and took a quick profit.I confused you were using 3 month of data for decision making.

 

[Smart Money]

For most mere mortals that is simply not the case, as they have clearly not put in the effort towards trade (money) management as you might have.

Putting on my Morgan Freeman voice, "He's right you know". Profits are the amounts you lock into times the number of times you book a profit. Losses are the amounts you lose, times the number of times you take a loss. To be profitable, the Profits have to exceed the losses. Theoretically, you could books small profits 9 out of 10 times, but then take a loss 1 out of 10 times big enough to make you unprofitable over the long run. Sounds like you are hedging once you're solidly in the black. But I don't have access to that stuff.

I realized that I don't let my profits run like conventional wisdom dictates, but booking the profit after a solid upward move seems to work for me. I am wondering if this is because my predictions are more accurate after I take the trade and their accuracy erodes over time, so I lock in while I still know what's going on??? I've played with a trailing stop, but when price hits the top of the short term cycle's range, it just seems that I lose more money with the trailing stop because the short term cycle will reverse on me or the daily fluctuation stops me out lower than it should.

 

[Have a nice day trader]

When I went from trend trading daily charts to trading 1 min charts the biggest thing I had to get over was the impulse to hold a trade open. As soon as I started being happy with multiple small winners per day and forgot about the home runs I started making money. My average loss is still smaller than my average gain and my win rate is high enough to keep me in the black most days. At the end of the day if it's working for you don't fix it.

 

[eurusdzn]

I would bet you are not buying where classic TA and its lusers are .
Buying near resistance , right?
I would bet your winning percentage is high as well.

 

[Have a nice day trader]

I use support and resistance but more often to stop me from trading into something. What I do is all about momentum continuation. I'm slightly less worried about the overall trend and more interested in the immediate momentum. When everything lines up the way I want it I jump on and take some profit. I do have a reasonable winning percentage but I have a lot of scratch trades too. That's another thing I had to learn, better to lose a point or gain a point on a more or less scratched trade than to hang on "in case it goes my way". If my trades are about momentum continuation and the momentum doesn't continue straight away and take me into profit then why hold on to it? I'll give it half a minute or so but not much longer. I trade the Dax by the way so 1 point is not a lot to move, the spread is 0.8 (albeit commission free). My average loser is around 4 points and my average winner is about 6 points but my winning percentage seems to float around the 50 to 60 percent range.

 

[Smart Money]

I would bet you are not buying where classic TA and its lusers are .
Buying near resistance , right?
I would bet your winning percentage is high as well.

Yep. My approach is like Have a Nice Day's method, and since I play longer durations, my win percentage is scary high because I'm playing a longer time period so there is less "twitchiness" (reversals due to a larger counter trend). I do have to be patient because otherwise the "noise" will make me panic. The downside is that I can't do multiple trades per day since I'm swinging.

 

[Handle123]

I been trading DAX for a good long while but due to lack of volume has explosive moves, but I have switched to Euro Stoxx 50 cause of the volume is greater and less volatility. I Scalp as well, and unlike the ES where it is scalped 60 minutes, can scalp this all day long as seems less USA trades it. I use much larger risk of 14e mental stop, larger the risk, lower losing percentages. Almost all my entries are waiting for price to come back, same with Bund. I use 3 bars time stops and breakeven is always plus one tick, true breakeven considered a loss to me cause of fees. Can do 15 trades an hour and average down.

 

[Have a nice day trader]

I been trading DAX for a good long while but due to lack of volume has explosive moves, but I have switched to Euro Stoxx 50 cause of the volume is greater and less volatility. I Scalp as well, and unlike the ES where it is scalped 60 minutes, can scalp this all day long as seems less USA trades it. I use much larger risk of 14e mental stop, larger the risk, lower losing percentages. Almost all my entries are waiting for price to come back, same with Bund. I use 3 bars time stops and breakeven is always plus one tick, true breakeven considered a loss to me cause of fees. Can do 15 trades an hour and average down.

Sometimes dax moves nicely on the 1 min charts and sometimes it doesn't. The past week hasn't been particularly good for momentum traders if you were looking for moves with any kind of trend structure to it. I sat a lot of it out.

I don't see the advantage to less volatility? Most of these Euro based indices are pretty well correlated anyway aren't they, it's just all except the dax move hardly any points? If you want to grab points surely best to trade the one that moves more?

I don't know how you average these trades and how you know which ones will come back and which ones won't. I'd much rather be in and out quickly and if I'm wrong take a small loss. In my experience with the dax it can be in the nicest up trend and then decide it wants to be 100 points lower in a matter of minutes.