Walter, In theory you don't have to change your method, only make sure you have a broker who's good in trading futures. That's what I believed when I started this and did not change my trading setups. Gradually, of course, issues pertaining to the specifics of the futures market came up, like hours of operation, how many contracts and margin needed, fill rates, etc. With time, I learned to trade techniques that are finetuned to the idiosyncracies of the ES and the NQ - and I now use different methods, even different times of day, to trade each of them. My experience at this point is that the two are different (not much, but enough that one should pay attention to it) and if you want to excel at trading the futures be open to learning the way futures move, crawl, and jump in short timeframes and in various circumstances. Most traders familiar with this will tell you that the futures market is very different than the stocks market and you need to learn all details all over again, carefully. No-one can teach you that - just watch, papertrade, trade a single contract etc until you are really confident.
interesting article called Qrazy about the QQQ from cnn money basically sumarizing that tech funds are a better investment than the QQQ's. but check this stat, as fo feb 14 and according to the NASDAQ, 203.7 million shares were being held short, up 22% from mid-Jan. Thats nearly 1/3 the total number of QQQ shares available on the market. Bearish sign? http://money.cnn.com/2003/03/04/technology/techinvestor/lamonica/index.htm
I used to play options on the QQQ's but went back to the stocks, much simpler and less worries for me.
These are the 2 I follow everyday.Qs are range bound at the moment stuck between 24 & 25,the DIAs are a more volatile which makes trades more profitable,in saying that you have to watch the market for support and resistance levels.The markets are ready for a big move very shortly which way is anyones guess.I'm going short for Friday's market. I would like the long side more if the VIX wasn't range bound between 35-40 to much complacency with the Dow nearly at October's low the VIX then was in the 50's. Let the fun begin. MCA
how long do you wait before the qqq's break support(24) and resistance(25)? it really should be interesting over the next couple of days because the cubes have really been bouncing between 24 and 25.25 for quite a while. i can only assume the longer it stalls the harder the momentum is set up for a strong trading trend. i really have an itchy trigger finger over here
Volume,Volume,Volume,Volume,and more volume,without it we get stuck in a trading range.Look for a breakout in either direction, you guessed it on big volume,this is what the trading world thinks about the market at that time. If the market breaks down in the coming days, weeks we could see a big sell off,markets tend to fall faster once the support levels are broken everyone wants out. A could clue is to see where the market closes is it above or below support/resistance look for the DOW to break 7600 & the COMP to break 1300 on BIG VOLUME thats your next leg down.
I've just tried QQQ this week, shorting it in the high 24 area and scalping 15-20 cents. I've pulled off 3 or 4 of these. But I've noticed that QQQ's chart looks a lot like MSFT. It appears MSFT may have too large an influence on QQQ for the cubes to really be considered a "market" indicator. I'm thinking about switching to SPY for this reason. You can't write options on SPY, unfortunately. That's one thing I like about QQQ.
This new nasdaq ETF should become a very good trading vehicle -- there will be market makers and ecn's -- it should become very liquid - very fast -- hopefully - they will price it at an expensive price - hopefully $50 or $100 !!!!!
And since it will be on nasdaq - the ecns will not be subject to the trade thru and quote thru rules - like they are with the spy's