Why are Futures and Forex more popular than stocks for short-term trading?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by helpme_please, Sep 6, 2015.

  1. wartrace

    wartrace

    Is this what you are referring to?
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    Auction Orders
    An auction order is entered into the electronic trading system during the pre-market opening period for execution at the Calculated Opening Price (COP). If your order is not filled on the open, the order is re-submitted as a limit order with the limit price set to the COP or the best bid/ask after the market opens.
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    I see no advantage to use auction orders if you are trading futures intraday. If I want to avoid slip I just place my limit order in the que.

    Yes, investors should seek diversification. The question was about short term trading. I applaud your ability to concentrate on multiple markets/products and trade them successfully. Me? I have the attention span of a Hamster so in my case it pays to focus on one product.:)

    (on edit- it depends on what your definition of "short term" trading is. My definition is 5 to 20 minutes.
     
    #21     Sep 6, 2015
  2. Or being brain washed by their broker or forex bucket shops ( spread betting, CFD vendors and etc), or even by those fake trading guru that sell education that never been profit in trading for their whole life.
     
    #22     Sep 6, 2015
  3. I swear, I thought traders in general were smart people until I joined this site.
     
    #23     Sep 6, 2015
    China Cat likes this.
  4. EPrado

    EPrado


    You have to obviously see what there average win/loss ratio is. If they average lets say in CL 10 tick winners but their losers are 100 ticks, or even worse they are one of these martingale types who average down then yes, it will lead to ruin. Look at that clown who traded Russell futures in that chat room he ran. Forgot his name. It's on here. He had like 200 straight winning days of like 200-600 dollar winning days. Then lost 300k in one day.

    Win % means nothing until you look at average winners vs average losers.

    Leverage for some who can manage it is a great thing to have in your arsenal. For those who don't have a clue on risk management it's an obvious disaster.
     
    #24     Sep 6, 2015
    Rimping likes this.
  5. Absolutely. And that was exactly my point, some here seem to have not the slightest understanding about basic probabilities.

     
    #25     Sep 6, 2015
  6. Mtrader

    Mtrader

    Are you family from Marketsurfer? His twin brother?
    You twist your opinion like MS does.

    You agree with EPrado. It is funny that two of my postings about this discussion received a like from EPrado. I assume that this means that he likes what I wrote. And now suddenly you have apparently the same opinion?
     
    #26     Sep 6, 2015
    volpunter likes this.
  7. i960

    i960

    Okay let's talk about things NOT related to leverage:

    * Extremely simple to trade: long or short are the same with no margin loans or hard to borrow nonsense.
    * Much more favorable 1256 contract tax rules.
    * Markets open almost 24h on business days.
    * Straight forward commission prices per lot (2$ to control 100k isn't expensive).
    * The ability to trade the curve (front vs back month contracts). You cannot do that with equities.
    * A single non fragmented exchange free of latency arb/no risk/ripoff bots (there's still HFT but they cannot front run you via another quote on a different exchange).
     
    #27     Sep 6, 2015
  8. With futures, 1 lot of E-mini S&P 500 is equivalent to trading roughly 500 shares of SPY.

    Depending on what type of equity account you have, it can take from a minimum of $25k to $100k to trade 500 shares of SPY when SPY trades around $200/share.

    However with futures, you can trade 1 lot with less than $1,000 intraday margin, yet the moves in P&L will be the same as trading 500 shares of SPY.
     
    #28     Sep 6, 2015
    onemoreshot likes this.
  9. Leo Chu

    Leo Chu

    Jajaja. Traders are smart, but sometimes are over smart or lose mind
     
    #29     Sep 6, 2015
  10. All this posting and only 1 mention of tax treatment. Amazing.
    The US tax rules heavily favor futures for short term trading.
     
    #30     Sep 6, 2015
    Stock, Money Trust and onemoreshot like this.