Like, I had stated previously I don't know much about currencies. I've been spending all of my time researching and testing the ES, but I didn't understand why there were currency contracts on a program that didn't trade forex. But I realize now those are two separate things. I know that currencies obviously have to be going long one thing while short another so I was curious what the other side of the trade was for those contracts. I know I could have looked up that information but everyone is so helpful here I thought I'd also get an opinion from people that trade them. Thanks.
6a AUD/USD 6b GBP/USD 6c CAD/USD 6e EUR/USD . . . etc Eurodollar futures have nothing to do with the above, they are an interest rate product.
yeah, you're looking for something small, Currency futures for you are big, even IMHO moreso than ES. CL is another big one. no prob. making the switch from stocks to leverage takes a little time. Like the man said, most small stock traders can't make it unless they go prop. ES use to be the place to go, but now most go to spot forex. If you like to add to winners, a typical starting position would be 100k, and then you add 75k, 50k and 25k, and that's a full load, and you can put all that on for about 10k.
I wasn't necessarily planning on trading them. I was just curious and thought I'd get opinions from people who trade them instead of spending a lot of time researching something I won't speculate on for some time. I'm so familiar with individual stocks and indices that I can't bring myself to trade forex yet. I know how and why stocks/indices move and what to expect when big news events occur. You are right oldtime that forex would seem to fit my risk tolerance because of my available trading capital. But I'm currently taking your advice and practicing trading spreads with the ES for the time being. The commissions are a little more trading spreads than I would like but it's something I'm comfortable with going into the unfamiliar world of futures. Thanks
Many of us started out on the Mid Am, where you could trade grains and beans at just a 1000 bushels at a time. It would be a better story if now I was really big, but I am still small, and will probably always stay that way. I'm still living on the money I made from one big ES trade, and that's probably the last big trade I will ever make. Now, all that money is sitting in stocks and bonds making about 6% a year, but you can enhance those returns with a small trading account. It takes about ten minutes to learn how to invest. Apparently, it takes a lifetime to learn how to trade, because I still haven't learned it. I still enjoy ridiculing people that think they have it figured out. I suppose it could be different for different people. It didn't come naturally to me and I had to read and research everything. The only thing that came naturally to me was not really giving a shit about how it all iurned out. During a time when my father in law was always giving me hard time about what a failure I was I had a delivery route where I drove by a graveyard every night at about 2 am, and I use to think, "Well yeah, but that's where we are all going to end up."
yeah, that's exactly the way I was, I got to where I understood the stock market and just lost interest in commodities. So getting back to the spread, you will like it, especially when you get into how YM and ES and NQ are moving. It doesn't take long to get intimate with the stock index futures. I use to enjoy trading ES in the middle of the night, during the day I was just one of many, but at night I was a player. That's changed a little bit now, back then there were only hundereds of us, now there are thousands. yeah, you'll like that spread. I doubt you can make it just adding to winners, you will probaly also need to add to losers, never a good idea to do one without the other, as long as you probably already know, that Martingale can lead you to to eventual ruin, but then again, that's where we are all headed to anyway.'
I'm kind of a night owl anyway so I've also decided that most of my trading will be from 6pm-3am. Afterhours price action is less volatile of course so it will be great for learning the ropes on the ES for some short term trades here and there. Of course my main strategy will be trading longer term positions with spreads. I've always felt a strange connection to afterhours trading in the futures markets. I've spent many nights checking ES quotes every 5-10 minutes when I had large positions on (relative to my capital). I think I already have a good feeling for how es moves afterhours. In my opinion there is no such thing as talent. Everything is a matter of practice so for the time being I'm sticking with what I have the most experience.
ah, you're just a forex trader waiting to be born. Be careful on that ES at night, hang tough on your bid and ask and never chase. It can be miserable when you miss a big move. The worst is when you have a bid in and it screams, and you turn on CNBW and they are talking about the big "Rally in the futures" and it pulls back and you finally get filled about an hour before the open and it's no big deal and the market goes down just like everybody said it would. forex really starts heating up about 00:00 est, that's when Europe gets ready to open. In spite of everything you read on the Economics forum, as it stands now, Europe is the number 1 economy, with US coming in second, and China third.
Cut the guy some slack. It can be hard and sometimes frsutrating to find good info online. The currency futures are much safer than Forex for the following reasons: 1) the futures market is regulated 2) your futures broker does not trade against you 3) your futures broker does not manipulate the spread 4) when you trade futures you are trading against other futures traders rather than a fake pool of traders at that brokerage 5) futures taxes are straight forward Unfortunately, as you've found out, futures also force you into a minimum amount of leverage. With Forex you can trade as small as you want. One pip can be a penny, or 5 cents or 10 cents, or a dollar, or whatever you want. With futures, one tick is $12.50 (or whatever that contract is). There are e-micro futures which are 1/10 the size of the normal currency futures but their volume is so low they are virtually untradeable.