DashRiprock
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futures clearing merchant
pattern day trader
pattern day trader
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 .
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%...
He done the clever thing and *quit* whilst he was ahead (albeit a little down from the 150k or so peak of the account).
I think he went from 150k down to about 120k and called it a day. Still not bad for a years messing around from an 8k account.
Wall St and FTSE are choppy, i may to try my method out on them with IG for now and see what i get
What do you think of Alpari? They run MT4 too which is another reason i would like to use them
Thanks, and yea cheers for the tips of the above firms will probably go that route if all goes well, to start off as im still learning how about Alpari? As you can start an account with any amount of money, Everyone seems to be loving their service too and its not just scalping i'd be doing, here's some of their spreads:
EUR/USD 1.6 pips
USD/JPY 2.0 pips
EUR/GBP 2.0 pips
What do you think of Alpari? They run MT4 too which is another reason i would like to use them
Clearly, this information is false. 25% profitable accounts? But we know it should be 15% as 85% of traders fail!
PS I still use Alpari/MT4 and think they're great. Two weeks ago, I came to within 0.1 pip of my stop and it reversed for profit. Can't argue with that.