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Are you long term profitable? If so, I wouldn't advise changing markets.
If you are not, then how many trades per month are you doing? What is your average gross gain per trade in dollars? What percentage of your total gross gains do you pay in commissions?
I think these values need to be known before making recommendations.
It's a little early to say whether I'm "long term profitable"...but, this is the problem I'm having now.
I'm scalping for 3 ticks. I'm getting a pretty high percentage of winners. Take today for example, I've had 5 scalps and they've all been winners, so I made $163.75.
But, I was just thinking, if I had lost these 5 today, I would have lost $211.25. That's a $47.50 swing! Just seems a little wide of a spread to me.
Sounds like you know the market you are trading pretty well. I don't think I would change that. Changing brokers usually is more hassle then it's worth if you are familiar with your current one. Maybe all brokers are the same price in your market...? You may need to try and get longer trades... Set up a spreadsheet to run the numbers...I don't think I would assume a max win rate of better then 70%. Plug in a bunch of scenarios though. What happens if you have 4 days at 20% win. Do you have a max weekly/monthly money stop. I found with commissions and the stops I felt I needed to use that it was very hard if not impossible to only scalp for 3-4 pips and be long term profitable. (high pressure)You need a very high consistent win rate because you are capping your money at 3 ticks. Getting a 15-30pip run occasionally and adding to this scenario dramatically changes the numbers though.... If you read any of the Al Brooks stuff you will see he supplements the small trades with the occasional longer run.
I am very interested that you posted this question though. I think there are a lot of scalpers on this board yet no one mentions commissions. I find this surprising. Office and infrastructure costs are usually small - laptop/work from home... but commissions are the major expense especially if you are a high frequency trader. - I thought this may not be the case with other markets as I trade Forex (or with swing traders) but now I see it comes into play with ES.
I have done both scalp and swing and have moved more towards swing (meaning 15+pip targets preferably a lot more). I understand the attraction of 3 ticks with 50 cars..in/out. Done in 10 minutes. I just can't do it with a high enough win rate consistently.
You might try to get a hold of Sharky...haven't seen him post in awhile but he trades like this (scalp) and makes it work. He may have more insight or some good advice. Scalping is not easy.
Yes - trade the DAX. If you look at the daily movement of the DAX, see what each point is worth, and calculate how many contracts you could trade relative to the ES, you will find that the commission rate works out to approximately 5-6 times cheaper than the ES. The DAX trades less volume, but you would need to trade less contracts to get the same dollar movement, so it works out OK. If you are trading 200 ES contracts this won't work as the liquidity won't be there in sufficient quantity, but if you are trading 5-10 ES contracts, try switching to 2-3 FDAX units instead and you will see your commissions go down dramatically for the same dollar movement. (I also find it easier to trade.)
I have a friend that scalps ES for about 2-3 ticks and is profitable. He lays down so many contracts (50-100) at a time that he gets volume discounts from his broker on commissions. Plus, if you trade, on average, more than 500 cars a month (per side, so 250 cars round-trip) you can qualify for discounted exchange fees as well from the CME that they can pass through your broker. Check with your broker on how to make that happen if you think you can bring the volume.
This is how the true HFT guys get their exchange fees down to 10% of what we pay. Or, you can just buy a seat on the CME for about $1M, though I'm not sure what advantages that gets you.
