I have tried backtesting this, and although it shows profit, it will not do for me cause losses go beyond my limits of 15%, this is NOT to say I win on 85% as there are breakeven trades, but many breakeven trades are overall profitable trades cause I average down, but based on backtesting and trading a one lot, no go for me. I think if you can't make money trading a one lot, more contracts is not going to be a profitable method.
Trading one lot and a size - two different stories.I think trading a one lot is more complex task then trading a size.With one lot, you need to catch at the very take off moment to otherwise not position yourself where you have a drawdown.There is no other way to trade one lot.Sure you can place a limti order,but who gives you the price? Whereas,when you trade size you are more of thinking in terms of segments,clusters,ranges,specific hours, accumulation/distribution 'cells' within these clusters etc...
Was that due to the incorrect defenition of the 'opening' hours of each segment or the failure to determine accumulation/distribution 'cells' within these segments or alltogether,or you can`t say for sure?
For my own trading and how I backtested it, the first ninty minutes of the day session offers the biggest extension of price that follows thru and most often where volume actually works more than 50/50 using my rules of what is supposed to happen, where upon I can increase size. Cause of the percentages telling me of Price follows through or is more likely to hit my first target, I can bend my money management rules during this timeframe. Unlike the next 3 hours and fifteen minutes when it is lunch and each of most bars are much smaller and offers less profit for my style of trading. So not all signals are used cause likelyhood of congestion type ranges. So if one is generally a trend trader and going in on a breakout, buying near highs and selling near lows is unacceptable. The afternoon session till close for me, can give an open range breakout, but unless you are very experienced and have specialized in ES market, you can often get whipsawed to death in this session. But the ES and other indexes have many reoccurring patterns based on closures of other markets and other countries. Just like most traders never really study charts, they number crunch, studying thousands of charts by eye is hard to do, so much easier to have PC's backtest, but newbies don't want to work hard to make it in this business, they don't want to hear to study first for three years and save a ton of money. I do all my backtesting based on a one lot past 20 odd years trading first S&P and now ES and others. I have made good systems thru the years and even better money management rules for these systems. So I have developed good entries but even if they were poor entires, money management rules would take over. I think after awhile, maybe fifteen years of this, I just figured precise entries only means less risk, but what I do AFTER I get in is all that matters. Trend also matters or how you discern trend to be, which never been my best at trading, I am for most part a good counter-trend trader, but you can factor that into trend trades wanting for price to retrace. I trade pretty decent size till I hit my daily goal, but all based on one lot. So even if I traded all but a one lot, the method I trade has to have a low enough losing % for me to be interested.
To trade, you need to learn/study how to enter. Using the same principle you can learn how to exit, although the latter is infinitely harder due to momentum and trends. FoN
I don`t trade US session,but from what i see from the charts i think the opening time is displaced now somehow a bit hours backwards.It`s not 9:30 anymore.It starts developing way earlier.Maybe i`m wrong though.
it just exactly on the contrary.it is because of the momentum you know exactly where and whet to exit.but the entry could swindle you at times i think that there is no other solution but to take a small loss.
Very often we now have huge gaps depending on overnite action, and when ES use to jump at 7:20CDT, they now start at 7:00CDT, and of course any news at 7:30cdt makes them leap in one direction or another. I seldom trade ES pre-day session, rather trade Financials and currencies for the report play as they give more bang for the buck. I find there is 1.50 hours I don't like to trade crude oil before the open, so gives more time for these 2 other sectors. I like all four T-Bonds, 10/5/2 yr notes, one will be the strongest and one will be the weakest, often times in this report times I will do a day trade spread play
Someone gets up erlier Yes,it seems that the morning session(the first part) begins around 7:00CDT,then, before the US lunch, where the European session ends the second part plays out.But the third part is the most vague,it can starts and ends at any time. So the best leading indicator for these two parts could be the order flow,not volume.Volume only shows up after the fact.