Why not get the feeling for one or two stocks... I traded stocks, when things got harder, switched to eMini´s and now I´m back with stocks. I do trade the eMini´s sometimes but for me it´s easier to trade familiar stocks. This has been said before : From futures back to stocks is like playing back a record on 50% speed....
H20 brings out an interesting point. It's not very often I read about a trader as knowlegeable as H2O going back to stocks. (he taught me a scalping technique one afternoon in the chatroom). But there is a truth about the speed and liquidity of the E-minis vs. stock trading. Michael B
H2O is right there. The speed difference is huge. Be carefull and practice practice practice. Real time simulator helped me out big in getting the trade placements and seeing what clicks with the market and indicators but theres nothing like it when the cash hits the table. So be careful. Lots of good ideas here in these posts. learn to merge and stat out of the chop gw
This advice is not very good, in my opinion. I have traded both and the emini's are vastly superior. they are much cheaper to trade and more efficient if you are doing any kind of $$ volume at all. The biggest problem I have with trading SPY and QQQ is the way brokers charge for your order. There is a flat fee that you pay no matter how many of your chares you ended up getting. I can put in a limit order for 2000 QQQ, but if I only get taken out on 50 QQQ, and the price starts to run the other way, then what? Do you cancel the mostly unfilled order and place another order for 1950, hoping once again to get all your shares? Or do you wait and hope it comes back and fills the rest of your order, risking the fact it might never come back and you lose a large winning trade. Remember, you pay flat fees on EVERY trade, no matter how many shares you end up getting in a particular trade. The cost of getting filled on 1 single QQQ is the same as getting filled on 2000 QQQ. Its just a very inefficeint way to trade, its more expensive than emini's, you have less margin power, the QQQ shares are split over several ECN's, thereby further reducing liquidity, etc. Just stick to futures, if you can't make money trading emini's, you won't make it trading SPY and QQQ, in fact your losses will be even more trading those.
I have been daytrading SPY (100 shrs) for about 2 months now. I have had only 1 winning week, however, my account is only down 1.2 %. If I would have gone straight to ES, my account would be smaller and I would be under a great deal of phsycological pressure do to the greater risk. The goal for now is to lose as little as possible while learning to trade one setup. As far as commisions, they are .01 per share at IB. Good Luck
The perfect E Mini System has beeen found thats why these guys are hitting with 50 - 200 lots do the math here boys just gotta do some serious damage here. Watch your head fakes cause these guys are pros. The Spyders and Diamonds are good to watch for market direction against ES. Ride the Wave Stay Healthy gw