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Well I met my goal of making money in March as a one lot warrior. This chart is my cumulative profit and doesn't take into account my commissions. For those interested, with commissions I broke even but according to Steenbarger if you can trade well enough to cover costs that is one of the stages of expertise, so I will take it.
I took 34 Trades in the 14 trading days I placed trades. I think there was one or two in there that I did not get filled on a trade. So lets say 17 trading days I was watching the DOM for at least 3 focused hours. That is about 50 hours of trading time. I could easily double that as I would have the DOM up for another 3 hours on average watching it half hazardly in case any blatant opportunities presented themselves, though usually the action I like has died off in the first three hours if it were to occur at all.
34 trades is not a lot then. But I can honestly say I was poised to take as many as I could justify clicking the mouse for from my perspective, within that 3 hour focused window per day. Most of the action in March seemed a lot slower than average if you were to compare the accumulative volume to previous months. This last week gone presented the most opportunity but I was the least focused, being a bit sick and exhausted from a few days away on business. Wednesday and Thursday alone I felt I could have taken double digits away each day if I had acted on my instincts. I even bought bottom tick on Wednesday would you believe, and settled for one tick when it didn't move up within a few minutes haha. Whoops.
Its a weird sensation though, as if these trades were taken mechanically I would probably be high fiving myself, after having a good profitable sample set of trades. My experience is no where near that, as I feel that though I might very well be turning the corner in my trading, I could just as easily have had a round of luck, and an 8 tick loser could be just around the corner putting me back in the red. But still a sample set is a sample set - that 8 tick loser could have occurred anytime in the month, and I even started down for the first 2 days and ended up, so all in all, I'll take the result as a good indication that my discretionary trading in the Bund has potential.
I have now watched the Bund and associated products in the Jigsaw DOM for a few hours pretty much every trading day since January 7. I still do not fully trust my intuition, and that seems to be my biggest weakness at present. The more internal dialogue / thinking that goes on at the moment I am 'feeling' like taking a trade, the more I hesitate and either don't take the trade, or balls the trade up as it takes off, or miss that trade and take a stupid one in its place out of fear of missing out. It seems I would be much better just taking the trades instead of waiting for that microsecond more bit of information. Just take the trade and get out if it then ends up looking wrong, which from experience is not that common if I am playing in the right areas at steps in the profile etc. I can say with certainty that I feel I could have taken many many more ticks out of the market than I did this month, and that is my plan for April.
I made a video of my first good trade/s this month. Been a string of small losses I am afraid. I mainly haven't been able to get a read on the Bund. The daily ranges suggest opportunities, but the ticks behaving differently to what I am used to trading. Could be the all time highs, thickening things up with Stocks and Bonds at or near record territory. Surely somethings exciting is going to play out?
I am toying with the idea of starting to learn a bit of Market Profiling. I have watched the FT71 webinars, and skimmed through Mind Over Markets ie noticed all the technical pictures. Seems a useful framework however I am still committed to scalping over position day trading.
It really is simple - get the edge on a trade in an area they look like supporting the market and some more, and hope like hell it goes on in your favour. Get out if someone smacks it down, or doesn't go anywhere after a few minutes, and definitely don't let 2 or 3 ticks profit turn into a loss. The skill then is constantly monitoring the risk / reward possibilities.. and managing it appropriately. I am only entering this game now after always previously being more concerned with taking small quick profits. I justified it for confidence reasons, but its obviously that resourceful mindset at play.
April I am focusing on hitting in at market if a move looks imminent and on the verge of leaving me behind - instead of being tight and waiting for a limit fill. Also managing trades instead of my take a quick profit flaw It helps me to relax a bit more in a trade to focus on where I will get out if the market turns against me - but this is not the right mindset - should be focusing on the current action and where it can potentially go. Much easier to focus on the known than the unknown but thus is trading.
Good question. Feels like I haven't given it enough time to make it work just yet. Though the urge is certainly there to try something else - can't say I have come across any argument anywhere as to why position day trade over scalping. Is it much easier? Would be more time consuming... Is it more profitable?
No BS is what got me hooked after researching what some prop shops are doing. The prop shop I was looking into has No BS as prerequisite material.
I get the feeling that market profile is the pro's framework for position day trading. Price Action another option. Pros and Cons for each I suppose. I guess thats where mentorship comes in which is hard to come by if you're going at it alone without paying big $$$ for.
Ok dont want to over complicate this question, assume trader is profitable and manages Risk to Reward etc, we all know a scalper is usually 1to1 or 2to1, guys trading bigger time frames are 1to3 or 1to4. Only referring to day traders not holding for days, …
In the end, if you are profitable then you don't need anyone else to tell you what to do. If you are unprofitable, I would encourage you to not fall into the scalping mentality.
Thanks Big Mike. I am not one to worry about limiting risk so much.. other than then need to do it to come out on top. The idea of trading size for smaller moves has me thinking I can trade a few hours a day of maximum focus as my trading plan instead of watching a full session for day positions. I would have to be nocturnal to pull that off here in Oz.
There are numerous arguments for and against, but briefly, for position day trading over scalping:
1) Focus required for both, but scalping for ticks requires extreme focus on minutiae, and can be very wearisome and stressful (just as day trading is more stressful than longer term position trading!)
2) Commissions and spread are a huge percentage of overall cost for scalping and can turn a gross profit into a net breakeven/loss when it's all said and done
3) see #2
I also tended to gravitate towards scalping when I first began to trade futures, and there's nothing inherently bad about it, it's just a very tough game, largely because of #2 above. I often use my scalping tendencies to pinpoint good entry points for larger swings, but I have to find a balance so that I don't get too zoomed in sometimes.
Can you share the results of some of your research? I'd be interested in this if you can briefly detail your findings and overall conclusions.
A friend is in their inhouse training right now and sounds like they are manually spreading treasuries, and spreading is not in the No BS stuff. As JG says - 'You're limiting your winners' - well pretty sure he said that.
Am sure a bunch of prop firms trade in a bunch of different ways. Think I heard that scalpers don't get hired in Prop Shops in the US.
Brings me to a major point actually - what is scalping?
IMO - The No BS stuff is not blind scalping, clicking away relying purely on your statistical edge. You get in where you perceive size is trading, and then try hold on until you see size trading again in the opposite direction.. ideally. I have seen JG hold onto trades for half an hour. If a smooth trend presists after your entry you would hold on for many ticks. No limiting to time in the market, or price moves, its all about size trading tipping you to a change in price action. Also obviously depends on the market action for the day whether its grinding or momentum is happening.
In a sense the way the No BS stuff uses the volume profile, a quality Scalp would be similar to a volume profile day trader entering then exiting at their first target - with smooth trend between those two points. Just no scaling in or out. Position trading maybe refers more to scaling in and out for the day session. No BS scalping would enter where size is trading, exit where size is trading. If the move isn't over then the same indications could set you up for another 'scalp'.
I have seen Scalping courses / videos where the trader has a dig purely on price action, or interaction of price with some indicator, and no trade management. Scalping is not just scalping I would love to scalp 20 ticks in the Bund even if it meant holding for an hour. Can I call that scalping?
I traded like an absolute chomp yesterday and payed the consequences for it. Thinking back to the day before I had already lost site of the goal of trading size with a down day. Instead of closely monitoring for size I think I have been trading the profile only with overconfidence, thinking that I know best what Bund is going to do next. I took trades at extremes in the profile, playing breakouts etc, without really seeing size in my favor first. 10 ticks down, and a massive downward sloping P&L this month has me ready to jump ship and take up another form of trading.
But I won't. Going to ease off this evening and watch the split profile more carefully in the DOM before taking any trades. I can sense a bit of spiraling into trader oblivion with so much effort and increasing losses to show. The joy of trading.
I am tempted to put a video up to show what not to do... anyway today is another day. Just venting and got an hour or so to get myself emotionally pumped to make some ticks today!