Futures :: Forex Trading

The Joys of Scale Trading

Days like today almost make me want to sing about the joys of scale trading.  

Last Thursday December cotton dipped just below 49.50 where I had my buy order in.

Today is Monday and December cotton jumped up to just over 51.50 where I had my sell order.

So within 3 trading days I made $1000 (not counting commissions which are about $15 for a round turn) because cotton makes $500 for each whole point it moves up.

This is scale trading at its finest.

Cotton closed around 51.60 so I am ready for the price to drop tomorrow back to 49.50 and do it all over again.

The best thing about this is last week I spent less than 10 minutes total on trading.

  • I woke up 5 mornings and checked CNBC for the prices I am following, 30 seconds X 5 days.

  • I entered 3 or 4 orders, about 1 minute each order.

  • I spent another 2 minutes looking over my orders on the index cards to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

For a total of about 8.5 minutes.  Scale trading has got to be the least time intensive form of trading there is.

I think even to do a buy and hold takes more time to research the companies.

Yesterday I was reading about an investor who says that scale trading was the worst possible way to trade stocks.  I agree with this completely.

I would never scale trade any stock, I don’t care what company it was I could never have enough faith that their price would come back like commodities have always done.

Never try to scale trade a stock, it is a great way to lose all your money, and that won’t make you sing about the joys of scale trading

Monday, September 19, 2005