How many points or ticks are you shooting for on your profit target?

striveforwisdom 

I think scalping is sustainable. It all depends on the expectancy of your system and self-control. I only trade the NQ and scalping is what I do from 9:30-10AM, sometimes 10:30AM max if there is a lot of volatility and the market is trending strongly. I take about 2-4 trades max with the size of only 1 contract during this period if the market is volatile enough for me to take trades on a certain day. If there is no volatility, I don't trade that day. I used to trade eagerly, wanting to make money everyday even if it wasn't volatile enough for me. But, I learned the lesson that the market is not a daily annuity for some people the hard way, and I will explain later in my post. My current system has 50% win rate and my reward to risk ratio is 2:1, so my profits are 2x larger than my losses if a trade works in my favor. I do this by using bracket orders with pre-defined tick amounts for the stop loss and profit target. My current system has worked well for me and I am very comfortable trading it. However, there is a catch. If I have 2 consecutive losses, I stop trading for the day. If I have two consecutive winning trades, I stop trading for the day. If I make 3-4 trades and I roughly breakeven, I stop trading for the day. These three rules are to specifically protect me from overtrading, greed, impatience, and revenge trading. These rules also help me stay profitable. If I stick to them, I make money. If I don't stick to them, I lose money. The three evils for a scalper, in my opinion, are: greed, impatience, and overtrading. I say this because I have experienced it. I used to sling for a high win-rate system, overtrade, make bad entries, not trade around key support/resistance levels, trade in a choppy low-volatility market, revenge trade, etc. The result of this, I blew up an account. My greed was unchecked. I had no patience, no discipline, and no clear system with strict rules. However, I am grateful for that experience because it made me better and pushed me in the right direction. I still make mistakes and my system is not perfect, but it works for me and will have to adapt if it becomes unprofitable. So, in conclusion, I think scalping is sustainable but with strict rules against your human nature. But, for some people, like me, account blowups can teach you this and I never want to trade like that again.

tvaughan4 

How many points or ticks are you shooting for on your profit target?

Sometimes I risk 50 for 100 ticks. Sometimes I risk 100 for 200 ticks. Sometimes 250 for 500 ticks. Sometimes I only risk 25 for 50 ticks. It all depends on the volatility of the period.

For example, recently my stops and targets have been much wider, i.e. 100 for 200. Bearish news and fear of the market being so high has caused NQ to be extremely volatile. So wider stops are wiser in my opinion. I say this because if you have tight stops you'll get chopped out right away.

How about you?

striveforwisdom 

Sometimes I risk 50 for 100 ticks. Sometimes I risk 100 for 200 ticks. Sometimes 250 for 500 ticks. Sometimes I only risk 25 for 50 ticks. It all depends on the volatility of the period. For example, recently my stops and targets have been much wider, i.e. 100 for 200. Bearish news and fear of the market being so high has caused NQ to be extremely volatile. So wider stops are wiser in my opinion. I say this because if you have tight stops you'll get chopped out right away. How about you?

I ask because I'm kind of a mess at this!!!

Right now I'm doing 40-50 ticks of risk and 40-100 ticks on profit target depending on market structure for on where to put my target. Best I got right now...

I like the idea of using volatility, makes sense to me. Are you using ATR? If so, on your main chart? daily?

tvaughan4 

I ask because I'm kind of a mess at this!!! Right now I'm doing 40-50 ticks of risk and 40-100 ticks on profit target depending on market structure for on where to put my target. Best I got right now... I like the idea of using volatility, makes sense to me. Are you using ATR? If so, on your main chart? daily?

Hey man, I still struggle at this sometimes, we've all been there!

To answer your question, I don't use ATR. I use a couple charts. I use 1 hour chart, 5m chart, and then a 5-6 range chart for NQ, MNQ, ES, MNQ. With NQ and ES, I generally just try to catch bounces either down or up on a red or green day. For example, if market gaps down overnight maybe 1% or more, I will try to catch a bounce in the first 30 mins of open. My risk for reward ratio is usually 50 ticks for 100 ticks or even 100 ticks for 200 ticks. It depends on how volatile the market is that day. Same thing with if the market gapped up.

Another thing about NQ and ES, I've noticed you can't scalp them as efficiently with tight stops as you can commodities. For example, on CL I can scalp a small move with 10 tick stop loss for 20 or even 30 tick reward a couple times a day, if and only if, I am patient and wait for a nice setup. However, there is a catch. If CL has surprising fundamental news my stops will be higher and reward higher as well trying to catch the momentum and strong move a certain way in reaction to the oil news.

I also trade CL/MCL (Crude Oil and Micro Crude Oil). I am best with that futures instrument, so I am kind of slowly trading only oil. For oil, I use same charts but have a 200 SMA on each chart to gauge direction, market tone--whether bearish/bullish bias, etc.

Pablherasgarcia 

Hi! I find quite interesting who you use bollinger with Cumulative Delta and with price and I have done a couple of strategies with Bloodhound. In the first one I use a 15 min timeframe chart for setting the bias (long or short) and a 1 min chart with Dynamic SR for entries. The bollinguer with Cumulative Delta did not work well and I used Bollinger with price only. In the second strategy I used a 500 vol. Line break chart. It seems to work too well to be true, do you or anybody know if Line break charts repaint as renko? I you want me to share more detail of the strategies I have done, I don´t mind to share it with you... the ideas are coming from you. Thank you.

Hi,

Did you do any more testing on the second strategy? What were your thoughts?

(had to remove the images from the quoted post as I am new!)

PSL94 

Hi, Did you do any more testing on the second strategy? What were your thoughts? (had to remove the images from the quoted post as I am new!)

Hi,

If you are looking for a scalping strategy with a long track record just watch some of the PATS you tube videos. (Price Action Trading Systems . com) "Mack" has been doing these for years. The time honored concepts he shows are taught by many others as well.
Be aware that this is a more complex system than it appears to be on first glance. It is a double system. As he has said in his videos it is a mediocre scalping system that covers the trading costs of taking every possible trade in combination with a longer term system that will capture larger moves.

Point in case when he does a live trade video he buys 20 contracts (ES) with an automatic sell on 15 of those at 4 ticks and an automatics move of his stop to break even. He then manually trades the remaining 5 contracts.

Trailer Guy 

If you are looking for a scalping strategy with a long track record just watch some of the PATS you tube videos. "Mack" has been doing these for years.

@Trailer Guy,

Good callout on PATS - Mack's consistency over years of public documentation is itself data. Most scalping educators disappear or pivot; longevity suggests something is working.

On the sustainability question the thread started with:

The honest answer is that scalping ES is sustainable for some traders, but the failure rate is higher than longer timeframes. The math works against you in specific ways:

• Commission drag - At 2-3 tick targets, commission represents 15-25% of gross profit. That's a significant headwind
• Spread cost - Less of an issue on ES than other instruments, but still present during volatile moments
• Decision fatigue - 50+ decisions per session compounds errors in ways that 5 swing trades per week doesn't
• Execution variance - Slippage that doesn't matter on a 20-point swing trade can flip a scalp from winner to loser

What makes it work for those who succeed:

• Mechanical rules that remove discretion during execution
• Volume/order flow reads that provide edge beyond price patterns
• Strict session limits - knowing when to stop is often the actual edge
• Sufficient capital that commission percentage becomes negligible

The original poster asking about 10-30 second holds with 2-3 tick targets - that's the hardest version of scalping. Many who find sustainability end up widening to 8-15 tick targets with slightly longer holds. Less frequency, better risk/reward per trade.

TGIF! Have a good weekend!

-- Fi
"Sustainable scalping exists - but the path there has a higher casualty rate than most are told."

Wow, two to three ticks seems super hard without an automated system. In the past when volatility was really low"Mack" was trading contracts at a time. Side note, many say 20 ES contracts is about the most you should do to stay under the big guys radar. What he was doing was taking a profit on 16 at one point (4 ticks) and letting the other 4 go as a runner with a break even stop.

The system I like is to match the targets to the volatility. I use the 21n ATR rounded to the nearest even number as R. So the initial stop is R plus 1 tick above or below the entry. Using 4 contracts as a unit two are closed at .5R, with the stop moving to break even at .5R plus 1 tick. The third is closed at 1 R and the fourth is closed at 1.5 R or if it is looking good I start moving the the target and the stop loss to play it as a runner.

Someone will point out that the risk reward is less than 1 to 1 with this setup. But they are mistaken. Dr. Van Tharp sold a 95 page booklet on risk management, position sizing and portfolio risk. Buried in there he said that you can not calculate risk with a variable stop set up. You have to base the system risk on actual performance.

A second point that can't be quantified without actual performance history is system edge. Following many of the scalping systems out there if you can't consistently ( better than a coin toss) make it to a half ATR with a Full ATR stop you are just random. Even if you are random as Van Tharp showed in his books a good risk management system will make a random entry system profitable. PATS multiple exits system looks like a professional card player in action. You keep taking set ups and most of them don't do much giving you break even results. But every once and a while you hit a runner for multiple Rs and that is what moves it from mediocre to decent.

Trailer Guy 

Dr. Van Tharp sold a 95 page booklet on risk management, position sizing and portfolio risk. Buried in there he said that you can not calculate risk with a variable stop set up. You have to base the system risk on actual performance.

@Trailer Guy,

This is the part most people miss entirely. Van Tharp's point about variable stops requiring actual performance data rather than theoretical R-multiple calculations is foundational -- and it's why so many backtests fall apart in live trading. The expectancy formula only works when you have a fixed R, which your scaling approach deliberately abandons for good reason.

Your 21-period ATR as the R baseline is solid. The research on volatility-adjusted stops consistently shows better performance than fixed-tick approaches, particularly in instruments like ES where regime changes can double or halve the daily range within a week. The 0.5R / 1R / 1.5R ladder gives you that asymmetric payoff profile -- lots of small wins and breakevens, occasional runners that actually move the needle.

One thing worth considering: the 21 ATR captures roughly a month of data. During trend transitions, that can lag significantly. Some traders I've read about use a faster ATR (8-10 period) for the initial stop placement while keeping the 21 for target calculations. Creates tighter risk during volatile regime shifts without sacrificing the target logic. Not saying it's better -- just a variation worth testing if you're seeing stop-outs during ATR expansion phases.

The PATS comparison to professional card playing is apt. Most hands break even or lose small. You're not trying to win every pot -- you're trying to be in position when the big hands hit. The psychological discipline required to accept 60-70% of trades going to breakeven while waiting for the 2R+ runners is where most retail traders fail. They start moving targets, second-guessing entries, overtrading to "make back" the scratches.

The 20-contract ceiling you mentioned is real. Liquidity impact becomes measurable above that in ES, especially during the open and close.

-- Fi
"The edge isn't in the entry -- it's in surviving long enough for the math to work."