Today is Wednesday, May 13th and I decided to do something a little different from the start.
Today’s session was a little different in that I traded my bread and butter scalp trade setups – mostly. I took only a few trades for more, one I remember was for 3 1/2 points and a couple others were for two points or so. But the bulk of my trades were for only 1/2 point. I only had that mind set from the start. I wanted to show how I can scalp trade and only run a 2-3 tick stop for most trades.
In fact, since I am having a problem getting my equity chart to come up on Tradestation (just not working?), I have a 5 minute video of the trades that I took below. Most all of the trades go past my target and that is fine, I was not worried about leaving points on the table, that was not what I was there for. There were some trades that I could not get filled in time at my price and that was ok as well. I show a few of them in the video. I have some of the trades identified as potential trades and that is all that they are, potential trades that I could have taken, but some of them are the ones that I could not get filled at my price.
Keep in mind, to get to my basic daily goal of 2 points, I only need 3 or 4 of those little trades to get it. That being said, my stats for this type of trading this morning is 24 gains and only 4 losses with a few even trades. The stops that I took were -2 ticks, -2 ticks, -1 tick, and -4 ticks but this one was only on 1 contract, the other half of the trade was a gain.
This did not happen by accident and it is repeatable. So many people cannot bring themselves to only trade for such a small amount, that they miss the possibilities. I am not saying that this type of trading is what everyone should do and not even myself for that matter. You need to be able to pull out different tools in order to build a house. If you only have a hammer and nails, that’s good, but you may not get the house you are looking for if you only have those tools in your bag. There is more that may be needed. Anyway, this is part of the method that got me out of trouble yesterday and I am giving you a glimpse of that type of market action today.
There is a set of conditions that are met every time to get these results and it most certainly is repeatable. If done right, you should be able to hit 80+ percent of your trades and still run a very small stop. Those are good odds, how ever you look at it. Now, as far as size is concerned, I dropped it down to only 3 contracts. I did not have to, but I did. With this high percentage trade, I could have been trading 10 contracts, easily.
Today’s results produced about $ 600 dollars profit per contract traded, in 3 hours and that is after commissions. So, since I was only running 3 small contracts, I added $1,800 with today’s results. If I had been trading the 5 contracts that I usually trade everyday, that would be 5 contracts x $ 600 per contract net $ 3,000. Ten contracts would be, $6,000 and 20 contracts brings it to $ 12,000 for the day. A few weeks ago I was trading at 10, but I brought it down to mostly 5 lately.
Anyway, that is pretty darn good. I was getting tired after 3 hours of this and that is why I stopped. It is a lot more than I usually do, but I was on a roll. I could feel that my concentration was slipping, so I took that clue as my sign to stop. I could come back after lunch and do it again, or trade sparingly for higher point returns, if the market is rolling, but either way, to be able to trade profitably at will is a great feeling and a nice boost of trading confidence.
We all need to remember to stay humble and I am speaking to myself right here. If I, or anyone else gets sloppy or trades without discipline, the market will bring you back in line or take you out. The second part is what usually happens. If anyone trades without a plan or method, you will most certainly be one of the ones that gets taken out, that is for sure.
You cannot think that you have greater trading knowledge than the traders on Wall Street, who do this for a living, and still come out ahead of them without a trading plan and or method. That is the problem with the small independent trader who thinks he has a handle on it. It takes time and without help, it could take years and a lot of money and you may still never get it. There are very few services out there that are of any real benefit to the small would be trader. Most never show you actually how the markets work and it can be confusing and frustrating for many. I never learned from anyone but myself and it took me a long time, but I am happy to say that this is a compilation of years of experience that has been tested over time. It works.
The great thing as I have said before is that this method can be traded on any instrument on any time frame. Mutual Funds, Stocks, Commodities, Forex, Futures, all of them work the same. In fact it is easier to trade higher time frames because it is very slow to develop and you have a lot of time to see things take shape. The downside of that is, you need a much bigger stop. If daily charts are your thing, then by learning how to trade small time frames, you are exposing yourself to so many screen shots, over and over again. As time passes, you will get very familiar to what a good set-up is supposed to look like and then apply that knowledge to the daily’s.
Consider trading for income and a modest daily goal. It just could be what the Doctor ordered !
http://www.screencast.com/t/xMmWZHiAmI 5 minute video, to replace today’s equity chart
Related posts:
- Scalping the S&P 500 for Daily Profit
- Do you have a Daily Trading Loss Limit ?
- Trade Positioning – Key to Profit
- Day Trade Ratio, and Risk Reward
- Big Profit Day in S&P and Link to Free Newsletter
Tags: daily charts, daily goal, trade setups, trading for income, trading plan
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