Why does it seem that good traders go to futures market?

You might take a look in the different Futures Forums and see what is going on there. And PDT stands for Pattern Daytrader.

 

Main reasons:
- Cheaper execution for an equivalent $ face value...
- More favorable tax treatment...
- No fucking around attempting to shift what would be size in the stockmarket... in the futures markets, even 20 contracts of ES (face value not far off $1million) is easy to shift, cos 20 cars is small fry in the world of futures...

Secondary reason:
- Laziness: got fed up with scanning for stocks plays... easier to just play one or two futures contracts all day long...

No wonder even lagging stocktrading firms such as Cybertrader are now making a futures offering...

 

IRS

 

Index futures are the most popular mainly because they are the most accessible (especially the e-mini index futures i.e. ES, NQ, YM), but many do also trade commodities futures, Bond futures, currencies futures, all manner of things. People also trade European instruments, Asian and many other markets around the world...

Best

Natalie

 

How is the taxation more favorable?

 

Only favorable is you are profitable.

 

Yes!! Scanning stocks is f**king stupid. It drives me crazy. Once I tried futures I never look back.

 

Good luck to you guys. Personally, I think there is way too much competition in futures now for me or anyone to just get started there. All the newbies are gonna get ripped apart.

I could use some less hacks on NYSE listed so hope they all go to futures.

 

are futures strickly for daytrading ? or can you position trade them too ?

 

I've always felt the advantage of trading stocks is that you have a bunch of different markets to choose from. There isn't an opportunity in every stock every day, but if i watch 100 stocks i can usually find a few decent opportunities daily.

If i just watched 1 stock, or 1 futures contract (i.e. spy) i wouldn't have nearly as many opportunities daily.

By the same logic, i would say a futures trader who just watches SPY and not 10 other futures markets would be limiting himself.

A person can only watch so many markets at once, but everyone should be able to handle watching at least 5-10 at once.

For that reason i don't understand why anyone would limit themselves to just trading S&p futures and nothing else. Perhaps some futures traders here could explain why they just trade 1 market. I would like to understand.

I'm mainly a stock trader, but a few times a month i might feel like i have a good edge in predicting where the s&p is going and i will play the SPY or DIA. Rest of the time i'm looking for sector/specific stock opportunities where i can get more of an edge.