Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
I need some simple set ups or "rules" on scalping, for a poker player turned trader
I would have to agree that Volman has a easy to read book with some fairly straight forward and executable strategies for most instruments with reasonable volatility. Many of his concepts will work well with CL.
I would also say that you will need a defined process on market context. When I say market context, I mean:
1. Know when you should be looking to go long
2. Know when you should be looking to go short
3. Know when you should be doing nothing
If you do not a have a method for doing this, you are wasting your time on setups. I wish someone would have clearly told me this a couple of years ago and saved me thousands of dollars and shaved mucho time from my learning curve. It sounds so obvious, but I think is one of the most overlooked steps for beginning traders. I know it was for me...
I as well am a former poker player that has spent a ridiculous amount of hours the last couple of years making the transition from poker to trading CL and NG contracts. I can tell you in my own experience that there are different types of winning/losing players in poker and different styles of traders as well. Your time frame, personal psychology, etc. will steer you towards different strategies/setups. If you were a tight poker player you may do well to simply focus on pullbacks in trends which are more of a high prob/less frequent setup type of trade. If you were a loose poker player then you may do better incorporating more active strategies such as looking for breakouts and trying out strategies where you are always either long or short in the market... to satisfy your need for action.
As for myself, I am a tight/aggressive poker player which always suited my temperment. So after watching hundreds of hours of price action and practicing various types of strategies I finally settled on focusing on identifying trends on the 30 minute and hourly charts and then looking for pullbacks to pivot areas and then using the 5 min chart for a signal to enter. They happen less frequently (I average 1 trade per day) but they keep my confidence intact as I know they are more higher probability trades. I love to catch successful breakouts but they can beat you up very easily if you don't know what you're doing. I have found success w/ more of an automated approach focusing on trend pullback setups where I am only trying to be right between 45 and 60% of the time w/ a risk/reward of around 2 to 1.
Last bit of advice: Like poker, there is no simple indicator/book/strategy/etc. to becoming consistently profitable. Both poker and trading requires never-ending study and practice. If it were easy, more than 5 to 10% of partipants would find success. Find what strats/styles work well with your psychology and then focus on optimizing and testing those ideas. But don't vary your strats too much or you will never know how to quantify your risk/reward.
