Whip me in to shape scalpers :D

[Doomberg]

Ok so im just getting in to technical trading properly, i do have trading experience but for the last few years of trading i didn't even know what a bloody candle stick was lol other than the ones you light, but then again i have been trading mainly using fundamentals... banks etc, whenever i did try to day trade on IG index i was ripped to pieces and lost 1000's and kept trying without any plan and got ass raped over and over again... i didn't even know how to read charts, lol we live and we learn.

Ok so Forex, its something i have been interested in for a while but have been put off since its mostly day trading and as they say "once bitten twice shy" anyway, i have started to educate myself on chart reading and decided to have a pop at forex trading, i used a very simple scalping method that i thought sounded good. I didn't use big money today, was max of £5 per pip and on a very short time frame.

It seems like a penny has dropped today, within a few trades i was thinking "right, this could be an edge if i practise properly" and i truly believe that i can make this work if i stick at it, i had literally no plan to these trades other than trying to sell on a red candle and buy on a blue at the correct times, i was using 5 min candles.

Here's my 1st 20 trades win lose ratio 12 to 8 so 66.7% wins on my 1st scalp, and btw this is on IG Index where its a 3 pip spread on the majority of the below.

DEAL 04/04/11 J7TAZ6AR Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16169.3 £ -5-5 16164.8 22.50
DEAL 04/04/11 J7TAX9AR Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16165.9 £ -5-5 16172.2 -31.50
DEAL 04/04/11 J7S4V4AF Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16162.3 £ +5+5 16169.4 35.50
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SY4TAE Spot FX EUR/USD DFB 14237.4 £ -5-5 14235.4 10.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7S49UAV Spot FX EUR/USD DFB 14236.6 £ +4+4 14240.1 14.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SZX6AQ Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16163.3 £ -4-4 16157.3 24.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SV5ZAS Daily Spot Gold DFB 1430.97 £ +2+2 1430.35 -1.24
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SWY4AP Spot FX EUR/GBP DFB 8807 £ +2+2 8804.2 -5.60
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SUYEAV Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16157.2 £ -2-2 16158 -1.60
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SQ5LAQ Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16167.7 £ +2+2 16158.9 -17.60
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SPRAAS Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16134.4 £ -2-2 16154.4 -40.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SAJBAF Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16123.6 £ +1+1 16134.4 10.80
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SDD4AD Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16122.7 £ +1+1 16134.5 11.80
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SBQQAJ Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16128.9 £ +2+2 16134.8 11.80
DEAL 04/04/11 J7R6KNAE Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16128.8 £ +1+1 16118.8 -10.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SCRDAC Forward EUR/USD SEP-11 14195.5 £ +0.50+0.50 14175.5 -10.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7RYDNAJ Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16135.2 £ -5-5 16132 16.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7RSQUAT Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16114.6 £ +0.50+0.50 16135.4 10.40
DEAL 04/04/11 J7RMQ2AB Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16122.5 £ +1+1 16135.3 12.80
DEAL 04/04/11 J7RQACAE Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16115.8 £ +1+1 16135.5 19.70

I am i the process of getting MT4 sorted out, but im trading from a mac so will need to get windows sorted 1st.... from the trades above, what can i do to improve.. any constructive criticism is more than welcome, im really eager to learn :smart:

Hope you are all well

 

[Masquerade]

you'regoingtogetraped.jpeg

how much do you have in your account? £5/pip is not small (well it is if you have £10k in an account, but if you have 1-2k it's stupid.)

 

[DashRiprock]

well yes, trading bank stocks is very easy when you

i) buy low and sell high

or when trading forex

ii) buy high and sell higher

 

[TheBramble]

ind?

 

[Doomberg]

Lol as positive as ever with the noobs guys :clap:

And RE a forex account, don't even have one yet but when i do it won't be 10k so i'll just start off small, as it will be a big learning process.. im thinking £1 a point for a while as i dip my toes in the water, out of interest how come you automatically think i'll be raped? If i have more wins than losses then it'll be the same as any other trading?

And if you don't mind me asking, how long have you guys been doing Forex? Do you love it? Do you scalp? Or do you have other preferred methods? Cheers

 

[shadowninja]

How many hours did you take to make 16 pips?

 

[shadowninja]

BTW if you scalp, you are already defining a ceiling as to your potential income with IG. They will put you on manual once you do maybe £20/pip. So you click and then the operator goes for a pint, comes back and then clicks "accept" when the market's moved 75 pips against you.

 

[Masquerade]

And RE a forex account, don't even have one yet but when i do it won't be 10k so i'll just start off small, as it will be a big learning process.. im thinking £1 a point for a while as i dip my toes in the water, out of interest how come you automatically think i'll be raped? If i have more wins than losses then it'll be the same as any other trading?

And if you don't mind me asking, how long have you guys been doing Forex? Do you love it? Do you scalp? Or do you have other preferred methods? Cheers

I don't know your account size/finances, but i'll tell you that £5/pt is a pretty decent size to be trading with and one can make a good sum of money with it if they have some ability. When you trade £5/pt on gpb/usd you're taking a position worth about £80k. Think about that....if you have £2k in your account what will a small % move in the currency will do to your account. Also, you're paying so much spread and making a few pips and your losses are generally larger than your profits. You need to make more than a few pips in your trade (unless you're not going to lose so many in a trade) rather than looking at the money and thinking "I just made £10 in a minute, i'll do that 60 times an hour and be loaded."

As for your question: on and off for a few years, i'm starting to like it (not sure about love) as there are some days which make me pull my hair out, not sure what your definition of scalping is...

 

[Doomberg]

Masquarade yeah im aware it can be hard to pull it off on an ongoing basis, but people do... its not the only way i'll be trading, i'll be following trends etc, breakouts but nipping the odd pips here and there, i really got in to it, and yeah your right, at £5 a pip you could earn or lose some serious dough

 

[Doomberg]

BTW if you scalp, you are already defining a ceiling as to your potential income with IG. They will put you on manual once you do maybe £20/pip. So you click and then the operator goes for a pint, comes back and then clicks "accept" when the market's moved 75 pips against you.

Swines, most spreadbetting firms are dodgy as f.uck

 

[Doomberg]

How many hours did you take to make 16 pips?

Quite a while, but got a but more than 16, hope to learn as much as i can over the next few months

 

[DashRiprock]

honestly mate if you really really want to scalp then I would open an account with an FCM or become a PDT.

forex + 5m + spreadbetters + scalping = world of pain

 

[Masquerade]

Just for a point of reference, i'd not trade £5/pt with less than £10k in an account. At least to be comfortable. Through some poor decisions in the past i've had some losses in excess of 200pts and that's going to be a fair chunk of a £10k account at £5/pt. Nothing disastrous of course but it may take a few weeks to recover from.

 

[DashRiprock]

or double up and trade the futures / thu an ECN

 

[Black Swan]

A few things;

Firstly you can't scalp with an SB firm, by defintion scalping is exploiting inefficiencies, being in/out of trades in seconds not minutes..the likes of IG/CMC won't put you on referall if you stay under their radar, you're not big enough for them to consider you a cheat <irony alert?> you'll simply run out of luck. 3 pip spread, 2 pip 'lag', 2 pip guaranteed stop..it'll fail as an edge but even if it didn't you're paying 50%+ more than you need to and forget finding a permanent method for now MM (capital preservation) is everything.

Once you feel confident and If you're commiting ten grand to your first effort then go with the likes of IB, DBFX or Dukascopy, who are excellent, but the platforms on offer (J-forex etc) are a touch clunky. Cracking firm though.

DBFX you'll be paying approx. 1.2/7 pip spread on the Euro and you only need $5,000 to open an account. They lease fxcm software, the platform is the best in the industry imho. In fact why not open a micro with fxcm to test run it? Then smoothly move over. Even on micro you'll be paying less spread on FX than with an SB firm.

If you make ten grand, or whatever your allowance is, then think about the tax implications..not before, dont get lulled into the tax free SB marketing nonsense. You could always make 20K on FX and not pay tax with the most basic of imagination.

Now if that was yesterday figures then sorry to say this but you may have got lucky picking the bounces in the range. It was a 5hite day for me as a swing trader yesterday ergo it was good for range/intraday/noise traders. There were some luverly 20 pip opps on cable..a nuisance for me.

Oh and risk, you'll hear it a zillion times risk no more than 2%, 1% preferably per trade. If you're going to trade off a 15 min TF or 1000 ticks the your average loss should smooth out at circa 20 pips, you could use a stop of this size...up to you, you'll know exactly how big a cheque you're potentially writing out for each trade. I know guys with 1:1 who do OK from 1000 tick charts on the basis of more winners than losers 60/40%...

 

[the hare]

Just for a point of reference, i'd not trade £5/pt with less than £10k in an account.

100% in agreement.

 

[kimo'sabby]

Ok so im just getting in to technical trading properly, i do have trading experience but for the last few years of trading i didn't even know what a bloody candle stick was lol other than the ones you light, but then again i have been trading mainly using fundamentals... banks etc, whenever i did try to day trade on IG index i was ripped to pieces and lost 1000's and kept trying without any plan and got ass raped over and over again... i didn't even know how to read charts, lol we live and we learn.

Ok so Forex, its something i have been interested in for a while but have been put off since its mostly day trading and as they say "once bitten twice shy" anyway, i have started to educate myself on chart reading and decided to have a pop at forex trading, i used a very simple scalping method that i thought sounded good. I didn't use big money today, was max of £5 per pip and on a very short time frame.

It seems like a penny has dropped today, within a few trades i was thinking "right, this could be an edge if i practise properly" and i truly believe that i can make this work if i stick at it, i had literally no plan to these trades other than trying to sell on a red candle and buy on a blue at the correct times, i was using 5 min candles.

Here's my 1st 20 trades win lose ratio 12 to 8 so 66.7% wins on my 1st scalp, and btw this is on IG Index where its a 3 pip spread on the majority of the below.

DEAL 04/04/11 J7TAZ6AR Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16169.3 £ -5-5 16164.8 22.50
DEAL 04/04/11 J7TAX9AR Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16165.9 £ -5-5 16172.2 -31.50
DEAL 04/04/11 J7S4V4AF Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16162.3 £ +5+5 16169.4 35.50
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SY4TAE Spot FX EUR/USD DFB 14237.4 £ -5-5 14235.4 10.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7S49UAV Spot FX EUR/USD DFB 14236.6 £ +4+4 14240.1 14.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SZX6AQ Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16163.3 £ -4-4 16157.3 24.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SV5ZAS Daily Spot Gold DFB 1430.97 £ +2+2 1430.35 -1.24
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SWY4AP Spot FX EUR/GBP DFB 8807 £ +2+2 8804.2 -5.60
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SUYEAV Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16157.2 £ -2-2 16158 -1.60
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SQ5LAQ Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16167.7 £ +2+2 16158.9 -17.60
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SPRAAS Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16134.4 £ -2-2 16154.4 -40.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SAJBAF Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16123.6 £ +1+1 16134.4 10.80
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SDD4AD Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16122.7 £ +1+1 16134.5 11.80
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SBQQAJ Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16128.9 £ +2+2 16134.8 11.80
DEAL 04/04/11 J7R6KNAE Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16128.8 £ +1+1 16118.8 -10.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7SCRDAC Forward EUR/USD SEP-11 14195.5 £ +0.50+0.50 14175.5 -10.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7RYDNAJ Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16135.2 £ -5-5 16132 16.00
DEAL 04/04/11 J7RSQUAT Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16114.6 £ +0.50+0.50 16135.4 10.40
DEAL 04/04/11 J7RMQ2AB Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16122.5 £ +1+1 16135.3 12.80
DEAL 04/04/11 J7RQACAE Spot FX GBP/USD DFB 16115.8 £ +1+1 16135.5 19.70

I am i the process of getting MT4 sorted out, but im trading from a mac so will need to get windows sorted 1st.... from the trades above, what can i do to improve.. any constructive criticism is more than welcome, im really eager to learn :smart:

Hope you are all well

IG Index must luv U. You've made them more than u've made for yourself. Way to go!

 

[redart]

100% in agreement.

I'd pretty much agree, too.
Although my dad called me a puss-y for being so conservative.

He started trading his 8k spreadbet account at about £30 per point which he eventually turned into about 150k trading at about £120 per point lol.

 

[the hare]

IHe started trading his 8k spreadbet account at about £30 per point which he eventually turned into about 150k trading at about £120 per point lol.

Is he still trading, or did he quit whilst he was ahead, or does the story have an unhappy ending ?

Its always argued that if you have an edge then even with very aggressive position sizing such as optimal F, your equity, even with the 95% drawdowns is still usually greater than it would have been with simple fixed fraction. I'd probably be OK doing it on a small account for the lulz but not sure I could live with it day to day .

 

[Doomberg]

honestly mate if you really really want to scalp then I would open an account with an FCM or become a PDT.

forex + 5m + spreadbetters + scalping = world of pain

Hey, couldn't find any firms to look at called FCM and excuse my ignorance but i have no idea what PDT is.. lol google came up with "Pacific Daylight Time"