One of the things which has given the e-minis some trends (finally) has been the low volume. When the program buys kick in (and there's been a lot of them in the past couple of weeks) it pushes the futures around like a hot knife through butter. Sure beats scalping. -Festus
I've never traded the E-mini's and really know very little about them. For those who do trade them regularly what minimum account size do you suggest and what trading platform are you using?
Hi TheCaracal and Magna, You two must not be reading all my posts nor hang out in the realtime chat room where I post my trades... http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=125909 if you did... you'll know that I do have a few losing trades (here and there) or read posts here at EliteTrader.com that I talk about avoiding a particular part of the trading day when I tend to have those losing trades or struggle trading. This time period has been my favorite period for lunches, long naps, getting personal errands done, reading a book and even sneaking off to an afternoon matinee movie or going for a long walk... I started doing the above shut-down many years ago after researching when I made money and when I lose money... it's an exploitable edge I have via knowing when I should be trading and when I should not be trading. Think about it carefully...if you saw a patten in your trading where you made most of your profits and where you lost some of those profits... why on earth would you keep doing battle with the markets and keep trading the time periods where you lost money? Keeping reading and don't skip anymore posts this time P.S. GreenDog's comments doesn't merit a direct reply because of his effort to twist a first ever comment about having a good week into a silly lie...he has a twisted sense of humor of what humility is based on some of his past posts. NihabaAshi
Also why is it that the big losing trade happens so quickly but the winning trade for the same size move takes so long and is so hard to get? I got bent over on my first trade which did not last very long and spent the rest of the day trying to make it back. Can be a pretty unforgiving environment some days.
What I quoted was more a followup to what Silk said about the difficulties of trading NYSE stocks right now, where if you take a big loser you don't have much opportunity to make it up with a big winner.
The first question that comes to mind, then, is why take the big loser in the first place? If that's what the plan calls for, then perhaps the plan needs to be changed. Not trying to start anything; just wondering why so many people complain about "the market". --Db
Has anyone noticed lately that NYSE stocks are trading differently in the past few weeks or so? The bid and ask are moving much more quickly and they are moving together. It makes it impossible to try to catch a move in a stock. the bid ask will be 2 cents apart and with 30 on each side, then suddenly both step up/down by a nickel, without a print of either size. It seems like the bid and ask are more sensitive to the general index movements now. Maybe its that new software I read somewhere that the specs are using. Any thoughts?
Well I don't know if you have traded NYSE stocks before because I know some futures traders who never have, but stocks are not as liquid as the futures are. It is entirely possible to have a NYSE stock gap against you a large amount without any shares being traded or without the ability to get out of the stock because the specialist is moving the stock without filling any size orders. Then it is up to you to decide how to manage it. You can wait and pray for a bounce to lessen the loss. But what if that move was the pause before they gap it down again for an even bigger loser. Of course taking a big loser was not in my plan, but sometimes it comes with the territory to trading stocks where liquidity can disappear without a lot of warning.