4% A Day Forever

Thanks andante9! We all have our dark moments sometimes

Good luck on trading!

Hi, Fool,

I tried your strategy but failed badly today.

Yesterday I made 49 trades (mostly between NY time 9:00 am to 12:00pm), with 47% win and 53% loss trades. The win average is 2.95pips, loss average 2.86. Final result is -6.5pips. Though I got negative, I felt this was a good improvement.

But, today, I did very badly. Totally I lost 94 pips with 96 trades made between 8:45am to 1:30pm. Win only 34%, with average 2.11pip. Loss 66% with average 2.60pips. I might have made too many trades, but I think the problem is my trading mentality.

Most of the time I seem trying to catch the top/bottom and trade against the trend. Although I controlled the loss to be small (mostly 2~3 pips), but made too many wrong judgments. Often I anticipated a top seeing price stalled, jumped in, price moved against me, I then stepped out. But soon the price indeed formed the top while I am left out. When the price starts going down, I always hesitate to chase it. Then my mentality makes me waiting for the reverse instead of following the down trend. Then it comes into a cycle when I often jump into the anticipated reverse too soon.

Of cause I sometimes got it right.

Sometimes, I tried to jump into the break outs, but had more failures than successes. So I am always reluctant to chase the price.

Fool, here are some questions. Do you often chase the price? How do you catch the trend reverse in 1m chart? Do you often make many tries to catch one or you prefer wait longer with risk of missing the trend? My dilemma is often afraid of missing the early trend. When the trend reverse is already obvious, I often fear to be caught in the retracement when the old trend continues.

Another question, have you tried the NY open time? I am thinking that the NY morning time market is more active and volatile than your trading hours. Maybe 2~3 pips loss is too small for NY time? Because if you always exit whenever price moves against you, many of these small 2~3 pips would add up hugely.

I am still thinking about the so called “predictable volatility”. May need more time to get it. Also I am not sure how you trade the s/r or PP you mentioned before.

Is it possible that you post some of your 1m trade history chart at your convenience? I want to learn your strategy because I know it is the best winning strategy.

Appreciate your inputs.

I think I've made 188 trades this year you guys are nutso!!

That sounds really exhausting, 49 trades in 3 hours. Hope these were on a demo but if not at least your broker loves you

I'd say that you're overtrading! I seldom take more than 5 trades a day, typically I'm looking at 2-3. Of course sometimes a little more sometimes a little less.

Different trading style, there full on game zone twitch trading where as we are abit more cautious, nothing wrong with either as long as ultimately you profit from it, maybe not day #1 ofcourse.

10-4, that's to much f&^$kn clicking and shit for me. I'd rather spend my couple of hours trading then out and about enjoying the outdoors. Different strokes for different folks though...nothing wrong with that.

I definitely hope you nail it man and earn a bunch of pips!

I agree I traded too much today. I just hope I can master the techique.

Hope your practicing on a demo account ?? if so keep clicking, maybe you'll learn your over clicking and find the trades which work better.


Don't want to be doing this on a real account though.

i hope you're not doing high frequency trades with a market maker

better go with an ECN. The cost of trading reeeeally adds up to your bottom line.

Hey there odt101,

It takes practice to become adept at scalping. Practice on demo or with microlots until you get proficient.

Your 49-trade run at the NY open was not that bad. I almost never trade the NY open as this is a time of day that I am waking up and working at my real job. The FO/LO 2-3 hr stint is the best available to me. Sometimes I will try to catch the London/NY overlap, especially if there is good news coming out in the NY AM - but that is still early in the morning for me as I am 3 hours behind NY. The 1/2 hr before and 1-2 hours after Tokyo open can be OK, but usually not so hot. I have been watching the geppy for a scalping alternative for the Tokyo open and that looks good, just have not been on it long enough to make it part of my diet.

A good rule of thumb to remember is to scalp in the direction of the overall trend and also in the direction of any anticipated break-out. I don't always have a good hit rate and I will just fold if I am not feeling it or if the PA is too slow or too squirrely. I did some scalping last night but didn't have the right energy for it so I stopped and I did some longer trades instead...

I am always mixing scalping with other trades on "predictable volatility" and I am not averse to swing trading either if I see something that seems obvious to me. Yesterday, for instance, I thought that E/U 1.50 would be tough to break & that the market was setting up for a downish day. I put on a short at 1.4999 with a 15 pip sl and a tp at 1.4955 - did that around Tokyo sometime and just left it. Then Fitch reports on the GB rating downgrade and there was a spike down to 1.4950 while I was out, so I scored. Good R:R. I also tuned in at 1100 GMT (3AM my time) just to play the German ZEW. I strongly felt that would be a red number and based on prior experience I thought the move would have a volatility range (yes up and down) of at least 20 pips each way. So I shorted before the announcement with a 15 pip tp and a 5 pip sl and that scored, too. Thing is, on that particular instance of "predictable volatility" a 15 or 20 pip tp would have won either way, long or short, the key would just have been to have a wide enough sl. Actually, if I had played the retrace, instead - would have been better - PA bounced back 40 pips or so as I recall....

If I am trying to play trendlet reversals in ranging PA then I will put on BB w/ 21, 2.5 & I will look for reversals at a touch on the BB. I am looking for stalling in the PA as shown by doji-like candles. Sometimes you don't get an easy sign and you might just need to enter on the reversing candle. The flatter the ranging PA, the better this approach will work, and of course, you have the previous PA printed to see how it has behaved. Be careful of breakouts, though, & try to play into them - know when they are likely to occur and for how much. I play "breakouts" around the pickup times in market activity - at the FO, at the Tokyo open, after Tokyo lunch, etc - those are the ones I know. Some might not call these breakouts per se, but there are predictable increases in volatility at those and other times and it is possible to lay wait & trap nice little spurts of pippage. Sometimes you can do that while you are scalping.... As far as chasing price - no, if I feel like PA has moved beyond the range where a quick scalp could safely yield a worthwhile (2 pips - woohoo!) profit, then I will wait for another chance. If you enter and price runs hard against you, best to get out & watch closely - often I have reversed a trade after a quick stop and caught an unexpected breakout or run...

If you are getting beat at scalping sometimes it helps to shorten your target. 1 pip. 1 pip. omg how hard is 1 pip!? Well, sometimes, it seems, its pretty hard. I have given up for the day trying to scalp for 1 pip (omg 1 pip!) after getting beat 3, 4, 5 times in a row...! But really, if you can net 1 pip, and then if you can do that 10-20 times a day - there's no reason you can't make a living doing just that. 1 pip x 4 lots, 20 times, $800/day gross, $200k/year gross, how does that sound?

Keep trying, try different things, everyone is different, with practice you will find trading methods that work for you. Let the bottom line of your account tell you if something is working for you or not...

Good Luck & Best Regards.

P.S. I will screenshot a scalp chart or 2 this week sometime and post here, but there are examples back in the thread, too...

I trade with Oanda, E/U spread avg. about 1-pip, but near instant fills always. I get slipped in high volatility, but often the slippage goes my way....

...if you know of a better/cheaper spot broker for high-f trading I'd be interested to hear...thanks

Thanks Fool. I am trading real but with very small units.

Your post is great and it does clear me of something. I think in the NY opening market a tight scalping may not be very easy. And I think you are right about that this trendlet scalping is easier to be done in a ranged market. Today I blindly tried this strategy in the volatile market, when I got lots of bad trades, I turned impatient and made too many trades.

I also understand I may never mimic your trading style. Trading is very personal.

Still, regarding your trading style, could you clarify one more thing? That is, you say you manually stop out whenever you see the price goes against you. Is that you always close the trade whenever you are in the red 2~3 pips, or you may judge how the price moves and may let the price run for a while to make sure it is indeed going against you? Very often I see the price jumps around +1 to -5 pips around my position. I feel I should be little patient to pick a better position to close it instead of just stop it at -3 at its first occurrence. Of cause this way may risk larger loss, which needs one to be very disciplined to execute.

Thanks a lot.

I can't really talk about NY open because I am almost never there, and if I am there its almost always for a news trade.

If PA is jumping around +1/-5 from your entry you are probably in some PA that has a range too tight to bother with. I throw on the BB and I will look for like a min. 12-pip spread through the band. This means typically a minimum 10-pip spread through the range. If you are in too-tight PA you can wait for ages to get a decent profit or even for a tight sl to get hit. I used to scalp E/G sometimes & it would flatline like that. So I like scalping in ranging PA but it has to have enough volatility. You can still hit flat stretches even in volatile PA but then it boils down to how robust you think the range will be - is it likely to keep ranging? If you feel like it will then you can stretch your boundaries. That is a slippery slope, though - be careful of wishful thinking.

If you are in some trending PA - the trend is still your friend even if you are a scalper. You can enter a scalp in the direction of the trend and move profit target out as the trend develops, trailing sl to BE and better.

Well I scalped a couple 5-pippers right around Tokyo open but then E/U got pretty slow so now I am waiting to see how the CNY news will affect the market. I might place a volatility trade if I see something juicy but I'm not familiar with the CNY releases yet. I will watch the yen crosses & also the AUD and NZD....

Good luck all...

Its nice of them to load up all that news on one big raft like that, huh? And when it comes in mixed, like tonight, well it will probably move the related currencies up and down both, like it did tonight,..... huh?. I'll be sure to mark my calendar for this free money party...

Allright, GulfCoast, I know you a stud trader and all, so I wanted to ask you:

If I told you I could give you a trading method that would guarantee you 5 pips a day, but that you could only trade that method - that's right trade any size, 2 hrs a day max, but score only 5 pips - 5 pips guaronteed - would you go for that?

Ok, I will keep trying. Thanks a lot.

GulfCoast can speak for himself... but any easy 5 pips per day @ 20 lots would just about fix me up! I don't think such a guarantee is possible, but I would love to be wrong!!

Exactly, Coach. Of course, there are no guarantees in life or forex.

But I know I can net positive pips so long as I limit the target. The limitation is the key. I just had to learn how not to f*ck up. Yep, pretty much all downhill from here....

My biggest concern would be how bad are the stops going to kill you? So, for example, if your stop is around 20 pips, you need to be right 4 times for every 1 wrong just to get back to break even.

Just my 2 cents. If it works for you, by all means pip away!