Hi everyone, After having traded up to five ER@ contracts for several years, I'm getting ready to enter the market with a larger account, in the $150k-$180k area. There are several points I'm concerned about, and which I would appreciate your input about. 1. Fills & trading methodology. Trading 5 contracts is one thing, trading 15-30 quite something else. Up until now, I've been trading with a combination of S&R and DOM reading, going for 2-4 points profit per trade, with an average stop loss of 2 points. Will trading a higher number of contracts mean a lot more slippage, and a need to perhaps entirely change my entire methodology to account for that? And perhaps a need to use higher margins (currently $5k/contract)? 2. Connected to the previous point, with ER2 moving to ICE, will that just worsen the situation due to less volume, perhaps necessitating a move to a different trading vehicle? 3. On the other hand, are there methodologies that would perhaps allow a bigger account to take advantage of less volume, having a bigger impact on market direction? I realize that 15-30 contracts is not exactly earth-shattering, yet I wonder if there is a point where a certain number of contracts enables/forces one to use profitable strategies unavailable to smaller traders. Thanks in advance for any comments. Shraga
going from 5 to 30 shouldn't mean too much on fills in ES, unless you are trading slow volume times. ER2 is going to die on the vine on ICE. damn shame. talk about bang for your buck! Hopefully, CME will introduce something comparable that has volume.
Aye, there's the rub. I'm used to ER2, and have invested years in getting to know it well. Moving to ES might mean having to go back to school for me, which I would rather not spend time on...
As you have traded the ER for the last "several years", I do not understand why you have asked this question.
?? As I wrote, I've been trading it with up to 5 contracts. Now I'm going up to 15-30 contracts. Are you saying there's no difference?
There's difference. What are you seeing when bids/asks getting hit. What vol's going through? When can you get out or in? You a system or discretionary trader?
Well I will put in the caveat here that I have not daytraded the Emini's since mid 2003. At that time I was doing a managed program (which I closed due to my own poor performance when the drawdown hit 12.5%), I was trading 100/150 contracts at a time. My slippage then was purhaps a quarter point more than it was when I had been trading 10 contracts. So, since the market is more liquid now, I would think you would have an even easier time than I did in terms of executions.