I agree with you. But for someone with a $1000 account with no plan or experience, it is a problem. But I'm with you, I love the intraday vol since 2019 ended.
Well, you just wrote yourself that there are markets that are easier to trade than ES in your experience. So, it seems like you're in agreement? Well, the thing is if you have something unique that's currently working you want to exploit that. Not share it and by doing so possibly making it go away. The exception would be if you once had an edge that is no longer working. DE Shaw (the hedge fund) wouldn't even share redundant strategies in a Market Wizards interview because they considered that a potential advantage for the competition. There was I believe a few examples of traders who found anamolies/mispricings in the Market Wizards that they were able to exploit and which eventually went away. One guy was quoting prices in illiquid stocks and made his initial pile doing that. I think people have different ideas in mind when the word edge is used. When the word inefficiency is used I interpret that to mean that the market is not correctly priced. For example, if you could accurately calculate the spread between ES futures and the S&P 500 index, you could do a pair trade whenever they get out of whack and collect risk free money as they get back in line. This is however not something a retail trader can do as it's done by computers and the result is that the index/futures are pretty much always in lock-step and not out of whack at all. Essentially, arbitrage is risk-free money. With instruments that are less traded mispricings are more likely to occur and potentially exploited. I assume that's what meant. Fact is an "edge" could mean many, many things. But I agree that it would be nice to hear more from that poster.
For those exact reasons, I think it is unlikely that any systematic inefficiency would be left on the table by this guy and others that have been at it for a couple of decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician) Couldn't you argue the same for any instrument, strategy and time period. That every systematic inefficiency has been arbitraged away? Yes. But if Jim Simons would leave anything on the table it would be much less profitable than a strategy based on S&P 500 e-mini futures where as you say you have the ability "to move size."
Try to ask Jim Simons that question. He has been asked that question for a couple of decades now. If he gives you an answer, I will be happy to answer as well.
Such people include Jim Simons. If he had given away his edge every time someone asked, there would be no Medallion Fund. Why would you give away any edge to see it arbitraged away?
Yes. Probably. See my prior comment on arbitrage. Regardless, the ES market is clearly not random and it moves sufficiently on a daily basis. This can be exploited. Easy? No. Possible? Most certainly. An untradeable market for me would be one that was completely random and which moved around in a very narrow range. In some past periods this may have been true for ES. At least the narrow range part. These days it's moving around greatly from day to day. This can be exploited.
My biggest issue with trading the ES are the Algo's constantly hunting your stops & chopping the market in a range instead of breaking out on one side. Makes it worse when I overtrade and after noon when the Algo's take over. Force of habit!
Today was a predictable inside day on the S&P 500 following a larger move down. If you expected continuation either higher or lower today you could quite possibly get smoked buying high and selling low. As important as it is to learn how to trade it's very important to know when not to trade. Simply put: If you don't know what's going on or have a rational expectation to make a profit; don't trade. The more you learn/understand the more you can trade/participate. That's obvious, because if you don't know anything, you shouldn't be doing anything. Just sit on your ass and watch and see if you can catch on.
If you see what I posted in the ES journal that prediction was posted before the bell rang today. EDIT: By the way. I use a predictive model for that. But I’m sure an experienced chartist/trader could come to the same conclusion without one.