Hi Eric P; Still the best thread on SI, and I know it must take a lot of your time. I sincerely hope that you put it into a book, and make some bucks and get some fame, as well as train a few traders. Some further thoughts about learning to scalp:
Seattle Online is fairly well connected. We can use the ISLD, BTRD or INCA books. Like any other trading office, we can SOES or SNET various ways.
Mostly I use ISLD, but I also use INCA and SOES. I sometimes SNET also, but the commissions are higher, and I don't like the interface. Hmmmm. Seems like I've found a lacking that I've been ignoring. Okay, tomorrow I will practice using the various weird preferencing techniques. The only time to learn them is when you don't need them...
There are no scalpers besides me, in the office at the time, in the sense of someone who can generate huge numbers of tickets. We did have one this past fall, though. He did quite well, though not as much as those $1000 and up traders you hear about. I keep hoping he'll come back this summer.
I don't find scalping stressful at all. In fact, the big clue that scalping is in my blood was when I discovered that if I held a stock for more than 5 minutes I tended to get emotional about it, and would dump it too early, or marry it.
I started training myself in scalping in March, starting with the slow movers. I am sure it would be easier if I had someone to guide me, but the real fact is that everybody probably needs to develop their own techniques.
The office used to be a lot louder than it is currently with regard to people calling out their trades. My favorite were the CNBC news plays. Mostly, we did these as a sort of a community trade, a few times per week. On a dull day, they were hilarious. But now we have a squawk box from the futures pit, so I have less aural bandwidth to throw at the TV.
I think scalping is the safest and most elegant way to trade. When traders tell me that they don't want to scalp, my mouth hangs open until I remember that not everybody sees it the way I do...
As far as the big bucks you mentioned, that may come later or it may not. Trading is a sort of a game, and is fun in and of itself. It brings me back to my chess playing youth in some way. I know I trade better when I don't think about money at all, just the game. While it's true that the great scalpers make an incredible amount of money, I never think of it. I would be quite content with trading for considerably less than what I make as an engineer.
-- Carl |
