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where to , to learn how to scalp the ES ?


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where to , to learn how to scalp the ES ?

  #1 (permalink)
broken8
los angeles ca/u.s.
 
Posts: 4 since Apr 2018
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wanting to learn how to scalp the es for 2 or 3 ticks per trade . using fibs and ninja 7 or 8 . open to any methods and platforms if they come highly recommended . can someone point me in the right direction ?

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  #3 (permalink)
miktrading
Los Angeles, California
 
Posts: 24 since Mar 2017
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Hey there. I've found it very helpful to trading using value area. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to give you links to sites and specific traders. The strategy should be using with TICKS, UP volume/Down Volume, and Advance/Decline lines.

Up/Down volume could give tell you whether or not the indexes are more bullish or bearish throughout the day. That tells you if you have a better chance of trading long or short.

Ticks can tell you the same thing. Are ticks building positive or negative. If futures are making new highs and ticks are not, that's a sign that price could come down soon. Note that it doesn't always happen like that. You have to take a huge sample of trades.

Value Area is used with market profile. I'm not good at reading the market profile, but I use value area. You could see it as support/resistance. There are much more detailed explanations on value area though. If ES opens above value, and bullish, your long trade should be as close to value area high as possible. Breaking through value, would stop you out. That's an example of a setup I would say.

If it opens within value, you usually trade later than earlier in the session. Wait and see if futures are trying to break below value area or above. You could buy value area low, or sell short value area high. Of course you want markets to be bullish when buying and bearish when selling. Breaking above or below should stop you out And have you looking for trades in the direction that price broke out of.

This was a very quick explanation. I hope you could find more information similar to this.

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  #4 (permalink)
miktrading
Los Angeles, California
 
Posts: 24 since Mar 2017
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Here's what my "quad" screen looks like for trading ES ...

The value area is on the right bottom, but the values are from a while ago since I haven't traded from this computer.

If you do some research on those indicators, you'll find more info to specific trading setups.

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  #5 (permalink)
 noobforlyfe 
Toronto , Ontario, Canada
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart, SC
Trading: Emini ES, CL, USD/CAD
Posts: 424 since Jun 2016
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Save your hard-earned money and put it to good use elsewhere. You will bury yourself in stoplosses, vodoo context if you think fibs will tell you much about the market and market direction.

Trading the hard right edge is extremely difficult, when combined with a myriad of psychological hurdles, you are doomed for failure if your goal is to scalp 2 - 3 ticks per trade, assuming you saw some video or read something where the market just beautifully glides up or down without any hesitation and gives you your 2-3 ticks.

The frequency of trades you will have to make will alone kill your bank account, and it will be just matter of time before it truly happens. ES volatility has increased since I last traded live, and you need a much bigger account size to reduce the risk you take with every trade, and frankly the risk I have to take for one contract is not worth the return of 2-3 ticks.

Scalping can work, and there are few members here who have demonstrated long-term profitability, but it was through their hard work and coming up with a method through their observance. You should start on page 1 of the E-mini thread, going through these 3600 pages over the course of the year will put you in a better understanding, and position. You will be able to observe how the market has changed throughout the years and tiny gold nuggets that you can pick up to further expand your understanding about market structure / correlation. Even I still can't learn to incorporate all the information on a live trading market like Tigertrader or other traders on that thread could.



You will then forget about wanting to scalp 2-3 ticks cause it is not feasible and surely it is doomed for failure, sad but that's the honest truth.

Even after reading that thread, I gained valuable knowledge, but it still hasn't made me rich or successful. But it has shown me the reality of trading as a retail trader, and it isn't pretty as you may have come across in some video or news. You need a good account size upwards of 25K + to minimize the risk you put on for each trade and be able to withstand drawdowns and still come back tomorrow to trade.

I am not going to endorse that becoming an elite member will help you in your journey, but if you are serious about it, then there are some valuable knowledge that will help you get your rationale straight and thinking in the right direction. However, there are always resources out there on google if you look hard enough. But you will not know the amount of effort required to make this work successfully over long period of time, so take some time to think about if you really want to spend all the time, effort and money over this. There are many other ways your money can be invested with a better return than trading.

I've invested quite a bit of time myself, and wished i could know just how much effort and work it will require of me before I dug deeper. I now want to to make this worth the invaluable time I have put in it. If you have decided to get started after thinking about it for a while, there are many beginner journals on the other side of the forum where traders like myself and others who have journaled their progress from a complete beginner point of view.

All the best in your journey.

John

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  #6 (permalink)
 
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 Rrrracer 
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^^^ You may not want to hear it but this is very good advice.

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  #7 (permalink)
 
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 rintin2x 
salt lake utah
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: CQG
Trading: ES
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I scalp and closed the positions with a tick or two wins, but never initially did targetting 2 ticks only .

Edit: seriously when you’re targetting only 2 ticks, don’t bother with chart and other things...go straight to DOM only.

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  #8 (permalink)
 
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 rintin2x 
salt lake utah
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: CQG
Trading: ES
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Another thing to think about, please correct me if im wrong here. I did my last year tax, statement showed me way more than what I have in my account, I truely believe thats because they tax on gross, not net. So for example you trade ES, 2 tick=$25, lets just say total fee=$5, than on top of that IRS tax=$25*15%(just guessing)=$3.75, your total net=$16.25....just 65%. I can see it’s worth if you trade big and have big winning ratio, but we’re just small retails.

Now looking at the losers: 2 tick loss + fees = $30, granted not taxable, you earn $16.25 vs loss $30.

That being said, if you’re still set to just really quick scalp, trade only first and last 10 minutes, each swing for sure can give you 2 ticks easily on momentum move....that’s my secret cheat cheat sauce . Good luck.

Edit: Nie I’m even trying to change for larger target because it’s not favorable for small retail.

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  #9 (permalink)
 
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 lax99 
Denver
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: Bookmap and Jigsaw DOM
Broker: Stage 5 Trading
Trading: ZN
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broken8 View Post
wanting to learn how to scalp the es for 2 or 3 ticks per trade . using fibs and ninja 7 or 8 . open to any methods and platforms if they come highly recommended . can someone point me in the right direction ?

If you want to scalp I highly suggest using a DOM (Depth of Market) tool. It really helps open the door to the moment-to-moment transactions which take place in any given market. If you want to click at a chart a few times a day for the rush of trading then you probably don't need a DOM.

The other thing is that two or three ES ticks happen in the blink of an eye. It can be tough to pick a stop loss point in a thin market like the ES or CL. I'm going to outline the above by telling the story of how I started "scalping crude"; this may or may not apply to you, so feel free to just take it at face value.

To start: I highly respect MLM. He does things I cannot and trades markets I will not. His journal, for better or worse, is called "The Scalper's Journal". I thought that scalping was about picking a quick, whippy product, and banging out a few ticks here or there. I thought to myself "Boy... if I can do ten trades a day, hit 60%, make 8 and lose 5, then I'm making 28 ticks per day. That's ~250 after commissions. That's $65,000 per year, and then I'll just size up to a 5 lot to make hundreds of thousands!!"

And then I sat at my desk, clicked into 7 trades, lost on 5 of them, and thought "What the hell happened". Sometimes I picked the direction dead on, but got stopped to the tick. Sometimes I was perfectly right, but saw the market rocket 20 ticks in my favor after I had bailed for 8. Other times I would place an order to test the waters, only to get swept for a quick -5. I was obviously trading poorly and trying to do something which I was not meant to do.

In my opinion, scalping isn't about clicking around, hoping to become rich. I was clicking excessively, reading into every single twitch of CL, and getting nowhere. I think scalping is about reading order flow, understanding what larger folks are doing or trying to do, and hopping on board with them. It sounds easy. It's tough. It takes a whole lot of time to see what's happening, to understand why it moved today but not last week, to reason why absorption works here but not there, and to start to realize when you're wrong and need to exit immediately.

I also trade ZN, which is the US 10 year treasury future. I think this product is the easiest of all products to read precisely because it's so thick. You might pull up a chart of ZN and think "There's no action in this market. I need to trade the ES or NQ for some real action", but I can assure you that there's action every single day. The caveat is that you have to spend a lot of time staring at a DOM and interpreting the order flow.

And, like others here have said, trying to emulate somebody else's trades will wind up with you facedown in the mud. You can't just copy-paste a winning trader's P&L or strategy or mindset. You have to put in lots and lots of time.

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  #10 (permalink)
 iantg 
charlotte nc
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: My Own System
Broker: Optimus
Trading: Emini (ES, YM, NQ, ect.)
Posts: 408 since Jan 2015
Thanks Given: 90
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Like others have mentioned... This route will be hard for you.

There is right and wrong way to do this, or put another way... an easy way and a very hard way to consistently get a few ticks profit on the ES.

If you want to be successful with the ES aiming for just a few ticks of profit then you are essentially entering the arms race with the HF traders. And that is okay, there is a right way to play in this space... You will need to be an algorithmic trader and take advantage of the spread on entries and exits alike using only passive limit orders and your execution speed will need to be very quick.

I did some analysis on how quickly price levels were clearing a little while back but I think this will give you some perspective on what you are up against. If you are targeting 2-3 ticks, you will need to be in and out in 1 to 2 seconds in order to not end up going for a ride 3-5 ticks the opposite way. To do this effectively and use the spread in your favor you will need queue optimization, and an algorythm to pull the trigger only using passive limit orders on every entry and every exit. You can have the occasional emergency exit that crosses the spread, but this won't get hit too often if you know how to use it. These are the tools of HF traders, and wanna be HF traders like me. . There is a play book to this that is fairly well known among these types of circles, but for anyone else trying to profit in the ES on just a few ticks.... most of this is going to sound like Charlie Brown's teachers.... Unfortunately I think you will have a difficult time if you don't use this type of tool set, and it is not very well known or discussed.

There are plenty of other profitable ways to trade the ES, especially for discretionary retail traders, but these all involve using larger targets. This is due the fact that you will not be competitive in a speed race at all in this market. So the few ticks you pick up will be across the spread, late on entries and late on exits every time. And I think you will struggle to find an edge that overcome these factors. So it would be better IMO to target 5,10,15,20 ticks on the ES if you are discretionary / retail.

Consider the following:

1. Based on my analysis below you will see 50% to 75% of the price levels get cleared in 1 to 2 seconds.
2. Unless you are co-locating and using an algorythm that is very optimized you will typically be clicking to trade from home and hitting 1- 2 seconds just to click, submit your order, send your order over the internet, touch your data feed, go to your broker, then go to the exchange.
3. Adverse selection will come into play in a big way considering points 1 and 2.
4. Depending on if you submit a profit target / stop loss with your order or if you try to pull the trigger on your exit yourself you may see additional delays that can impact your P&L.




Best of luck!

Ian

In the analytical world there is no such thing as art, there is only the science you know and the science you don't know. Characterizing the science you don't know as "art" is a fools game.
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