yea i also find that my setups that works great on the ER or YM arent performing good on the ES i believe with the ES you trade performance for size, meaning you can put a lot more size at a time on the ES than the other eminis.
I guess it depends on your system. I personally like break out systems on markets that really move, in terms of ticks. So the ER2, YM and the Dax are perfect for this. You enter your position, the markets carries you along then you exit. Its all about timing and you can net healthy profits day in and day out. Only problem with that is once you increase your contract size, you are going to get slippage and throw up all kinds of red flags. Other traders (human and blackbox) will pick up on this and run you out of town. You can call it the "fat finger" syndrome!! Once you get to that point, then you look at the thick and liquid markets such as the ES or the DJ Euro Stoxx 50. In terms of tick ATR its going to be less.just increase your contract size and you will make up for this. You can throw 50-100 and even more contracts into the ES and its a drop in the Atlantic. Point is, there are traders who make money in the ES, it all depends on what system they are using. If you have a system that doesn't apply in one market, then look at other markets in which your system can be profitable. It seems like everyone wants to trade the S&P/ES because that where the big dogs are but money is the same color to me no matter what market it comes from. Happy Trading
es,ym dax,bonds,oil,gold they are all different animals, if you watch a stock for a while you will see how it trades,they are all different,you have to understand the vehicle,like people, no 2 are the same
I do, and have done so for nearly two years. Before that, I traded Equities - also 'for a living.' In an ironic twist, you've previously described how I trade each day in quite a pejorative fashion. Such a belief system has, thus far, not resulted in your ability to trade the ES. As such, why not start reading how one can learn to trade the ES, rather than, holding onto a belief system which clearly hasn't yielded the results you anticipated. Why not, find out for yourself, whether or not, a particular path to knowledge has merit? The choice is yours. - Spydertrader
<i>"It seems like everyone wants to trade the S&P/ES because that where the big dogs are but money is the same color to me no matter what market it comes from."</i> Agreed. Unless someone has to clear 100 contracts or more, the ES offers nothing, nada, zero that other eminis have. The NQ clears 40 ~ 80 contract blocks all day long without changing price more than one tick on the time & sales. NQ is much smoother all around, and when it comes out of congestion there is no seven-pump, back & fill torturing the entry or stop. The ER has a split personality right now. When volatility is high, size on the dome dwindles to almost nothing. This week with the VIX back down, there has been 40 ~ 100+ ER contracts five levels deep. I just dabbled with it past couple of days and picked up several points each session. When the ER trades normally, there isn't even a distant second in comparison. A real good ER trader turning 10-lots can blow away the world's best ES traders turning 50-lots respectively. Problem is, CME is doing everything possible to drain liquidity from there to anywhere else in-house before it shifts to ICE. Just last week I got a promotional mailer from Dorman / CME with a $5 gift card to Starbucks, promo invited recipients into CME website for alternative vehicles to ER2. If held at gunpoint with a choice of trading either ES or ZB, I'd go with bonds every time. Same story there... when they come out of consolidation, '16+ to '32+ tick straightline swings are common. Traders will always gravitate to the ES because it is "the" market. After awhile, many people who prefer to trade what's simplest for most profit with least amount of effort in return work elsewhere. Pretty much same concept as stock traders working small or midcaps versus trying to scalp MSFT or GE day after day.
Does anybody that trades the ES feel like when you're wrong you lose money and when you're right you lose money! LOL. Meaning when you make a good entry price has to touch or dip below your entry about a thousand times before price moves along to profit world. It loves to shake you out of your position.
Here's a hint about trading in general.....learn to adjust to the instrument you are trading after observation of its behavior. If you know its tendencies, you can take advantage of them.