Quote from coolweb:
1-3 tick Stop YM
Breakeven Stop moved asap once moved 3-5 ticks in my direction.
Smaller the stop , Higher the contracts.
Your winning % can't be much higher than 10% if you're using such tight stops. No matter how selective you are about taking signals, you must get shaken out of good trades all the time just do to market volatility. You must put on dozens of trades/day.
I've been trading the YM since its daily volume was < 15k contracts and the typical spread was 3 or 4 ticks. Now that the vol has picked up, maybe it is possible to trade as you do. But it takes an unusual personality to tolerate such a low winning %.
Winning % is a simple trade off no matter what kind of signals you're taking:
High winning % requires low ave win/ ave loss ratio (under 1.5 let's say)
Low winning % is only profitable with high ave win / ave loss ratio (over 3.0 let's say).
There is one thing that might clarify this issue:
Are you using "mental stops" or real stop orders?
If mental stops, that would explain everything.
As my eloquent friend Rover put it:
"Hard stops, hard stops, and nothing but. A mental stop is no stop at all."