Iâve been trading YM, alongside ES and NQ, for the past few weeks⦠and I like it. Moves are fast and furious but I find it less noisy (more predictable) on the charts then other e-minis â I think that the liquidity is the main reason for it. Not very keen on the spread but I can live with it â I am going for larger moves now days anyway (I have calmed down a bit now - scalping with 1min chart was fun but not justifiable from the profits v commissions point of view). I wouldnât touch $2 Dow (unless you toss a coin and enter a trade at the start of the day and exit at the end of the day) â MM playing the usual games with a very wide spread. Liquidity for YM is improving all the time â but I would like to see the effect of SSF first before I can say there is a future for e-mini Dow.
I had no idea the $2 Dow e-mini even existed until August. But since then, I've used it a number of times profitably. I'll switch to them whenever the craziness level gets a little too extreme on the SP-eminis for my account size. Granted though, you can't trade them for 2-3 points, like you can the S&Ps. But they ARE good for the broader multi-day trend-trades, or, in my opinion, for higher-risk/high reward trades that you might not want to attempt with the SP-eminis, but have a strong feeling about (like those "sloppy" days when the SPs keep trying to punch through a strong resistance or support level for most of the session, and you sense an end-of-day reversal coming - but you can't always find a high-probability entry point for the SP-eminis. Or event-driven bets on big earnings news, fed meetings, economic data, etc). Granted, a trade with the $2s is a lower-profit trade range-for-range with the SP-eminis. But I'll hold a $2 overnight or for a number of days (if I think the odds are in my favor). Its rare that I'll do that with the SP-eminis.
I had a couple bad experiences with the Dow, where I go in when the spread was 2 points and went to get out and had to jump over a 10 point spread.... This was enough for me to jump back into the e-mini's
Yeah, the Dowskis are definitely not day-tradeable, IMO. Catch the bigger trend, with wider stops Yes. As liquid and efficient as the S&Ps? No.
just curious, when are they going to cancell the $2 contract? i couldnt find it anywhere. on cbot they only give out info on the $5 one only. hmm did they kill it already??? thnx
Yes, someone mentioned it earlier on this thread, and the CBOT confirmed it. The $2 is going away once the December contract expires. Highly unfortunate, as far as I'm concerned. The $2 offered a nice way for small traders to take a position on the broader market trend, in my opinion, even while using the SP-eminis to snip away pieces of the microtrends within... oh well.
The $2, to be clear, does still trade. I've been buying contracts here and there in the last couple weeks...I haven't really noticed more-than-normal slippage, and these have been market-orders, to boot.