[Adamned]

I have been trading nearly three years. I am making a living at this business but defintily not a super living by monetary standards. I do extract great fun from trading but I definitly can't call it a great success. I have been preparing a year end evaluation this past month to propel me forward into the coming new year. My mind seems to be gravitating to a new direction in my trading. I would really apreciate it someone could share with me their thoughts about this.

I basically can call my self a scalper. Thats pretty much all I do, scalp the ES or Nq. To get to the point I'm thinking about changing my approach to the market. My current approach to the markets its best summed up by the quote in the market wizards book about how the cheetha hunts. Waiting and waiting for the perfect kill and striking in and out fast. But after doing this for years this type of game isn't cutting it for me. My mind is moving to more of an approach that Mark Dougals calls Trading like a Casino. This means having a much larger sample size and letting the edge play out. Another good metaphor is I currently trade like swiss watch maker, a man that takes his craft very seriously and aims for pure perfection. But the question is? Is this best path? Maybe it would be much better for me to become a quartz watch maker.

Finally this is what I think I want to do to move forward. I want to put an end for the most part to my scalping. Implement a mean reversion strategy that aims to extract more points with ofcourse much more money behind each trade, to make it worthwhile doing this type of method. The serious cons of this method is waiting for the edge to come to succesful completion and the requirement of a much larger stop. In my mind this seems much more like a real business rather than a tactical game which scalping is. I've been around the markets long enough to realize that large sums of money is there for the taking in the market but not possible in scalping at least not for me. If anyone can assist me with this serious decison I would really appreciate any advice. Thank you very much and good trading to all.

[OAC]

There is more than one way to skin a cat.
Why can't you make big money from scalping ? The key is really consistency.
If you can consistenly make one ES point day after day, you simply raise the number of contracts ten-fold. Before embarking on a new swinging type of strategy, I recommend you analyze every single one of your scalp trades in the past year in reference to different factor as: time of day, type of day, breakout, trending vs congestion, degree of volatility , or any other factors that you can come up with. I believe this process will benefit you greatly.
Surely mean-reversion strategies may be nice. Like anything else, it takes time to achieve a degree of mastery.

[Reaver]

Scalping scares me. I definitely respect anyone that can make money consistently doing it.

[OAC]

And don't fall into the "Grass is Greener On the Other Side" sydrome.
People that say you can't are people that don't know how.
Hey Reaver, how can you tell which way the market is going by reading a bunch of letters ?

[Reaver]

They could be smiley faces instead of letters for all I care, you follow the distribution. Among other things. Didn't say scalping couldn't be done...but I personally am not going to compete with pit traders while sitting many miles away on a computer..simply my opinion...I also offered my respect to anyone who does that and succeeds!

I also use standard TA of course....more than one way to skin a cat, remember?

[Reaver]

Dude I was just messing with you, no hard feelings man. lol

I got busy and forgot to come back and mention that part. heh heh

[walterw]

Originally Posted by Adamned »

If anyone can assist me with this serious decison I would really appreciate any advice. Thank you very much and good trading to all.

Hi Adamned... I understand somehow your experience as I think we all did go thru that type of situations at some stage...

The casino thing... my advice is to drop it... martingale type of money managment do not work at a professional level, it may be a fun game for some time but eventually you will not succeed with it...

Being profesional on this game first means having decided where your arena will be... this decision principally its related to instrument and time frame... will you play futures, forex, stocks, options etc... then will you scalp, daytrade or play long term...

Any of this decisions DO NOT give you an edge... you may loose or win on any product, any time frame... changing them does not create any true edge...

Where is the edge ? your setups in relation to the market conditions... if you get to the point of "understanding" market conditions, and you have the apropiate setups for each of them... plus a superb clean timing tool.... most probably you are more near to be in bussiness...

here at TL there is lots of diferent aproaches, we got market profile, market statistics, candles, vma`s, price action formed setups... you name it... all of them are succesfull techniques if applied on the right market condition and keeping things as clean as possible...

hope you find here something of usefull aplication... we are here to help... cheers The Chimp.

[Reaver]

Originally Posted by walterw »

Hi Adamned... I understand somehow your experience as I think we all did go thru that type of situations at some stage...

The casino thing... my advice is to drop it... martingale type of money managment do not work at a professional level, it may be a fun game for some time but eventually you will not succeed with it...

Being profesional on this game first means having decided where your arena will be... this decision principally its related to instrument and time frame... will you play futures, forex, stocks, options etc... then will you scalp, daytrade or play long term...

Any of this decisions DO NOT give you an edge... you may loose or win on any product, any time frame... changing them does not create any true edge...

Where is the edge ? your setups in relation to the market conditions... if you get to the point of "understanding" market conditions, and you have the apropiate setups for each of them... plus a superb clean timing tool.... most probably you are more near to be in bussiness...

here at TL there is lots of diferent aproaches, we got market profile, market statistics, candles, vma`s, price action formed setups... you name it... all of them are succesfull techniques if applied on the right market condition and keeping things as clean as possible...

hope you find here something of usefull aplication... we are here to help... cheers The Chimp.

That should be a sticky.

Outstanding post Walter!