I actually agree with what you're saying. Which is why right now I focus mainly on one vehicle (mnq/nq), only occasionally trade the others. However, in order for me to have the highest probability trade for myself there's a lot of factors that have to align. That would be the point / is the point of me trading multiple instruments. But yes right now with my human limitations as stated focusing largely on MNQ/NQ. It's very difficult for me to just sit and not trade. So if NQ isn't showing anything or is looking unlikely that it will, than I will go to MES/MCL to see if theirs a setup there to try and prevent myself from taking sub par setup in NQ. Again there's nothing wrong with what you're saying, it's correct, logical and make sense but it is just standard and obvious information which I am well aware of and sure everyone posting in this journal is as well. But if we all did in trading what we know we should than most of us would be rich, that's the hard part is actually doing it. While I've come along ways, am still not fully doing what I know I should be doing.
Unless something drastically changes Sunday night, than see no reason why we wouldn't get more of the same action. The market isn't even that extended if you factor in context, odds are ES will run to at least 4671.25 - 4684, before any sustainable long term pullback. Just trading it intra-day as signals come. No need to try and be a hero or early on aggressive shorting, just wait for confirmation and if we miss some of the down move, that's better than being early and losing.
my guess is 4800-5000 next. Last week I was kind of expecting some sort of retrace (based on sentiment as I mentioned) but I was wrong. We kept going up and I abandoned that idea a few days in and went back to my 'buy all dips and breakouts' method and it's working well I expect us to just keep going up and any dips will surely be a gift to buy into. Thanks my guess. Certainly not gonna think about shorting until we are lots higher, personally.
The average RTH range on NQ over the last 20 days is approximately 150 points. There have not been many this year below 100 points. Let's assume 100 points as a conservative minimum and that you're able to take 20 % of that net daily. That's 20 points / 40$ per MNQ contract. Let's say you trade 1 MNQ contract per every $2.5K in your account. Simple example: $3K account. You start out trading 1 contract. At day 51 you're allowed to trade 2 contracts. It will take you 103 days to hit $10K, but after that, growth starts accelerating. After 250 days your account hits just over $90K. Remember, your only goal is to get those 20 points per day. If you start out with $5K - even better. Here, like in the first example, you'll spend a lot of time to grow your account initially, but at a certain point it starts snowballing. Your account hits 200K after a year of trading. Bottom line: Master one market and you're rich. Worry about that other stuff later on. If it's "very difficult for you to just sit and not trade", then that's what you should adress, IMO. A common theme repeated amongst successful traders is that it's key to not overtrade and being able to wait for the best trades. In poker, it's called playing your strong hands only. Discipline. And of course trading is hard. That's why so few master it. It's rigged against human nature.
Completely agree, nothing else for me to add. Need to apply discipline and methodically scale up as capital allows. It's the only way I'll be able to accomplish my larger goal. Going to really work on this and actually do it.
I don't claim to hold all the answers, but the key point I'm trying to communicate is that a consistent daily profit even if fairly small eventually will grow into a large sum if you don't withdraw capital and compound your profits. Yes, progress is small and slow initially, but at some point growth starts accelerating. I'm sure most people trading a small account approaches it the other way around, i.e., I have a small account, so I need to swing for the fences and make a killing every single day. Most can't do that and frustration can lead to unnecessary losses where a trader instead could have been satisfied with a small daily take. Let's say you hit $90K after year 1 by compounding. You can then choose to slow down a bit and stop compounding and stick with a fixed size of say 5 contracts. That's $18K in margin per each full NQ contract. 20 points per day x 5 contracts = $2000. Your account hits $590K at the end of year 2 with zero compounding. Now you have the money to hire some programmers to automate your multi-time frame strategy and move on to other markets... But first, you need to master NQ and get your daily nut every single day without fail.
first dip in a while! 'im long ym amd es here. ps -bitcoin, man! My friend got rich from that. I'm jelly. He's still holding a fair bit and it's still ramping. Up 5% today! Mad mover