3 “Boring” Scalping Strategies The Top 1% of Traders Use

I've probably taken over 10,000 trades in my life. Last week, I looked at all the trades I've taken and realized something that changed how I look at trading forever. The trades I took that won were simple and boring. The trades I lost were overcomplicated and I wasn't following my system. I've been trading for seven years, I've studied hundreds of trading strategies and realized my best trades come from three simple setups. In this video, I'll show you how I trade them, show real examples, and then near the end of this video, I'll reveal how I combine all three to give me the highest probability strategy. All right, so in this video, I'm going to explain the three boring setups that I use on a consistent basis when I'm trading in the markets and I've been trading for the last seven years. In this video, I'm going to try to keep it short, to the point, but valuable. So make sure to watch the whole thing, but remember, all you need to do is pick your favorite setup. I'm going to show you three setups that I like the most trading in the markets and then based off the setup you like the most, you can see which one works the best for you. And near the end of the video, I'll talk about how to combine all three as well. So for this first setup, we are on Microsoft and all we're going to do is go to the daily time frame. On the daily time frame, and of course, this is the one day time frame, all we need to do is simply mark out the previous day high and the previous day low. One thing you'll notice about the strategy and system, I try to have the least amount of levels as possible and I try to keep my trading extremely mechanical. With this being said, all I'm going to do is mark out the previous day high and previous day low. So this is the Wednesday candle high and the Wednesday candle low, and that's because we're going to be trading on Thursday. Remember, when we're trading, we're trading the 9.30 a.m. Eastern New York Stock Exchange open. For myself, I trade stocks, options, and futures. This applies to all of them, but also if you trade forex, crypto, or any other instrument, this can also work for that, but you want to be trading the 9.30 a.m. open. Now that we have our previous day high and previous day low, it is very simple. For the first boring setup, because the most liquidity is sitting at previous day high or previous day low, we know if we break above that previous day high level, that means that there are more buyers than sellers. Therefore, if we pull back into this area, because remember, every healthy uptrend needs a pullback. When we pull back into this area, buyers understand that we need to overpower sellers. So in this area, buyers will want to step up for that continuation play to the upside, because if it does fail back below, then that means that sellers are overpowering buyers, and that is the relationship that we're playing. We're playing the relationship of understanding buyers are overpowering sellers above previous day high, and then if we're looking for previous day low retest, then we're playing the relationship of sellers overpowering buyers at this area. So understand, when a stock moves in any direction, it is the direct correlation of buyers and sellers, and that's the only way a stock can move. So like I said, we're either looking for that previous day high break and retest or the previous day low. Remember, we let the stock and the trade come to us. So we wait for this to happen and set up. We don't need a bias coming into the day. We don't need a thesis. We simply just trade the price action that's in front of us. Let's play out this day and see exactly what happens. Now, remember, for me, I am on the one minute timeframe, because I trade and execute on the one minute timeframe. But whatever timeframe you're comfortable with, whether it's a five minute, 15 minute, 10 minute, you can trade on any timeframe for myself personally, because I do scalp trade and day trade. I trade specifically on the one minute timeframe. As we can see here, we have now broken out and we're coming back for the retest. So we broke above that previous day high, and now we're coming back for the retest with strong price action. The reason we have strong price action is because buyers are stepping in at this area. If you don't understand how to read price action, I have a full in-depth guide in the free how to start day trading course, which is in the link in the description. All you have to do is sign up. It is absolutely free, and it has three hours of trading education from beginner to advanced. With this being said, as we can see here for this trade, this is where we would enter. Our stop loss is always going to be a break below that previous day high, and our profit target needs to be at least a two hour multiple, meaning if we're risking $100 at the stop loss, we need to make $200 of profit. However, in this example, I'm just going to target out that 500 whole psychological number because this is the next area that this stock can come into. So in this example, if we're risking about $530, we're looking for about $2,380 of potential profit on this trade. Let's see what happens. And as we can see here, this trade was a great example of understanding how to use that previous day high strategy, and it worked out extremely well back into our profit target, and we were done at 10 to one, which means about 31 minutes into market open. Now, this was the first strategy. You can see it's mechanical, it's simple, and maybe a little bit boring, but it's the boring systems that help traders become profitable. This was the first strategy. Let's go over to strategy number two. All right, here we are for strategy number two. We're on Tesla, and we're on the one minute timeframe. Now, for the last strategy, we had to use our levels from the previous day high and the previous day low. We had to go to the daily timeframe. But what if I wanted a strategy that requires for me to only look at one timeframe? Well, if I want a strategy that I can only look at one timeframe and keep it very, very simple without switching to the daily timeframe, what I'm going to do is mark out the pre-market high and low levels. Pre-market high and low happens from 4 a.m. Eastern to 9.30 p.m. Eastern, and all I'm going to do, no matter what instrument I'm trading, is mark out the high and low from 4 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. Eastern, and it is the exact same setup. We are still looking for buyers above that pre-market high, retest and continuation, or sellers below that pre-market low, retest and continuation. It is a very similar strategy because it's the retest strategy, but the setup is simply based on the pre-market levels this time compared to the previous day high and previous day low levels. So let's play out this day and see exactly what happens. So far, you can see we got into pre-market high. We haven't broke above pre-market high just yet. Here's the break of pre-market high. This tells me that buyers are stepping up, but I still need the retest back into our pre-market high area. And you can see, even though buyers stepped up very nicely, we still retested that pre-market high because this is the area of support that buyers know they need to hold the stock above. Remember, in this big push up, there was no levels of support. The only level of support that we had here or any sort of resistance was that pre-market high resistance, and that's why we can see buyers stepping up in this area. At this area, I'm going to put my stop loss once again below that pre-market high, but a break of the candle that I'm entering in on and my profit target can simply be high of day. This gives me about an 8.8 risk to reward trade. This means if I'm risking about $560 at the break of structure, I'm looking to make $4,420 at the high of the day. Let's play out this trade and see exactly what happens. Remember, I'm trying to show you these simple examples. Simple doesn't mean guaranteed. Trading does come with risk, but our goal with trading is to keep it as repeatable as possible because for me, what helped me trading when I was trying to become profitable was trying to simplify trading as much as possible rather than trying to keep it complicated and adding different indicators and noise. As we can see, this trade just hit high of day here. We entered in on that pre-market high, buyers stepped in, and this pushed up very, very nicely. So this was strategy number two, but now let me show you the final strategy that I use on a consistent basis and what has helped me trade for the last seven years. OK, so for this final example, we're on MU. For the first example, you had to go to the daily time frame and then come to the one minute time frame. On the second example, you still needed the pre-market data to understand what's going to happen throughout the day. But what if you just wanted to come to your desk at 930 a.m. Eastern and trade the levels that were in front of you and not worry about anything that happened on the previous dates? Is there a strategy that we can trade for that? Well, for that, I like to use my first candle strategy. What is the first candle strategy? Well, for the first candle strategy, all I need to do is play out the first five minutes of market open. Once I play out the first five minutes of market open, this is going to give me a good indication whether the stock is going up, whether the stock is going down. But remember, the most volume traded during a day is going to happen within the first five minutes of market open. And because we understand that the stock only moves based off of volume and other people buying and selling, we're going to mark out this five minute high and the five minute low, because in the intraday price action, we know that this is going to be the levels where the stock respects either the high or low and looks for continuation above or below. Now, I don't know how many of you guys caught it, but we actually use this five minute strategy for the last example as well. So after this video is done, go rewatch example number two. We actually use this five minute high and five minute low strategy for example number two, where we waited for that previous low break and then entered in on that retest opportunity. But it was just combined with the pre-market strategy. In this example, you can see we broke below that five minute low. We retested and we're getting weak price action. So what I'm going to do is look to enter into a position here. And remember the last two examples I was buying for a move to the upside. For this example, I'm actually looking to short the stock because you can not only make money buying the stock, but you can actually make money shorting the stock as well if you know what you're doing. And remember, though, I'm showing you these examples here. I trade live every single day in the accelerator where I'm trading in front of thousands of traders to help them understand my thesis and what I'm looking for in real time. And the link for that is, of course, in the description. But as we can see here for this trade on the five minute low strategy, this is a 3.24 risk to reward trade. We're risking about $3,400 up here to make about $9,500 of potential profit. Enter into this trade and see exactly what happens. And as we can see, this trade was executed very nicely and we would have been done the day at $9.45. So 15 minutes into the market open, we would have been done the day because we're using a boring but simple and repeatable strategy. So if you want to learn more about any of these strategies that I talked about today and more about how to start trading from absolutely scratch to an advanced trader, make sure to click the playlist on screen now. It's a free course. If this video helped you, make sure to leave it a like. If you have any questions, put them in the comments down below. Subscribe to the channel. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter for more education. And I'll see you in next week's video.