Dear "Robert Morse", I started day trading in September 1998, on First Level at Tradescape, which would eventually become Lightspeed. Excellent platform; I just wish they had futures directly on it. I spent a good decade trading on Lightspeed, my youth. Just got finished reading "One Good Trade" by Mike Bellafiore. So many memories from that era...
It is my expectation that we will add futures to Lightspeed sometime in 2020 as we also want to offer universal accounts. In the meantime, realtick offer equities and futures and we offer a number of Futures platforms that are excellent including CQG QTRader and Desktop. Futures accounts require a different application and funding.
"We all have to find our own style, but on the charting side of things, I've been most inspired by Timothy Morge. No-nonsense guy with 40+ years of success, specialized around a single leading indicator and not much else. Best of all, you can gather what he has to say without spending a dime in the I.B. webinar archives, but he also does sell coaching to those who can afford it. ____________________ Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish." Dear "Rbrowny", Tim Morge removed Shane Blankenship from Market Geometry a few months ago. So Shane has started his own trading academy, same format as Morge's: https://languageofmarkets.com/ Yes, this is the same Shane Blankenship that recently declared bankruptcy, and was Morge's protege, and business partner for like 20 years: https://www.open-public-records.com/court/nevada-14952360.htm Shane also has plenty of free material, and only charges $15,000 dollars for Mentoring. I am sure you will be inspired as well!!! Please always do due diligence: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/tim-morge-and-the-well-chosen-example.305061/page-23
I used to watch this guy's videos. It seemed like there is some kind of edge in what he was doing. I remember him using tick bars (volume bars) and applying Andrew's pitchforks to the pivots (highs and lows). First off this is just kind of a 'time at price' screening tool. The bars show how long the market traded at what values (in what range). Then he is applying trend lines to that, in the form of pitchforks. At first I thought this guy was pretty smart. He seems to have a lot of experience and a favored method. I will give a little consideration to just about any kind of technique. The pitchforks just aren't my style. He also likes currencies and I have moved away from them because I don't like the vol distribution in them, and don't really have a way to spread that out using hedges. I decided to be a futures guy a long time ago. So, naturally the guys that impressed me most were the guys who traded the big S&P, rate futures, and professionals in the commodities space.
I have a problem accepting technical analysis as a legitimate tool for the Indices. I cannot see how analysing 500 companies (The S&P for example, each component of the Index having an individual performance, different earnings, operating in different sectors and located in different regions) as a group can produce usable predictions or signals. It is just too simplistic and convenient to use TA on an Index the same way one uses TA to analyse any one of the Index components individually. I'm not a chartist but have studied and followed professionals that are and have noted that these chartists are good with their TA on individual companies, but more than often do not get an Index right, in fact, their TA on an Index is mostly way off the reality. In my opinion, an Index needs to be position traded on the fundamentals of the economy. Day trading an Index on TA is as successful as flipping a coin... little surprise that 74% of day traders lose money and the 26% that don't lose is due their good risk and position management.
Index trading is a professionals game. Pro's know all the TA but they know everything else too. When you day trade the indexes you are trading with the professionals for a bunch of reasons. can lever the index for huge size can spread the indexes index is traded against rate futures on ECBOT index hedges CBOE transactions and block trades index is used to hedge cash market (~30 trillion dollar market) vast liquidity in index during cash market because of HFT index arbitrage the biggest banks and prime brokers (Morgan, Goldman, UBS, Merril, Citi, etc) have automated trading going on at all hours using indexes.
This further adds to the argument that TA is futile for an index. TA analyses the past to predict the future but if the instrument is bought or sold for arbitrage or by HFT bots on headlines, then-current day moves are detached from the past trend. Am I correct in saying that a day trader looking for single-digit points can flip a coin (buy on heads and short on tail) and do just as good (or bad) as a trader making decisions on TA... his performance being determined by how good the risk management is rather than ability to pick the direction? Conversely, a position trader can enter an Index trade knowing that, long term, an Index will gravitate towards a value determined by the economic fundamentals and the accepted PE of the time? After 10 years of trading the Indices I'm still learning, so far my best success has been by using the fundamentals to determine the expected direction. then enter a trade when sentiment pushes the price opposite to the fundamentals. My trade can last a moment or seasons (Medallion philosophy) and aims for triple-digit points.
Of course. Leverage, liquidity, and tax advantages are critical factors outside of edge/execution, and a centralized CME exchange provides even more incentive. I agree with the TA knowledge. I get bashed here when I outline the irrelevance of chart, bar, and visual TA pattern trading, but most never realize that I have a PhD in this stuff. It’s the typical evolution process, and the clever players get past it much quicker and figure out more creative, measurable, and smoother ways to dissect market structure.
No doubt about it. It’s not about direction. It’s putting yourself in the right place/time with strict size/risk control that makes or breaks you.