Ha! I actually pictured that today as I watched the price action there; I thought, this is like a bunch a boys standing at the edge of a cliff over the river: "You jump in!" "No, you first!" "Come on, dare ya!" Then all at once they go. I've come to recognize these price action patterns as traps for those taking the other side too soon (like I did yesterday). If it don't break your way quickly, get out! Today when price moved in to test the high I was thinking of you talking about the big dogs coming in to sniff there.
I've found it to be about the same as trading stocks because I use the same strategies, candle charts, 20-period MA and so on. The reason I considered it in the first place is because I felt I was jumping around too much with stocks, watching too many things, then missing entries. I was very unfocused. So after a while I thought, maybe I should just trade one stock, because often when I trade one stock frequently I get to know it and do very well with it. Then I figured if I was going to trade just one stock, why not trade an e-mini? Same idea, only not subject to trading halts, bankruptcy/takeover rumors, plus your stops work after hours, and best of all nice tax treatment for when I become a multi-millionaire and need those tax breaks I really don't find trading ES to be much different at all than trading stocks. I have a max loss per trade of $200 and my 2-3 pt ES stops come in under that amount.
I hope you prove me wrong, I just wish I saw or knew or read about more successful ES traders. Where are they? Anyway, good luck.
the bad thing when you stick with one stuff is: when you should jump in, you hestitate because you will get many past experience to prove you should hesitate. if you buy in the dip, the drop continues, if you buy in the rally, the rally reveses, for whatever reasons, you will get lots of confusions particularly just dealing with one stuff. finally, you will think your trading signals are traps! sorry to point out this fact
You won't come across too many on a site such as this. The good ones don't have the time or inclination to make multiple daily posts anywhere. They're out there, they don't teach and they don't talk, they just trade.
Could there really be a difference between ES (futures traders) and stock traders? The answer is less an individual answer as it is a more general answer. Many traders get started in the world of speculating after they played a few office pools, made a couple trips to Vegas, went to the track and bet on the ponies, married a few times, played cards, tried to count cards, followed the CUBS, played the NUMBERS back in the hood before the LOTTO was legalized and put the small guy numbers game out, and yes played LOTTO, etc, etc. We all have gambled a lot more than we want to admit. With all that experience in gambling we grow up to bigger and better games but drop the gambling term. RIGHT, we start to trade the respectable and honest games at the biggest casino of all........WALL STREET. As soon as the first stock we trade shows a profit we are hooked, just like a slot machine pays out a certain amount to keep you coming back. Ok, stock traders are not called gamblers because the marketing Dept has you brainwashed you are an OWNER of corp America. You puff out your chest and call up your girlfriend to tell her to reconsider dumping your loser butt. Well after you keep trading stocks (a slice of the dream) it starts to become clear that you are in a game of fiction. Stocks are nothing more toys sugar coated by the CEO's bs and the accounting dept's eraser and whiteout. http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventions/a/liquid_paper.htm The game of trading was appealing and profitable to many but the reality of bogus earnings reports and a CEO speaking with forked tounge was very hard to swallow for many. Futures traders know full well the game is much more legit and is more macro oriented than a single company. Single stocks were subject to manipulation far more than a 15 billion bushel crop could be manipulated or controlled by a single ceo. What better answer was there to switch from single stocks to the macro picture of the entire economy as a whole? Stock index futures are far less subject to the speculator getting killed when watching the ceo of the stock you bet the farm on being led out in handcuffs on CNBC. The skills of trading is more about knowing how to trade thats a fact but to trade an instrument far more removed from the BS that goes on in many corp offices is a wise choice in my book. Futures traders are a step up from stock traders, futs traders are more refined and do not need to stroke their ego in some silly p/l thread. I mean come on, lets not play kid games of my daddy can whip your daddy. How many of you guys remember as children you used to bet a hundred million. PS: and it has always been a givin that the so called "smart money" in the business are the bond guys, traders.
There are plenty of stocks vs futures threads on ET, so if anyone wants to argue about it go there. Futures are definitely the less manipulated macro instrument; just look at HAR and HURN and ENRON, etc. for examples of that. There are a few futures posters on P/L thread, xxxskier for example. Speaking of which, I believe the P/L thread did for me what I wanted (gave me the sense of my peers looking over my shoulder so I didn't make as many dumb mistakes), but I'll be leaving it behind now and just keeping this journal instead.
D., Why not swing trade a basket of stocks or a few ETF's to reduce the HAR/ENR risk?? TWM_UWM or BGU_BGZ.. there are other pairs out there. Making a living in stocks doesn't have to be booking xx$$ daily but can be done as or more effectively holding for a few days. Daytrade Futures with the rest of your money till noon, manage your stock positions, then quit for the day as there are other things in life that Trading is supposed to allow. In my opinion, many more fortunes have been made by more traders swing trading than daytrading.
Although my equity curve is consolidating in a range, the things I'm learning through after hours study, intense screen time, BigHog's incredible mentoring from afar, comments from so many of you on this site, and working my way through Al Brooks book is providing me with "confidence fuel" in a big way. I realize now why it takes 5 years on average to become a consistent profitable trader. As I posted once somewhere on ET I will soon either break out in a big way or totally blow up I would like to say to my trading roomies that I really miss you and will drop in from time to time, but my focus has been incredible without any distractions the past few days and the down time I used to spend chatting has become intense study time and of enormous benefit to me. Today, I added a 1-week hourly ES chart to my view so I can see the bigger picture on trending days, hopefully preventing my intraday bias from interfering with my trading. I spent a great deal of time paper trading based on a set of conditions I drew up last night for trend trading, range trading, breakouts and flags/pennants, with me talking to myself out loud confirming or disproving every setup as it formed. This turned out to be the best thing Iâve ever done and if youâve never done that as a beginning trader, do it and find out how easy it is to avoid bad trades! I continued to study entry points in trending stocks. A trend can be caught off the opening in a few ways and I'm still not sure what's the best, but they all seem to be fairly low risk, high reward: 1. Use the previous day's high and low for breakout points 2. Use price in relation to the previous day's close after the first X minutes (3- and 5-min bars seem to work very well). 3. Wait for the first 5-min bar and trade in the direction of price action following that bar - price above the high go long, below the low, go short. In a trend price generally makes a continuation attempt at the 10-period MA, if that fails it makes a continuation attempt at the 20-period MA. If that fails, a reversal or consolidation range is likely to follow. The attempts at continuation are, at worst, superb scalping points in the direction of the trend. Even if they fail you can grab a small move, and if it works, youâre in the direction of the trend. I said to myself loudly today not to chase when I missed an entry that quickly moved in my favor. Thatâs been an issue for me in the past, and it places me at risk of getting stopped out of the trade. My stops work well to keep me in good trades, but only if I act on the initial setup. My aggressive ES short signal was @ 1002.75 when price left behind a lower high and broke down the 20 EMA, but it fell so quickly I was afraid to chase. ES opening range triggers: long @ 1005.00, short @ 999.00. I did exactly what I did yesterday only today to the short side! Short triggered and quickly found support there. Total weakness and a retest, dropped a bit and bounced back, then repeated, leaving a lower low and lower high. This was proof the short signal was valid, and I shouldâve taken the trade here, but price fell quickly about 4 pts and I was then waiting for a value entry (retrace to near the 20 EMA, which never came). As a stock or ES set up, I talked to myself out loud about the entry point and the pros and cons of the trade. I confirmed every rule of âbest setupâ that I drew up last night. I kept myself out of many mediocre and bad trades this way. This was a fantastic exercise and really improved my overall confidence. Hereâs an example: My observations at 11:50 a.m. on ES, which has been trading in a range between 993.00 and 996.50. (Iâm saying this stuff out loud so the traders standing over my shoulder can hear this and I wonât be tempted to take lukewarm setups): âLooking at the 1-week chart, price has pulled far from the 20 EMA and should make at least a weak attempt to move back near it before dropping further.â âPrice established a higher low after bouncing quickly from just below yesterdayâs support @ 992.00. Price also established a negligible higher high, remaining rangebound.â âThere is no good trade entry at this point, and the range is too narrow for me to feel safe scalping a point or two. I would likely end up churning for b/e at best.â âIn the near term intraday, I have no strong bias as to whether a break out of this range will be upside or downside. The indication for downside is the fact that price has been unable to move above the 20 EMA. The indication for upside would be the tendency for price to pull back toward the 20 EMA on the longer term chart.â After some time price began ranging from the EMA to the upper channel of the range, supporting a gradual drift upward. Price eventually broke through 996.50 and worked its way to the 20 EMA on the 1 week hourly chart, as I expected. A long was signaled @ 997.50 when a series of small doji bars left behind higher lows, above the 20 EMA. This turned out to be a superb long that never looked back one tick and went straight to 1002.00 before pulling back at all. Additional confirmation on this trade could be found on the 1-week hourly chart because price had been working its way toward the 20 EMA and still had room to go before even getting there, so chances were good it would at least test that level, which it did and broke out. The more confirmed long entry was 999.00, breakout above the bull flag resistance line. Late in the day I saw X hitting the high ticker, a nice break out through the HOD. Since Iâd traded it a few times lately I watched the action, figuring I was too late to catch the breakout since it had climbed so much over the past few days. Well, I found out what a big buyer looks like and the benefit of jumping on these end of day breakout trains! Huge prints were going off in the Time & Sales window; just when it appeared the price would take a breather, it would push up again on huge rapid prints. I kept thinking it was too high to jump on board, yet it kept going and going and going. Extremely impressive price action and now I know what it looks like on the T&S. I will be watching for high tickers in the last 30 minutes of trading, because how nice to ride along with a buyer like that! Attached an ES chart, and I am drained from intense focus and ready to go jump in the pool!
Hey R, nice to hear from you! How's ES going? I am using Etrade to swing trade baskets of stocks in simulated portfolios. I'm also testing options spreads, which I've never done. My first three swing portfolios did fantastic: The first one from 6/29's close returned $1500 overnight where I would've taken profits, but was as high as $7900 had I waited until the end of that week. (I posted that one a while back on this thread) The one from 07/24's close is currently up $1900. And as you can see from the attached the third one from this Monday's close is already up $1600. I seem to have a knack for the swings, so I plan to start going live with these in my Etrade account soon. I'm also testing two calendar spreads as of yesterday's close to see how that pans out. I hope all is well with you. I miss your journal!