I trade mostly FESX, FDAX, NQ and ES, but also other contracts including the bund.
Wait, is this actually how people scalp?
- Thread starter 1a2b3cppp
- Start date
I trade mostly FESX, FDAX, NQ and ES, but also other contracts including the bund.
What about liquidity of FESX, FDAX. I guess lower than ES and NQ ?
On daX you trade the normal or the mini ?
It's a very bad idea to scalp for several ticks. The market will force you to maintain higher winning pcts to compensate for the worsening reward to risk ratios you WILL face. Stress factor is horrible if you do this with mouse clicks. There's exceptions to the rule but I wouldn't ever want to emulate a rare trading talent.
Why should there be a bad risk to reward ratio ? It is under your control how much you risk and how much you take. There is no "bad" rr-ratio nor a "good" winning percentage built in automatically the moment you start scalping. These elements are defined by the way YOU trade and improved by the experience YOU gain.
Horrible stress factor ? My trading today consisted of 40 minutes during the Eurex opening, and now only 15 minutes during the US markets opening. Thats not even 1 hour of concentrated focus on the screen, and much less time that I actually had positions in the market. Thats not that much of stress. Make your few ticks and go home. To me it seems much more stressfull to be a (intraday) swing/ position trader, who has to hope that his setup will at least once show up today and then sweat through the ups and downs of the market for several hours.
I am pretty sure I am not talented at all, and I dont think you have to be to become a consistently profitable (very) shortterm trader. All you have to do is give it a few months, give it a serious try, and then see if the improvements you made will be enough to make a good living with your trading.
I am discovering that it is very hard to find the winning percent needed for one-tick scalping in a can. If you do not use bracket orders there is a chance for improvement..hehe or more losses!
If I could just find that moment of entry! They say exits are the hardest...well I would be happy with one tick on a 90% winrate if I could just find it.
es
If I could just find that moment of entry! They say exits are the hardest...well I would be happy with one tick on a 90% winrate if I could just find it.
es
Dont be too frustrated after only and few days of trying this. Give yourself at least 3 months, better 6-12 months. During this time, really focus on what is happening right in front of you, in the DOM. Dont let yourself distract by indicators and other funny tools. After each month you should see some improvement, some "aha !" that you have not known before. Add up these "aha !"s for a few months and you should get enough feel and experience in the market(s) of your choice to be able to make somewhat consistent profits.
Dont search for secret patters, for answers how to for sure be able to grab 1 tick. This does not exist. The secret is you, what you see, what you learn, how you improve.
For practicing Tradovate is the best as they have no monthly chart fees. I do no know if they will extend my demo forever..so I might have to park 2k there to get sim charts for the life of my account.
ES
ES
Thanks for the productive post. Likely you could have said here is a reason why that is roughly what people did in the 90s and here is what you could do to improve what is being discussed in this thread.
You're feeling resistance in this thread for good reason. There have been two paradigm shifts that have made electronic scalping manually very difficult.
To literally "scalp" electronic markets these days manually, that is using a mouse and a DOM order window, is crazy hard. Not impossible, but crazy hard for a newb. You need to understand that quite literally thousands of traders who did it on the floor couldn't duplicate their success on the screen in the late 1990's.
But in the late '90's and early 2000's there were some traders who could do it quite well. The second paradigm shift came along in the very early 2000's at the advent of HF electronic trading. It became a pure speed game dominated by algorithms and high dollar ECN infrastructure.
First of all, you are going to have to be gifted at concentration and reading order flow. Second, you are going to have to a front end like TT X-Trader. Third, you are going to have to clear directly to an FCM - no IB's. And you're going to have to find an FCM with colocated servers at CME and whom will allow you access to those servers. Fourth, you are going to have to at least 100Mx100M fiber.
And you're still going to get your ass run over trying to scalp ES and 6E and CL...
I've seen guys clearing Advantage Futures in the CME building get their asses run over.
It is just too fast and too efficient on the bid/ask spread to successfully buy bids and sell offers.
There are other ways to trade markets where the independent has a better risk/reward skew than that.
Yes, there are exceptions. There are some experienced, talented traders who can get in and out of the markets like a mechanic. But they are like unicorns and white rhinos and hot blonds with brains.