I am not sure. I really am not trust worthy enough to set up a trade trigger and go vacuum. The problem is coding what one sees on the chart into a strategy. A teenie tiny bit below the zero line is kinda hard to code. You make decisions in real time on what you see, and the ingrained patterns you have developed. Coding that flexibilty is a trick. I am working on quantifying that teenie tiny thing. I have had this dilemma myself.

Everything that can be done as an alert or trade trigger can be done as a scan. I have 3 setups right now. I call them my hair lip strategies. If they pop up in my scan window, I take the trade, and I don’t care if it hair lips the Pope. That is why I am always quizing you so I can add another strategy to the hair lip list. That was fun today talking about the SSO trade as it happened. Thanks for the input.

String

Silly question. Would that affect automation?

Nice to know it can be fixed on-the-fly.

I think what happens is there is a communications block with other internet services. There is some conflict at times on what program gets the bandwidth on the internet. I have noticed that SD will just freeze at times and then pick back up. When it starts again there can be spikes in the charts. I don’t have the solution to stop it. I have figured out getting the chart to refresh will most times fix it though.

String

MOOoo

For day-trading, you can also think of options as volatile penny stocks. For example, this afternoon I bought some SPY call options. They cost me 19 cents each, and by the end of the day, the bid was 21 cents – a 10.5% jump.

Commissions are higher on options trades, and that can make a difference in scalping profits, so make sure to check that. You can probably also negotiate lower commissions since you are such a big cash cow for your broker.

Matt

Thanks, you all are making me salivate. I’m ordering option authorization forms from my broker.

Yes, spikes are gone. What that all about?

I just thought of this. I would rather lose $ following my rules than to lose not following them.

That SSO trade is a good example. Had I not followed my rules, when price dropped below my entry price I would have gotten out for a loss. I could and would have possibly re-entered when it started to turn back up because of my entry rules, too.

It’s difficult to watch those candles wiggle up and down. Each time they move opposite of our desired direction there’s a feeling that a mistake has been made. Even those violent candle moves cause the stochastic and MACD to move in the proper direction, albeit for shorter duration occassionally.

Staying the course is often difficult because of those reasons. Watching and following the indicators keeps us out of harms way. They give us the ‘edge’. And while not all may work out for whatever reason, overall, we will succeed to be profitable.

In my research, I’ve found that more profits can be made by being unprofitable at times. To put it another way, using some trading methods that have higher losses or drawdowns can produce more gains vs. one that has fewer losses and drawdowns.

As they say, “it’s in the numbers”.

I’ve heard that the FTSE is a leading indicator for the US market. Also, I assume that the same giant banks and hedge funds are simultaneously trading on all the major US and European indexes, so they are likely to create the same patterns on all of them.

I’ve noticed that the US market will often close with the same pattern as the FTSE and/or Dax. It’s not a sure thing of course, but something to consider.

Matt

Yes, you can scalp options and trade them very quickly. Many, such as SPY options, are very liquid and trade with tight spreads. For a day-trade, as Yerk says, you don’t even need to think about time decay. In fact, you can think of them just like shares of a stock, only more volatile. You can also experiment with very small dollar amounts to see if you like it.

Matt