Well I agree with EVERYONE who says that ‘scalping’ is a waste of time (at best case) and it will cost you in the long run (at worst case).
There is NO WAY to ‘get rich quick’ in this business I can assure you and ‘scalping’ is an attempt to do just that!!! All the ‘oldies’ around here at one time or another probably tried to ‘scalp’ in the beginning and, while it MAY have worked for a very short while, it’s only those of us who had enough capital to start again and stop ‘scalping’ that are here to tell the tale.
While there MAY be those that disagree with me on my thoughts regarding ‘scalping’ there is one thing I am 1000% sure of though:
DO NOT TRY AND ‘SCALP’ AT GCI!!!
While I personally think they are a fantastic broker and I love the trading platform DO NOT and I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT try and ‘scalp’ with them!!! I’ve been trading live with GCI for over a year now and I can assure you they will ‘feed you your ar*e on a plate’ if you try it with them. Do NOT be fooled by the demo i.e. on the demo it does not matter what instrument you trade your market order is executed ‘in split seconds’ and your stop and limit orders are ALWAYS instantly executed at the price at which you placed them. Not so in ‘the real world’ my friend. You WILL wait minutes for any type of order to be executed on most instruments and your stop and limit orders will be ‘slipped’. That is just the way they operate.
Having said that: I have learned my lesson and I still trade with GCI (my main account as a matter of fact) and I ONLY trade the daily (or longer) timeframes and if they requote me a couple of pips on a market order I gladly accept the ‘extra charge’ (within reason of course) as it were and I still make money and GCI and I are the best of friends!!!
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if you cannot afford a certain amount of ‘slippage’ then you don’t have enough money to be trading full stop!!! Read ANY book written by ANY professional trader and they will say something like ‘I placed an order at ‘XX.XX’ and I was filled at ‘YY.YY’’. No big deal. THAT’S the real world of trading. ‘Trading’ is EXACTLY that i.e. I make an offer to buy ‘something’ at a certain price and someone else is prepared to sell the same ‘something’ at a certain price and if the two are ‘matched’ i.e. we agree on the price (somewhere in the ‘middle’ sort of thing) of the ‘something’ then you have a deal. It’s not ‘I WANT ‘X’ amount for this and you WILL pay ‘Y’ amount for it OR ELSE’ type of scenario.
GCI has had some EXTREMELY bad reports everywhere because of this BUT if you read the reports, taking into account what I’ve just said above, then you’re good to go and they are a good broker. DO NOT TRY AND SCALP WITH THEM!!! If you’re not going to take my word for it then I want 10% commission on every loss you make (you don’t have to pay me commission on the profits you make)!!! (And by the way I am NOT, YET, an introducing broker for GCI so I have no financial interest in making the above statements).
As a matter of fact, now that I’m on the subject, I don’t see what I’m about to post being explained properly ANYWHERE and I think it’s about time it was:
This ‘business’ of seeing the ‘high flyers’ in the movies buying and selling all day long and making ‘gazillions’ is a pile of ‘bullsh*t’ and it’s the movies that ‘propogate’ this nonsense.
Before online trading was ‘the thing’ I ‘tried my hand’ at the stock market through a broker. I bought quite an astounding amount of shares in a particular company and ‘watched them’ (at that stage you could view the share price online but not trade) and, one day, I saw them starting to climb so, in true ‘movie style’ I picked up the phone and told my broker to sell them at the current price (not really knowing what I was doing but I just figured that once I said ‘sell’ I’d make a killing). Needless to say there was nobody willing to pay my price and there were so many other shares on offer at the same price that mine were never sold at that price and the price then dropped and continued to drop for days after that until I could not take it any more and eventually got rid of the shares at a loss.
Now while you may not care about my ‘sop story’ above the point is that nothing has changed NOT EVEN with online trading as we know it today. YOU do NOT drive the market or the price. If you ‘own’ an instrument and you decide to ‘sell’ that instrument such transaction will only take place if there is somebody somewhere willing to pay your price. If not: you will either get requoted (by your broker: enter GCI) or you will be forced to hold on to what you own. Just because you want to ‘rid’ yourself of an instrument at a certain price DOES NOT mean that you’re going to be able to ‘rid’ yourself of the said instrument at the price you want. If it were that easy believe me I be selling Dow at 14 000 on Monday because I bought Dow on Friday at 12 345!!!
I only wish that someone had explained this to me IN THIS WAY i.e. ‘down to earth’ when I first started trading live (again???). It sure would have saved me a whole lot of ‘anguish’, ‘swearing’ at my broker (it was only GCI at the time), ‘blaming’ GCI BECAUSE I’d just lost money BECAUSE instead of giving me a price of 1.4676 on EUR/USD they gave me 1.4675, and then when I’d finally ‘wiped out’ my (first of many) account going around telling everybody that this is a ‘crooked’ business and the brokers are ‘scammers’ and THAT’S why I lost my money!!! NO WAY could my losses be my fault!!! NO WAY!!! ‘It’s a dirty business I tell ya’ll’!!!
Anybody out there want DAX at 9 000??? I’ve got a few lots available if you want them!!! See my point???
Edit:
As a matter of fact this post is SUCH a ‘work of art’ it deserves it’s own thread don’t you think!!!