I read somewhere that if you simply buy 5 stocks, 1 may go down , 3 flat and 1 up , just sell the ones that go dn and keep the one that goes up. I guess that's kinda what spyder was alluding to in a very simple form. When I trade the es/nq I churn then get burned but when I buy a little basket and dump losers I make some money. Maybe it was in O'Neil's book, but think about trying to pick five winners on Sunday or losers for that matter. It's real hard but if you could hold your winners on Sunday and dump losers quickly then maybe you could make some money with the bookie. Doesn't this opportunity arise in the market but not with the indexes?
Trade stocks idiots... Look at MO and MXIM on fridays (11/07/03) data, compared to ES and NQ, easy peasy !
That will depend on what strategy you're applying to the vehicle you're interested in trading. If one has a particular strategy that he insists on applying to the NQ/ES no matter what, then he's probably going to lose a great deal of the time. But the same applies to stocks if the particular stocks under consideration aren't compatible with the strategy. Therefore, if one can't adapt his strategy, then he's just going to have to search for something that he can trade with it. If he feels that that's too much time spent with too little reward, then he's going to have to learn to adapt his strategy to whatever vehicle he prefers.
How do you determine the tradables? What your MO or MXIM for Monday? ES/NQ can give you those kinda days?
Excellent post. Before I traded a system for these markets, I would go back and test it on data from '90 to '98 and see how it did. I see an awful lot of misinformation thrown around on how to trade these markets. Before you piss your money away, take the time to find out for yourself what really has a chance.
That probably wouldn't do you much good, even if the market you're interested in existed at the time. Trading was somewhat different at the time because the population of traders was different, as were the tools available to them. Testing on old data might give you a clue, but you'd still be faced with considerable forwardtesting.
Short term trading requires focus and a definitive plan. Being able to take a loss and trade again is important. What I have found important is being able to ride a trend (the right way). I can have. There is a Real time simulator out there that at least gives you a chance to try a method with "funny money" before you put up your real capital. http://www.pfgca.com/besttest.htm. The company is not the cheapest commission but they have an easy to use platform