It was very surprising for me to hear that US index futures are the hardest markets to trade. A year and a half ago I started trading FOREX, spend almost a year without any positive results, tried to trade futures (YM and ER2) and finally became moderately profitable. Now I think that if these markets are so hard, if I try some other I would probably become not just profitable, but SUPER profitable in other "easier" markets. Could anyone please explain why exactly futures like YM are considered so tough and which markets are considered to be easier to trade? P. S. Actually even more interesting queston is what people who so strongly believe that profitable trading is impossible, do on forums dedicated strictly to trading?
Profitability is just a matter of getting the right combinations together. After you know how to use all the tools you won't be profitable. But you probably won't be profitable without the tools either. After the education to know what you're doing... I believe the key is to find the strategies that fit your personality, the markets that fit your personality, and the strategies that fit your markets. This combination isn't as easy to piece together as it would seem at first glance.
LOL. I won't argue that US futures are harder (try hsi sometime) but I am amused that you moved from forex to ym/er2 and became profitable. You might find that if you moved back to Eur/usd futures (assuming you use a trend following/intraday swing type approach) it would make you more profitable. As I said in my earlier post in this thread. You need to study the market until you perceive the opportunities, build a plan, test it, and execute it with discipline to make that money. Now that you are better you might find the forex futures more amenable.
Thanks for advice Kiwi! I will definately take a fresh look at short-term FX (FX futures) trading again! I guess that I became profitable with index futures because there are clear times when they are volatile and so there are good intraday trends (regular open hours). I'm a shorter-term trader by nature and it was for some reason harder for me to find intraday trends in FX. During the last months I applied my short-term strategies to FX and stocks too but from daily charts and it seems to work fine so far. That's why I was so astonished by people saying markets are so different, some are "harder" some are "easier". Honestly I didn't find any difference except those frightening overnight gaps in stocks world...
There is harder and easier and it depends in part on how one trades. If extreme moves scare you then HSI can be fairly scary (20-30 tick gaps during the trading day on a breakout and sometimes can move 100ticks in a few minutes vs normal situations where it will stay within 5 or 10 ticks over the same period). Manipulation by "locals" to suck people in and then reverse on them is another way a market can be harder. Violent noise in a particular timeframe (say es 3m) vs a market that moves in its trends more smoothly (estx50 3m or bund 3m) during the timeframe can make it "harder" for a particular approach. I think when people say stocks are easier they may mean that there is less manipulation because the majority of traders are operating in an orderly manner --- but I don't trade stocks so I confess that I'm not sure. But it depends what you do ... one person will favour one vs another.
A "hard" market is nearly perfectly efficient and arb'd completely (like ES, NQ, YM). An easy market is like NY where specialist handling rules create innefficiencies, or Nasdaq where a large order(s) on a smaller stock can run it 5% in a matter of minutes. Just a couple of examples...
Hmm... I will probably appear a complete amateur, but it all sounds like a kind of Mumbo-jumbo for me. I mean how can this knowledge be aplied to real trading? From my own experience: I just took a couple of chart patterns and began to use them in short-term futures trading as well as longer-term stock and FOREX trading. And everything seems to work very similarly (maybe a bit better with daily stocks charts indeed, but not much). My fail in FOREX was probably caused not by it's characteristics as a market, but by that I was just learning and switched to Index futures in the "right time" (when a year of 15-16 hours a day of learning to trade finally yielded some right trading skills). Now I think that I maybe missing some important knowledge about the markets. Could you please explain it in somehow an easier way (would be great if with examples) how these differences between markets (lets say Index futures and NYSE stocks) affect real trading experience... Janis
Did I understand it right that "harder" or "easier" is just a matter of how a particular trader is used to trade? I mean "hard" market for one can be "easy" for another and vice versa? Janis
The markets are not effecient i can assure you of that, i have upto 20 years back data for stock index futures and currencies to show that the markets are not efficient. Sure the EDGEs are small, but you have to learn to trade big SIZE so the small EDGE equates to big money. It is impossible(for most) because trading requires DISCIPLINE and that that requires constant work on yourself. Being DISCIPLINED is impossible for most people. Lack of an EDGE and lack of DISCIPLINE are the two main reasons why people who approach this game with only money and hard work fail. And one or both have probably been the reason why you have not yet succeeded.