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There are two types of daytraders. First there are the Intraday position traders who try to catch one or more main swings of the day. Then there are the the scalpers who's average trade ls less than 3 minutes. Scalping seems to be the most difficult and many in the industry says it can't be done.
The previous thread dealed mostly with the intraday position type. I 'd like to focus more on the scalping. How much screen time is required to become a consistently profitable scalper ?
Brownsfan, we will start out with you first |
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Good question OAC. You know, it's funny - I don't consider myself a scalper but I guess others would. What I mean is, I consider a scalper someone or program that buys on the bid and sells the ask. To me, that is scalping. I personally take bigger profits than this per trade, but much less than a 'position daytrader' would. Right now profits are ranging from 2-3 pts per ES trade. So I'm not sure that a 2-3 pt per trade goal is scalping or not.
Regardless, there is no substitution for screen time. How long it takes before you can make money at it is anyone's guess. There comes a time when you've been watching your minute/volume/tick charts so much that you just intuitively 'see' things - you see when volume is low, you see when a certain level is heavily defended, you see when your profit targets are too much or too little, you see certain trades failing more regularly than they used to, etc. etc.
I do not think you can quantify how much screen time is needed b/c it will vary person-to-person. If you watch a 3 minute ES chart with the utmost dedication for a solid year, you will see much more than the casual observer or the 'hindsight' trader. If you then continue to study that chart for another year, you'll have 2 years of screen time experience that simply cannot be purchased or replaced.
The bottom line is that it does take time. Much more than most are willing to dedicate to this. A successful day-trading biz will normally take much longer than the majority are willing to put towards it. I suppose that's where the 'most traders fail' garbage comes from. Yes, most will fail, but not b/c of a bad system or even a small account. Most will fail b/c they simply will not put forth the time and effort required. That's it in my opinion. If you go into this thinking you will conquer it in 6 or 12 months, good luck b/c you will need it. We are talking about YEARS. And it's just like many other high paying professions in terms of YEARS needed to see the success. The difference however is that you can start in this biz for as little as $2500 and a computer. To be a doctor or lawyer, there's a little more needed from you before you could even consider it. Not so with day-trading, esp in futures.