I hear ya man...Seriously, ET always has someone who will read your post and reply "stop bitching, stop whining, yada, yada, yada". There was absolutely nothing wrong with stating the obvious facts in front of all of us. The ranges have contracted, the price action is spotty and many traders have simply moved away from ES into other products.
It most closesy resembles the halcyon days of 2013-14 (QE in full bore). A market that just slowly climbs the stairs, day after day, week after week. Even then there were more pullbacks.
Agree volatility in ES is just plain dead. In this environment much better to be a micro scalper or longer term swing trader. The day trader going for 5-10 points swings in ES has to be getting frustrated.
Yes, its a market tendency about range expansion for the day after a U.S. President speech to Congress. Yet, even with today's market efforts...the average range is "still" at the lowest since 1983 just to keep things in perspective.
I have traded ES for 10+ years now. Started scalping, price action etc. I've found that ES gets a good trend out of the open about 4-5 days per month. Those are the days that I trade. 9 point target (or EOD if not hitting 9), usually 4 or 5 point stop in current volatility. Higher vol just changes the stop/target numbers not the ratio nor frequency of trend days. That was how I started to make money trading ES and am only tied to the screen 45 minutes per day. 50% win rate 35% loss rate 15% scratch/small win rate
How do you determine which are the 4-5 days per month unless you're actually watching ES every trading day and just waiting ? Thus, if you're watching every day and waiting for those 4 - 5 days per month...you using some kind of alerts to prevent being stuck in front of the computer or do you decided early in the trading day that you like or don't like what you see ? I ask because I've notice on many trading days that the Emini ES futures has a crappy opening but it doesn't give clues to how the rest of the trading day will evolve via its volatility. Simply, it leaves waiting for a schedule market event, political global event or U.S. economic event the shake the hornets nest sort'uv speak.