Scalping - is it something thrown upon?

Maxima, more often than not, scalping means going with the immediate trend in prices and taking a fairly small profit. It is almost impossible to do this successfully through a S/B or a CFD simply because you aim to make a few points profits after commission. There is no transparency with S/B or CFD providers and their spreads are too large. I opened my Direct Access account with $US5000 and there are no monthly fees at all and it is suited to most styles of trading you can think of, including scalping.

Online Futures Trading - Open E Cry ™ a Direct Access Trading System
yeah. I think that it should be somehow separated - professional floor traders scalping and short living positions from personal accounts...

Thank you for the link. I am going to gather information for few days and then test most interesting options.

Having no monthly fees is very attractive to me - cos I can spare couple of days a month only to test it in real time.
 
you need to go through a company (arcade) who will clear your trades-you can't just 'buy' access. these companies-for a monthly fee-will provide you with a system to trade and a seat and whatever else you want in terms of data, cahrting packages etc...
I have had a look. I wont be able to do this kind of scalping anyway. As I understood it - arcade is emulation of floor trading. If one wishes to be floor trader on his own.

This is a very specific activity. If I could do it I'd rather seek employment in the City as a trader and live on bonuses.

And you are still 100ms behind.
 
sorry mate-that's the IT dept's problem. :) I'm good at what I do-they're good at what they do.

take your point-it is a FT job...
 
extra network leg / extra router in the office building / extra port in exchange building... wont it add up ?

Behind who though? I reckon the guys here that trade from arcades have pretty good ping times - the only way to improve would be to take your laptop to LIFFE and ask to plug into their servers!

Any arcade traders want to check what their ping is?
 
bottom line of this story - I cannot do this that fast and take that much heat per sec.

Will experiment with DMA through brokers and see if I can make it success. My trades are much longer than yours (presumably). I hope that alternative set up might still work well for me.
 
Are most brokers who offer day trading margin account for emini futures allow scalping on US indices? Or is their a limit to how many scalping trades you can make per day?

Can brokers even look into your account and see you are scalping? From what I read is it's perfectly legal on emini index futures which even big trading firms are doing it.
 
If you are scalping futures or indices you will be fine. Perfectly legal and brokers won't care a dime. If you try scalping spot forex you run into issues.

Peter
 
If you are scalping futures or indices you will be fine. Perfectly legal and brokers won't care a dime. If you try scalping spot forex you run into issues.

Peter

Many thanks for your quick and very helpful reply

That's great to know about scalping
 
Are most brokers who offer day trading margin account for emini futures allow scalping on US indices? Or is their a limit to how many scalping trades you can make per day?

Can brokers even look into your account and see you are scalping? From what I read is it's perfectly legal on emini index futures which even big trading firms are doing it.
Hi Sopodo,
I concur with Peter's Comments, but would add that scalping isn't really recommended with a spread betting account - because the spreads are likely to be too big. With a DMA broker, they will actively encourage any trading style that results in a lot of trades, as the more trades you do - the more commissions they make. That said, a responsible broker will impose certain limits to ensure you don't do something really stupid that results in you blowing up your account in nano seconds.As for your broker knowing what you're doing - yes, absolutely they do. They only have to look at the commission statements that they send you each day to know almost as much about your trading as you do!
Tim.
 
Great to see threads resurrected from the dead after a couple of years, IMHO it proves just how quickly this industry can move one; trading off v. short TFs works with DMA/ECN brokers perfectly well, with SB firms it'll cost 50% more per trade/round trip as you prop guys call it...I conducted an experiment a while back before deciding to fill my trading gaps with a form of scalping and over a 250 trade sample the SB firm cost twice as much for the exact same trades...no funny games from 'em, I wasn't 'stiffed' on one trade bar the odd slow fill but you get that anywhere if the market's moving, my view they (SB firms) are quite simply not set up to cope with that tpye of trading and IMHO you'll bleed your money on a slow drip to them as a gift..

in relation to trading forex of an adjusted tick chart, Thurs; took 17 short term trades across 3 pairs, 11 winners..and a few of those trades were "stoopid, dumb, wtf have you done types.." :D Average losing trade ten pips, average winner 20..
 
How so Pete?

I suspect you know what the bucketshop forex brokers can do to your account if you try scalping with them. Canceling your account is one option for them to protect themselves.

I have a question though...maybe I'm the idiot here...what is an adjusted tick chart?
I have never used tick charts, no particular reason, just never felt the need to, so I have no bias for or against them.

Peter
 
I suspect you know what the bucketshop forex brokers can do to your account if you try scalping with them. Canceling your account is one option for them to protect themselves.

I have a question though...maybe I'm the idiot here...what is an adjusted tick chart?
I have never used tick charts, no particular reason, just never felt the need to, so I have no bias for or against them.

Peter

Not sure what a bucketshop forex broker is? It's not NDD or ECN that's for sure...

As well as providing all the usual indicators I only use charts that auto plot S+R and the pivot. On short term TFs I don't use time based measurement, I prefer a certain amount of ticks as it often represents volume therefore price action is smoother and clearer to visualise..
 
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