Yeah.. what was all that? Anyhow back to topic, Futures trading does not appear it will ever be an 8 hour job, it consumes more than that. I'm fortunate in that I work full time and my trading is but a hobby, I would like to have thought I could go full time trading, however doubt it very much, the risk, uncertainty and watching my system around the clock would turn me from an introvert into a super duper introvert and I don't wish that. I enjoy the trading hobby, but I think for me that's all it will ever be. I have a friend who is a Geologist and he has spent many years coding futures, (about 10 I think) has never pulled the trigger. He has some radical new ideas in his approach to predicting the next day, however I disagree with his methods as I believe reaction is better than prediction.
Typical time spent entering and exiting orders on a daily basis: From 0930 est to about 1400 unless a fed report is coming out or I am casually watching for an afternoon reversal signal like a "DC" in ES. A DC (double cross) is a reversal where price recrosses the 20 and the previous trend.........look for a basing first and never forget the 1-2-3. Casual glances at a screen (4 toys actually) is all that is needed to glean for a prospective upcoming event. The difficult part of trading is in the beginning, then it gets SIMPLE. Simple is as simple does. PS: Many "DC" signals come out of the blue and those are usually the ones that run for a solid 10 handles if not completely reversing the ENTIRE early trend of the day.
So true. There's nothing wrong with trading, but there's much wrong with expectations most wannabe traders have.
Same here, and thanks to you I learned to distill and simplify. I look for two setups and trade them aggressively. The RTH session is 6.5 hours at most and there's no commute time involved. So what's not to love?
Now, going further, 6.5 hours is too much! 3 first hours usually enough. It takes years to learn BEFORE and gets simple after, Bighog is absolutely right about it.