I'm just day trading Emini TF...not trying to swing trade it. Thus, I just want to get trade signals regardless to it's price levels. 2011 has been producing more price action that can be traded than the past two years in comparison for the same time period. I don't use volume or technical moving averages. However, I am impress about one thing this year so far...it takes a lot longer for the price action to retrace a recent volatility spike. In contrast, the last two years...too many intraday durations where a volatility spike was immediately followed by another volatility spike in the opposite direction. Regardless, supposedly the ICE exchange is trying to make Emini TF more attractive to institutional traders (I'll post a link to the article if I can find it). If ICE can do that...hopefully we'll get near price action environment we saw in ER2. Also, the average trade size is up a little in comparison to the average trade size of 2009 and 2010. Last of all, if TF is going to go higher...I hope it does such on increasing volatility because that contracting volatility on price increases is a killer. As soon as I see it...I call it a day instead of trying to be brave and trade it because not every day is a trading day. Also, so far the data fee increase for Emini TF on ICE doesn't seem to have a negative impact on retail traders...the same guys that I know were trading it the past few years...they're still trading it. However, I do see more Emini TF traders trying to diversify their trading by starting to learn the price actions of other trading instruments. Mark
Ya Mark if you could post that article i would appreciate it. Secondly yes i think thats the main issue right now is the volitility is practically non existant. Whether we go up or down, heck even side ways i would appreciate an increase in the vix. We are stuck in what seems like a 10-20 pt range all year with a few bear/bull traps but none the less 10-20 pt range with very few good moves unless you trade a chop strategy or some algo which by the sound of things you dont.
Today's current TF volume as of 3:30pm eastern is barely 80,000 contracts turned. It won't reach 100k for the session, a non-farm payroll day that is often higher than usual volume. Total price range is 7.3 index points from peak to trough. I'm not sure what you're seeing in the tapes this year, but I see a symbol trading on 1/2 to 1/3 its former volume with shriveled price ranges and tons of algo-bot chop with little else, more days than not. ** By comparison, the CL has traded 330,000+ contracts thru a 322 cent range good for $3,220 per contract price span. Care to guess where the former ER2 veterans can be found now?
yeah today when i tried trading TF i was thinking about the volume issue AustinP and yeah time to move to crude.
As I stated before, I don't use volume in my trading. In other words, it's not on my charts. Thus, my only concern is the volatility and volatility has been improving this year so far...hopefully it continues. Mark
I don't use volume of any kind in my trading... price action only. The reference to current lack of volume in the market is only meant to show that liquidity is anorexic thin. That means price movement crosses the line from volatile to spastic, when it's only the bots and you active in those tapes. VIX levels have hovered around 16 and sliding for months now. Intraday ranges, too. But we all see different things in the tape, and I'm happy for you that what you see is favorable. party on
I prefer to use Emini TF own volatility via comparing the number of expansion intervals and duration time it takes to retrace a prior expansion intervals in comparison to any of its historical data (e.g. 2009 and 2010). This year so far (hope it continues), there are more expansion intervals and the duration to retrace a prior expansion intervals has lengthen. Mark
I've stopped trading TF, strategy drawdown achieved 150% of in-sample results from 2002-2007 and I've noticed the behavior of the instrument is not the same as it used to be. Might reconsider in the future but for now I'll just keep an eye on it.