Wow. it just seems that there are so many e-minis. which do i choose? we have the ES, the russel, nasdaq, and the dow. so the question is which one do i trade? if it's open interest well of course i know the ES is the king and always will be. but the others are saturated with OI as well. even the newer of the emini complex the dow is picking up. During my trading career i always liked focus. with the eminis and day trading them i like to focus on one market. i know that the high octane day traders have 5 monitors in front of them with all the markets moving but to me thats alot of confusion. in day trading quick decisions need to be made considering all the data required and analysis of just one market, let alone 4 of them. by focusing on one market it makes it alot more possible. at least for me it does. my question to you ladies and gentleman is, if there is an emini market that you focus on and tend to have better trading profits from, which one would it be and why?
I started my trading career five or so years ago trading 1 YM contract. Fun stuff. Then size became a problem, thus I moved onto much more liquid issues. I would recommend YM for you.
I would put ES, ER and YM up together on 1 minute or 5 minute charts and compare the way they move. You'll see they are pretty closely correlated. If you want big excitement, then trade the CL or EC futures. If you are a newbie and want something less exciting, then trade the ED on a 60 minute chart.
Find one that speaks to you. You will most likely need to put in some considerable screen time before you can make an informed decision. There are a lot of futures products to trade other than the equity indices: interest rates, ags, energy, metals, currencies. Many of them have mini-size contracts too.
I've been trading ES since I started in futures, which was about a month ago now. I considered switching to one of the others (there's a thread about it in fact...), but after spending some screen time comparing them there isn't all that much difference as far as how they move, the main differences are volume and tick size. I like the ES tick size as I don't feel as bad about taking 1 or 2 ticks on a trade as I might if I were trading, say, NQ, and a one-tick profit only netted me 20 cents after comms. I like the volume as well, since I probably won't ever be trading so much size that getting fills will be a problem. I've heard that it can be, if you're trading e.g. 10 contracts on ER2 or YM. ES might be somewhat more volatile with lots of back-and-fills, which was really bothering me until recently, but I woke up this Tuesday and realized that it's actually an advantage: you get plenty of chances to enter very close to tops and bottoms once you see them forming.
the considerable screen time is what i was hoping to avoid by asking you guys what you prefer in your trading system. the other commodities you mention are not for day trading. i am talking about day trading here and eminis only becuase of the quick fills and liquidity. maybe i should have been more specific. if i am looking to trade using 1 minute charts with a 1-2 point tick profit. if you have traded using these formations and time increments which do you use?
There is no right or wrong e-mini. Fire up a demo and trade them all and see which one suits you best.
why the YM? why has it worked for you? i have day traded the YM but very little. i have noticed it lags in open interest and volume amongst the other eminis. will this hurt fills and slippage?