If you leave in europe like I do at GMT+2 then you can trade the Stoxx 50 contract which is super liquid. The code is FESXZ11 on tradestation. If you are looking at US then skip YM and go straight to ES. At the end of the day, if you succeed you will be trading the ES and not the YM and if you start on the YM, the switch will be harder later on. And you will switch as liquidity is a) insufficient, and b) you may get trapped into setups that appear to work on YM but are not that great (its a little hard to describe exactly what I mean). Personally, I was on YM before switching to FESX, and I regret it as it was harder to adjust. But since have adjusted and greatly prefer FESX. If I was in US time, I would definitely do ES.
I just took two more trades on what looked to be good levels but both stopped me out... However I am still in profit from the on trade I took this morning. So I am up 1.25 on the day, down from 4 after my initial trade this morning. Lessons from this experience... it is nice to have a positive risk reward ratio as even two stop outs later I am still in profit. Perhaps trying to trade just before lunchtime for both europe and uk is not a good idea. My trade in the morning was just before the london open, but Franfurt would have been open (i think). So is it a case of I shouldn't have taken any of the trades? Or was the one in the morning ok and the one just now right on the lunch hour supid? Any thoughts? MissTick
OK I am back to where I began the day with a nice 4+ points profit. I am now looking for the market to drop some more and then pull back a bit to let me get back into the trade... However both the ES and NQ are sat on intraday levels so until they are broken... I am out...
DAX and Stoxx futures start off at 8am GMT. The market opens earlier buts thats when activity takes off.
Yeah. I`m too lazy to go back to page one, but I seem to recall that this is your first time ever trading? If so, I think you are way ahead of yourself in that you are already second-guessing yourself and trying to make simulator money which should not be the goal at this point in your training. In my not so humble opinion, I think the coming weeks should be more of a "get your feet wet" phase. The goal should not be to make simulator money, but to experiment, get comfortable with the platform and get some experience trading your chosen instrument (or try out various instruments which I recommend that you do) in a live environment. Take 100 trades in 30 minutes if you feel like it. They can all be losers. It does not matter at this point. Test multiple strategies Only after you start to feel comfortable in this new environment or tired of messing around, I would consider implementing your new observations into your trading plan and narrow down a strategy and THEN start trading that strategy seriously and actually attempt to make simulator dollars. Keep fine tuning and learn from your mistakes until you are making consistent simulator bucks. As for choice of instrument, I think NQ would be good for you, but I agree with Snowman that you may meet some limitations down the road with the YM if you start trading more size. As for trading hours, I don`t think it is dangerous to trade US index futures during the European session, but I would never do it myself as the volume is light and I don`t have sufficient knowledge to know what is moving it. Sometimes it may be correlated to the European indices and currencies and other times it may be doing things on it`s own volition. If you want to trade Europe, I would find an European index. Snowman already gave you good advice there. Sincerely, Laissez Faire
All good advice from Laissez Faire. Knock yourself out in SIM. The only thing I might take some issue with is trading a European equity index. Nothing wrong with that but once London is up and running ES is as real as rain. I wouldn't trade Asian hours and certainly not before 8:00 GMT but otherwise on the vast majority of days ES more than OK.
Evening Everyone, Thank you all for contributing and giving me this advice. It is nice that there are so many helpful people on this forum! I will take you advice and just get to grips with things over the next few weeks. I will observe, play, make mistakes.... do everything I can to get comfortable. Truth be told there were a few mistakes I made earlier on the sim that both cost actual sim dollars but also missed opportunity costs... I am determined to make this work, people do make money trading these markets right... so if they can, then hopefully after enough study and effort, I can too. I appreciate all of your feedback and hope you all continue to give me you advice. So onwards from here... I will continue to keep my journal but I will not track my sim trades for a few weeks until I have played and start to get an understanding as to how this environment works. MissTick
Hi Snowman, Thank you for the heads up. I will look into those instruments as well. Do you ever trade the NQ? This seems to be the one I am drawn to at the moment, I have been looking at the charts, and it seems to make sense... Are you trading this morning? MissTick
No, I don't trade US anymore. I took only a few trades on NQ, then traded YM for a long time and this year have switched to FESX which is in my time zone. Took a short a little after the european markets opened. See attached. Please note I am still in the learning process myself and am only breakeven trader before costs. I have a full-time job. I've learned a ton from trying way too many things out. I believe I've come a long way. Just keep reading, testing and sim sim sim sim sim sim. One mistake I have done is not sim enough. I've simmed very little actually. Don't make that mistake. You just have to keep at until it makes sense to you. There are days where you will predict exactly what the market will do and days where you just need to quit early.
I know I know I shouldn't be measuring any type of performance and I am not... I just wanted to say that I had a really good day with the platform. I am really getting the hang of the trade execution now. One mistake earlier in execution gave me an extra point profit, but all in all my execution was much better than yesterday. On the trading perspective, I am continuing to develop my system, and things seem to be working out really nicely.