Quote from Handle123:
I have been day trading 25 years and mainly the S&P500/ES in these years. I have day traded couple dozen other markets as well and stocks. You have to understand that each market has it's own personality, some markets like Crude Oil, Russell and currencies are hard trending markets, some of the reasons are lower volume compared to ES. If a 1000 lot order comes into ES, it just gets swallowed up in a instant and rarely loses a tic, whereas you put a 1000 lot order in other markets, you will get several different prices, plus if your stop gets hit, can really hurt. The ES is a congestive market and when brokerages are in the market, they are hedging and much of the time they enter in congestion, when the market is trending hard, volume vanishes, and you can witness this on the Dome, watch the Dome 3 minutes before a huge report comes in, price levels on both sides are hugely reduced, smaller traders are generally only there.
If you stay in the "game" long enough, you develop methods that work well for the market you trade, one for congestion and others for running markets. Trendlines work better on some markets than others, crude oil works well on trendlines, whereas Nasdaq less so. I am basically a scalper, ave trade makes between 2-3 tics after fees, I average down on each trade, so even my breakeven trades will make money. I use no stops, and I never recommend anyone to scalp, just too tough for retail trader to do well. You have to often be happy with a one tic profit, but what the ES does have, is excellent volume.
There are some "patterns" that work well in any market, failures often do. Many trades do breakouts only to see market stops them out and then price go back into original direction, I laugh each time this happens, cause I am only getting in after the market has come back. The ES is known to break a previous pivot only to come back, (I mainly do counter-trend trades), these are called "Running stops" or "Traps", they happen both against trend and with trend. You have to have patience and don't just jump in when you get ansy. I don't test to find the biggest profit methods, I test to find the smallest losing %, if you not losing, the account is going up.
Thru the years I have developed four entry methods, mainly just two of them come up often 20-40 times a day, but where the profits comes in is developing 35 plus reasons of exits or when not to take the trade. I have an intense need to make something on each trade, very few trades for me ever make 10pts. You will find that good day traders are consistent when they make steady smaller profits, I simply don't know of anyone is consistently makes homerun trades and trades for a living.
Now I do trade very long term commodities and there is where the real money is made in trading as far as risk to reward.
