"So if you don't believe in TA, how will you trade short term on the e-minis?" Quite simple: I'll just listen to everyone on this board and follow them; they have it all figured out? Right?
I would like to thank everyone who did contribune today with different posts to my original question; I appreciate all the input even if we dont see eye to eye. I'm new to the futures and understand that I have a lot to learn. Hopefully with the least amount of $$$.
Dominic, I wish you the best on your new trading of the minis. As someone who trades mechanical, which seems to be a lot of us here on the board, I am wondering about your intuitive nature (how you trade using your gut). maybe we can learn something. Have you considered starting a journal thread? Just wondering. I have no thread cause my systems really boring! It just snips for a point here or there.
Get rid of the hard dollar stop and use percentages of your account. Some market wizards advocate 1%. Others go as high as 10%. The larger the timeframe, the wider the stop. You know that however, I'm sure. I would suggest that you start with 1 contract, to avoid unnecessary losses. The futures move much faster than equities. As far as TA and predictions, you don't trade your forecast which would be cycle analysis, you trade the chart and the volume, which would be the P/V relationship. The forecast simply gives you confidence to go larger. Anything you use in the futures is a form of technical analysis, since futures have no fundamentals. Regards Oddi.
ES (sp 500), YM (dow), NQ (nasdaq 100). Then there are the bonds and the european stock indexes that are also commonly traded.