Dude.. you should run a scan on some of the biggest gainers over $50 for 2004.. there was more than enough volatility to make money as a swing/ position trader. If you daytrade big cap stocks or trade the futures.. then I can relate to what you are saying. You sound like the typical prop shop guy complaining about how the ES moves in 5 point ranges and the specialist are screwing you over.. or how C or WMT have no volatility... you have to move on past this and look at what works.
I agree with your assertion and I have been fine tuning my stock trading skills in preparation for the summer doldrums. With that said; I'm starting to think the summer doldrums will be just the opposite. What I like about futures, and dislike about stocks, is futures provide uniformity. I know EXACTLY what to expect from NQ, ES, ZN, etc. on a day-to-day basis and my challenge is gauging position size and entry and exit relative those expectations. When trading stocks, assuming your universe is broad, uniformity is thrown out the window and systems need constant adaptation. For example, a $5 may hit my radar along with a $50 stock and their movement potential is totally different. While ES and NQ provide a sense of familiarity and "intimacy".
It all comes down to the bottom line. Are you really making serious money trading futures?? You never know what to expect with any market.. and trading ES, NQ... u are trading the choppiest and most competitive market in the world. You are going against thousands of robots and traders that are much smarter and faster than you. You can expect mostly chop and back and fill with the futures.. and one of out 4 days will give u a nice trend day.. which most people only see after the fact. By being intimate with these facts try having fun making a living trading it. Almost everyone on ET is blinded by the marketing machine of trading futures, lack trading capital, want to sit in front of pc and push buttons.. and in reality especially for the newbies popping up everyday here.. they are in for a good whipping. The ES/NQ.. will go from trendiness, to compression on a dime.. it will draw u in and chew you up with headfakes, false breakouts, low volume churn, and explosive moves. Just when u think u figured something out.. it will surprise u and do the opposite. THey are one of the most pure and liquid markets in the world.. every technical setup, patterns, moving avg crossover, etc is all being traded and faded by some of the most sophisticated traders in the world.... why would someone even dare to compete against it? The best value of futures.. is mainly as a hedge tool for portfolio managers due to its liquidity and leverage... but trading it solely for a living is suicidal.
You have obviously had a very poor experience trading the ES. Yes, it is a pure market . . . and yes it is traded by professionals who execute program trades, and yes it is extremely liquid. Those are all GOOD characteristics, not bad in my opinion . . . especially if you have the capital to POSITION TRADE over the course of a couple of days, rather than trading a very thinly capitalized account and simply "reacting" to minute by minute moves.
I couldn't agree more....But I always leave room for some doubt... But I agree with you 99.99999% nitro
Yes my experience was very poor swinging the ES.. because there is very little follow through most of the time. If the market is going up.. I would rather buy/swing some nice smooth trending NYSE stocks at 1000 shares a piece.. they will get better follow through and I can trail them with a stop that will really let my winners run. I do not have a thinly capitailized account.... my account is well over PDT limit.. I do not daytrade.. I only swing trade. Futures were not made to "position trade" you can not hold them for months or years. I bet 80% of the people that are holding them over 1 month per a trade.. are big institutions hedging their long or short exposure to the markets.
Trend Fader's comments are well taken but they could easily be applied to equities. Go ahead and yell at me if you want but all markets have their downside. Frankly I hate equities. MM's chew you up just as easily as the bots on the futures side. At the end of the day you have to do the time and bang your head until it all makes sense.
Since I swing trade.. I dont even look at what the MM's are doing nor do I care. In Stock Market Wizards.. there is a good trader by the name Minervini.. and he says that after he puts a 20k share order and he gets a good fill he gets upset because that means the stock doesnt have much momo. You dont see these great traders make a living scalping 20 cents and playing mind games with the MM's... you will hear something like I was 1million shares short going into IBM earnings and I covered in the afterhours..... The whole daytrading equity thing was a outgrowth of the late 90's into 2000... because the market only went straight up and u have $200 stocks trading millions of shares a day w/ a 10 points daily range.. anyone moron can go long and make a few thousand a day. Once the bear market started.. all of these people were wiped out and the few who managed to make it through the wreckage are not daytrading anymore.. they have moved on to other things ( the smart ones went into realestate). Just look at the countless journals on ET of newbie propsters or stay at home newbies with $5k futures accounts wanna be pro traders... the results speak for themselves.
10,000 stocks, 70% of which are untradeable so let's be realistic. Have a look through some of these stocks, I know I have a few times when I make my stock filters. Use some common sense, if everyone starts cutting losses quick while attemtping to catch those few big wins, the stocks simply chop most out. Yes, this happens to swing traders too, who do you think the specialists were shaking before the 1990s? Ever hear of running the stops? How about the short squeezes on garbage stocks like MYG, remember that squeeze a month or two ago? These moves are made for swing traders cause too many ppl on the right side. Stocks chop & whipsaw on all time scales, hunting for stops and shaking weak hands. The ultimate winners are the clearing firms & B/Ds, it has been like this forever. Your goal as a trader is to use discretion in order to shift your bets & risk toward the proper trades. That requires accepting higher risk for some trades and hence the standard small losses will not hold up. You'll simply miss out on the right trades or you will accumulate too many small losses where you will bleed to death after commissions & slippage. People act like a few big wins will save you from the numerous small losses, sorry but the wins can't get that big with everyone so quick to take profits nowdays. You have to get out sometime, so where do you close the position? Hold indefinitely? We all know how the buy & hold & invest public performs. Steve Cohen's real edge is top grade first call information, the other stuff is secondary. Didn't we discuss this like a year ago? The early bird gets the worm, so wake up, the top players use tricks that are unavailable to the rest, it's been like this for centuries so why the hell would it change now? They play big, they take risk and they do not mess around. Once again, I'm not saying to not cut losses but my point is that the overused "small losses, big wins" idiom is misleading. Why do futures & stocks chop and whipsaw so much? Cause it's all traders so quick to take small losses churning each other to death. If you want the reward, you have to take the risk, otherwise you just sit there collecting losses 90% of the time and hoping that the 10% of wins are enough to cover your losses & commish.
Actually futures chop for many reasons. One of the reasons is the use of sophisticated hedging protocols. To understand a little of the dynamic, you have to know that markets trend when larger players are willing to enter at the top and bottom of ranges. Institutional volume sustains moves, not the 1 contract retail trader hooked up to IB. With the advent of hedging protocols used by institutions (funds, banks) there is less need to pay up or to cash out on a given day. What happens is that participants can sit back and wait. and they do. In the middle, the little guy is trying to see the moves and jump in front. What is happening is they are getting slapped around by the locals as they mark it up and sell it off. From my perspective, it is the local market and mid size players who are making waves on an intraday basis. Now if that is true. What you can do is to find little holes in the session where non-random behavior happens. All it takes it the willingness to do some research. See Ya Lefty Edit: By the way, for all the complaining about how hard it is. I observe that there are some nice ranges happening for the ES market these days, and more trending than I have seen in a while. While I would always like to be earning more, I like the local action to date. I seem to get plenty of opportunity. Most of my limitations are my own, and not attributable to the market.