Why some traders only trade with ES? In my opinion it is less efficient on the intraday because sometimes ES is not moving and another future may be moving wildly. Is it a mistake to trade only ES?
Other Futures like NQ may be moving fast and furious in the other direction that you are positioned...when one is most proficient in ES, maybe one can move up to NQ...
ES is probably the top 5 most efficiently traded securities on the planet. Not good for the retail trader. Margins are razor thin and trading cost advantages have a lot to do with profitability. But nobody will believe me. Think about opening a store selling shampoo and tupperware next to a walmart. Its possible, but i dont recommend it.
Who's losing? Mostly those that are not changing with the times. ES is not the same as 1999, nor 2010. Bots are heavily deployed. If you cannot design a bot to trade, you certainly can't compete with them. 50% of my trades are "anti-bot" trades and is the bread and butter. Predictability in this context is more like a predictable Las Vegas magic show.
There have been prolonged periods in the past where ES was fairly bad for day trading, i.e., very narrow ranges. It's only over the last few weeks that we've seen a resemblance of this on ES. For the last few years it's been great for day trading with fairly large moves on a daily basis. NQ seems like a better market for scalping as there's more momentum behind the moves. However, this can be a two-edged sword as it's more wild as I perceive it. But that may very well be because I'm not experienced with this market. With ES - I know how it typically moves. What's a normal move. What's an exaggerated move. And a lot of other statistical biases. That's not to say it's an easy market to trade. But to me it's more predictable than NQ.
Most of retail traders that trade the Emini ES futures should not be trading it. They're trading it because its popular to talk about at forums, broker promotes it heavily with low margins and leverage and many futures trading platforms will use Emini ES to promote the platform. Yet, there are ways to navigate trading Emini ES futures when its not moving the way you want it to move... Such as not trading and trade whatever you refer to as trading wildly although you gave no examples of a trading day or duration in a trading day when ES is not moving and something else is moving wildly...as in no chart example comparison. Regardless, one should test the trade signal strategy on many different trading instruments and use the results of the tests or simulator trading to determine if Emini ES is suitable for the strategy or if something else is suitable for the strategy. wrbtrader