I think the ES is a pile of crap. I gave up trading it today after a year of breaking even. It is so gamed it is ridiculous. To all those making a living at it, my hat is off too you. You will see incredible strength, tons of buying, and then it will plummet 10 points in one minute. Either MM's are hedging stocks or their just painting the tape. Goldie and friends are running the show in futures, just like stocks. Good Luck
How do you know when a pullback is happening versus just the "noise" that is always going on ("noise" being random movement +/- 1 point from anywhere). I suck at reading charts and knowing what is going on so I can only see a pullback if a moving average starts to go the other way and tells me it's going the other way. Otherwise I have no idea of telling if it's a "pullback" or just noise or a bigger than usual bar but still in the direction of the trend.
Well, until today I was trading ES. I am actually going to try and find a job. Not a good time, but I've had it with trading for now. I've been trading for 10 years swing, 2 years fulltime. Things are so different even in just the last 2 years. Stocks and futures are so much faster, since alot of the trading now is automated. I'm just finding I am not as quick as a computer. I'm not familiar at all with Forex.
Using my broker's commission rate you would have had a small loss of $6.68 trading the ES.....537.50 vs 544.18 ...a lot of trading for zip!!.
Have you ever tried to find a consistant way to exit a trade, like a price divergence? Just a suggestion of course, but maybe something on a slighlty smaller time frame than you normally trade, turn on your favorite oscillator(MACD, RSI..etc.), and remaining in the trade until you see a divergence between price and your oscillator, then exiting.
The only thing I've found oscillators are good for is buying when they say overbought and selling when the say oversold.