It's volume, though good during the day, is not designed for evening hours. You're better off tradiing anyone of the many contracts which have good volume and active institutional trading during that time. *** Sometimes the NQ is good, other times it stinks as far as profitablity vs ES relative to its spread. Lately its been a gem ... it seems that when it leads the ES it's great, when it lags, it's a stinker.
Absolutely, outside market hours the only e-mini liquid enough with minimal spread is ES. Howerver RTH it's perfect unless your trading size is extremely thick. Anek
<i>"I don't really like the NQ, but to be fair I don't really like the ES anymore either, doesn't seem to fit my style. CL has been very profitable for me, 6E and 6B have been good also"</i> About anything other than eminis is trending intraday like a dream. ZC, ZS, ZB, ZN, currencies all make directional moves more days than not. Eminis have been ping-ponging technical levels all month of Feb. Indexes with this much sideways volatility are staging for a directional push that will last quite awhile. But until that happens, better be darned quick at hitting profit exits. By far my preference is the ER2. It can be buzzy at times, but that is usually in the morning. When it breaks out of consolidation at key spots on a chart, the directional push gets off entry points and allows us to trail stops and/or pick off +$200 ~ +$500 swings regularly. The ES is dominated by program slams during pit sessions. Amazing how smooth the overnight ES action can be from midnight to 8:30am est during econ news, or 9:30am otherwise. It's like someone flips a visible bot-switch as price action slams up & down. Takes much more effort to make much less money in ES than ER2 right now, simply due to the incessant backing & filling. NQ is somewhere between ER and ES in that regard, would definitely be my preferred choice over ES. Remains to be seen what happens with S&P 400 MidCaps. ER2 shifting to ICE will probably drop volume considerably, and size on the dome today is about 1/2 what it was last summer already. Don't know what to expect from either of them by August switch of ER to ICE. In any event, bonds are always very tradable and much more liquid than ES. Corn is also sweet, those 10:30am ~ 2:00pm EST hours are my kind of schedule, too
I trade the NQ almost everyday. 9:30 - 12 est and if volume picks up around 2pm, which it often does, I'll trade some more. I love the liquidty. Never and slipage. I only trade 4 contracts per trade. ~Mike
hey guys notice how we have no life outside of market hellooooooo its saturday none of us should be here parks, rides, visits to freakin restaurants anything
The answer is very easy really as the NQ is mainly traded by professionals where as the ES/ym has a lot of newbie traders as as this board is chock full of newbeis and nontraders the ES is where their attention is focused.
Austin P makes a great point about different contracts. Electronic trading may be more difficult than pit trading once was, but the ability to access many different markets should mean that there is always something to trade. I cant stress enough how important it is to learn to trade many different contracts because it will always give you money making opportunities. I regurely have 15 stock positions and ten future positions on. It will improve you understanding of how asset classes react to each other and you will always find something outthere
I couldn't agree more. Hmm...have I ever dis-agreed with you? Trading several different markets definitely relieves the pressure of trying to force trades in a random/choppy environment. If stocks aren't happening perhaps Treasuries are. Or the dollar. Or Beans/Crude/Gold. In today's hyper correlated asset world it's virtually unprofessional for a trader to say âI trade ES but I know nothing about Crude.â
What broker do you use? I also want to take a look at futures. I guess if a trader wants to make big money, he has to trade futures.