ok this is officially the first trading day journal entry from my side: the equity markets are right now at an important inflection point -> ATH. previously the market (ES) rejected the ATH. In the ON session the markets were quite balanced. The premarket hours were really quite and non-volatile. When the markets opened the DOW was moving more than NQ and RT, the move downside in the ES was attributed to the Dow stocks. but the move was not enough to drag ES proportionally lower, technologies were still balancing around ON session extremes, so did RT. if you look at the traded volume and compare it to the previous sessions, you will notice that it was lower, the orderbook was thicker and the ES was really rotational with no directional volatility at all. obviously in a low volatility, heavy rotational, thick orderbook environment the HFT's are fighting for the orderflow or adjusting mispricing with underlying stocks (i don't know for sure, just my guess). in such a day i decided to watch the markets and observe -> capital preservation, no trades today. Cheers
Do you even know the difference between "attributed" and :said"??? That particular quote has been attributed to al least 5 people, including Obama. Who actually said it? I don't give a F who did because I don't care. You need to get married, make some friends and get a life, instead of sitting on the internet 24/7.
Yeah, it does. Because Tony Robbins is not that smart. He's a sheister, sucking money away from people who are desperate to stay out of the poorhouse with his feel-good BS seminars. You know he actually did one on trading? Where he basically said the power of your mind will make you a better trader and a victor in the markets? Hooked-on Phonics worked for them?
obviously, the futures market is a two-way auction process. when volatility picks up, the orderbook becomes thinner, orders are distributed over larger price levels. market makers will try to minimize adverse selection. when volatility is lower the orderbook is thicker, there is not that additionally risk of adverse selection. more volume can be traded without impacting price. i watch the orderbook for several years now, not because of trading purely from the orderflow. with time i saw that orderbook depth can be an indicator of volatility anticipation intraday. the equity indexes are the result of the underlying stocks. the main purpose why i watch these correlated markets is, that i can gauge the strength/weakness of those underlyings as a collective entity. do they move all to one direction, is one market stronger or leading the others, do they send mixed signals? for yesterday, the Dow showed intraday weakness, but RT and NQ didn't bother at all. in such an environment i would not expect a proportional or extended move downside in the ES. in fact, if ES would extend much further down, i would consider fading the move at a predetermined support level and expecting a short term bounce at least, given the lack of downside momentum in the NQ and RT. even then i would not expect further liquidation in Dow either.
"obviously... market makers will try to minimize adverse selection." In Globex futures trading there are no market makers, all trades are matched electronically. There are companies the CME has designated as market makers but these are for the options on futures markets. There might be some value for you in running a self-diagnostic on your assumptions about the how and why of price movement. It has been my observation that people who might not be comfortable with ambiguity ( "i have a bachelors degree in mechanical eng. and masters degree in chemical eng.... i program simulation software with C++ that solve complex fluid flow phenomena") will often seek out certainty in imagined correlations that are in fact coincidental occurrences and have no causal relationship.
march, 16th, 2021 update so markets balanced around yesterdays highs pretty much. at cash market open the AD-Indicator was in negative territory while indices were above or around yesterdays close. because of the disconnect i attempted two shorts and got stopped out twice. i posted a 1 second chart when i got stopped out, that was one fast move, i think quite a few people got stopped out on this move. i am down around €45. for today