I will have satisfied my curiosity and, hopefully, have gained a bit of perspective. Basically, I just want to know if I'm the only one standing in a swamp at the moment.
With these abysmal daily ranges, all it ever takes to traverse the length of any range is a large buy or sell program. Once those programs hit, its like a hot knife thru butter. It seems we have gotten to the point in all products where there really isnt much offsetting liquidity. It has just evolved over the past 3 years. I began to notice it in 2003, it became more apparent in 2004, and now in 2005, its just in your face all the time.
Its summer time and the livin is easy ... except for.......... The scene this summer is not one of the best........ I'm looking forward to Labor Day, believe me... Then the next congressional elections..........
well ES has always been "challenging", it's certainly one of the most difficult market to daytrade consistently I think even YM has changed it no longer moves straight up like it used to do. It's just real annoying action most of the time when it moves up. Lots of head fake. ES feels slower but is less predictable I find. There has been a lot of nice moves recently not they are always easy to catch and as I have found often catching a big break just makes up for the rest of the day losses. I find that trend following using MA's doesn't work very well. It's also easy to jump and buy small breakouts at the highs. Shorting : a complete waste of time and money
The summer is dead. Just try and survive and reign in your expectations. I'm getting into other mkt's like Oil and German debt. Have a backup market.
Could the problem be that you are a trend trader and don't like to scalp? Last week or two been scalper's paradise.
Please let me reassert that I am not looking for trading advice or an assessment of the market's performance, either retrospectively or anticipatory. Further, I am not interested in trading a different market. I am only interested to know how traders have actually performed with their ES trading this summer thus far. Have they done well with their actual trading, or has their trading been off somewhat? As I noted in my first post, this summer has been less than stellar for me to date. While I appreciate your input, please let us not convert this into an advice thread. I am just asking for a show of hands here.
I trade ES and it sounds like your spending too much time on ES. Here's some suggestions in the link below because your question is very common lately concerning ES, YM, NQ and recently I saw a comment about ER2. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52533&perpage=1&pagenumber=16 I've reduced my trading in ES dramatically eventhough I still monitor it to keep track of the number of trade signals it produces. So yes...my performance in ES is way below its norm but I'm still happy with ES performance whenever I do get a trade signal due to the fact I'm also trading other markets (adapting) instead of being married to ES... As of September 2004. Further, I don't think ES is tougher to trade this summer (June, July and August)... I'm just not getting as many trade signals as I normally do in ES. Lets put it this way...if I get fixated on ES for an entire trading day... I'll have a lot of free time to be doing personal stuff at/near my trading workstation. This could be due to the lack of volatility or something else I've overlooked. Therefore, I hope your performance in ES as of lately is due to the fact your not taking as many trades (not as many trade signals) and not because you've been trying to maintain your level of activity in ES in an attempt to maintain some sort'uv profit target levels. NihabaAshi
I am taking fewer trades and they have been less profitable on balance in the recent past. A few respondents have suggested I follow different markets. While there is merit in these suggestions, the method I have developed for myself works most reliably with ES. Further, it requires fairly intense focus on a single market alone, let alone scattering my concentration among different markets. I understand the benefits of diversification, however, I am presently opting for the single market I know best. That may change in due course, but not yet. Besides, if the other indexes are also being mired by the "summer effect," then it is possible that jumping from one to the other would be a bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. For now, I will stick with the devil I know.
IMO this summer has been quite volatile in the ES, I think the increasing difficulty is due to the constant fight between black boxes, there are just almost no moves any more that are not completely retraced, the way I have been adjusting to this is going for smaller profit targets, as a result my W/L ratio has gone up but the profit per trade is significantly lower than it was. Which markets do you find the most tradable?