Agree, All it takes is one bad weekend news event or one orchestrated surprise event by henchmen and all of a sudden poof big gap down sun night ... "Oops S&P wasn't as risk free as I thought " says the ES margined long
Gaps over night used to kill me trading stocks, I stopped when they forced me to hold over night many many years ago, I don't hold DAX ( it closes ) over night, trade with a 20pip SL 3% risk and gaps against you 100pips and that's a 30% loss on the open.
The answer to that is range. The intraday range is always smaller than the daily/weekly range so daytraders are always forced to work with less range, this is almost always a bad thing because the spreads and comms are a bigger % of your gains/losses when you are dealing with small trading ranges. Smaller ATRs also make figuring out the market more difficult because trends are less reliable when the range is smaller. Daytrading is just insanely difficult now since ATRs have collapsed, aside from the occasional spike in volatility in some instruments, volatility is down in most cases. Daytrading isnt going to be worth it unless we get another period of prolonged fear/uncertainty in the markets.
This statement can only be made on your personal experience. What is worthless to you can be valuable for others. I started to daytrade because I am too stupid to keep positions overnight at a reasonable risk, have also no clue what the market will do overnight, so I keep it simple and short term. And every evening my money (what is left of it) stays cash in the bank so I sleep without stress. To me predicting what the market will do becomes more difficult exponentially with longer time periods. Last three months the market was outstanding, at least for me.
Forex wise yes, I had to stop trading Forex May 2014 time, moved to DAX, but been trading GPBAUD recently as it's on fire again. DAX has more than enough action to justify the spread, which is about 1% of average range. 1pt over 100pt range for me ) Recently Oil ofcourse is where it's at, but spread is high for me and well it's too crazy for me, always something trading well I find, if not Oil, Gold or index's.
Last 3 months? Try being profitable for at least 3 years (which still means nothing) before you conclude that volatility doesn't matter.
Yea I noticed that CL has pretty good range recently, but I can never figure that one out. Kudos to anyone who can trade that one profitably with any consistency though.
Try to read correctly. I said last 3 months were excellent. I did not say that volatility doesn't matter, I did not say that I trade only since 3 months. Apparently you have a huge problem trying to make money in these markets, but I don't have that problem. Maybe this tells a lot about the difference between you and me. I don't like to share personal information or results but I trade already far over a decade (almost 2 decades). So I know already a little bit how markets work. And after this long period I still manage to have more money then when I started.