Anybody here trade 50 or more emini sp500 contracts?

Quote from southbeach4me:


I also trade euro futures(6E), and pound futures (6b), never had a problem with large size with them either. Although i do have more instances of breaking up my orders on 6e and 6b into multiple ones bcuz they arent quite as liquid as the ES.


Anyone else who trades large size futures wish to chime in on this subject?
More...

I've traded in the 6B futures. I have traded between 20 and 30 contracts in the 6B and had horrendous fills. Everything after the first 8-12 was filled 1-2 worse than the best bid / offer. That market was frequently trading 2-3 wide so I was getting effective spreads of 4-5 on the average position and ended up losing money. This was a few years ago when the markets were quite volatile, and I have no idea if there are more / better LPs in this contract now. I was trading after the London open and expected the instrument to be liquid enough.

The other thing which annoyed me about the 6B was the small contract size and therefore proportionally higher exchange fees. Factoring those in, I ditched the contract for anything more than position trades.

For trading at limit price there would not have been a problem, but my strategy at the time was exclusively market orders. I know more about liquidity now and would be better at working orders on 6B, but have moved on to other instruments (ES and Euro only).

I've traded up to 50s in 6E without issue, and know others who move more than that. EUR/USD will not usually widen with orders up to 40 euros in London/New York overlap.

Are your experiences with 6B futures after 2008/early 2009, and do you enter at limit price?


For the OPs question - yes I've done 50 lots in the ES. I started this earlier than I should have done and took a few hits. There are successful traders out there doing this and more every day. No issues filling that even out of hours. Start with 1-5 and you can be at 50 with similar results soon enough.

Try this for inspiration: http://web.archive.org/web/20050707013433/http://marketmonk.blogs.com/pmtc/
 
Quote from JustDoingIt:

50 contracts is not a lot of contracts for RTH on the ES. My max position size is 50 contracts but I trade intraday and trade 5 linked accounts and seek to reduce risk via position reduction ASAP. As volatility contracts position size can be increased without incurring additional monetary risk. As volatility increases one must reduce position size but that will not decrease profit potential due to the increased point range. Only educators will tell you not to focus on the money because money is the only reason to trade(IMNSHO) and money is what keeps you able to trade. I operate with a 1.5 pt hard stop on the ES so if and when I have 50 contracts on a trade my risk is $3750. Your max tolerable risk per full stop out should determine how many contracts you trade IMO.
Sooooo...if you use a 2 pt stop and your max tolerable loss on a full stop out is $2000 then you should trade no more than 20 contracts and so on and so forth. Always value what have over what it is you seek to gain. Increase size as your account and skill level grows. In the ES money is made by increasing size using methods that already produce consistent results. During RTH 50 contracts are filled as easily as 5 contracts on the ES. I never traded only 1 contract on the ES but used to trade only 1 contract on the old ER2. 5 contracts is very good money to make a living off of my friend.
More...


If your risk is defined down to dollars at $3750 less commish on a 50....then what you are saying is you are actually hard stopping yourself at 1 handle/4 ticks as you are down 2 ticks from paying the spread on your RT.

With that being said,you`ll be stopped all day long at 4 tiks as an intraday descretionary trader on ES....obviously there are times & setups that will allow one a tight hard stop but to say you go into every setup with a predetermined 4 tik stop on a 50 lot would put you down in a hurry.....5 quick stops will have you down just under $20k..which will have you looking for an 8 point runner just to get back to even on the day.

How many RT`s are you executing in a session & what R/R ratio are you seeking?
 
You guys think the slippage in currencies is bad.......trade gold. You will appreciate your 2-3 tick slippage on "bad fills".
 
Quote from Spooz Top:

I`m with you on that Prado....GC provides accordian type vol with accordian type slippage.i`m a player in metal markets too.
More...


Yeah...gold can be brutal. The last few weeks I have had some real bad slippage on trades in GC. I use stops so of course it's going to happen. But have had 1.50-2.00 slippage over the last few weeks. And these trades are not at highs or lows.....are right in the middle of the pit range. I could see if the stops were placed right above day's high/low then might be asking for trouble. Luckily out of all the mkts I trade, gold is on the smallest size....but am losing interest in it.

I wonder how the hell the guys who trade 100 lots get out of gold?
 
The eMini S&P has the largest average daily volume of any market out there.

That being said if you were to look at the top 25 markets by the largest daily "Tick Range", the eMini S&P is dead last. If you are looking at the largest daily dollar range the eMini S&P only falls to #21. What does that mean to you as a trader?
Assume you are playing basketball, would you rather have a hoop 4 inches larger than the basketball or 4 foot larger than the basketball?

The larger the daily tick range or dollar range, the safer the market is to extract profits from.

Symbol Stats - based on eSignals symbols

Top 10 Daily Tick Range

HO
CT
CL
GC
SI
NG
6B
6E
YM
TF

Top 10 Daily Dollar Range

SI
HO
CL
KC
GC
6E
CT
NG
TF
6J

My Personal Top 10

CL
6E
TF
MC
ZS
ZW
CT
GC
6B
YM
 
Yes.

I also use the Iceberg function in X-trader, so there's no use in trying to detect big guys these days.

I also want to say that the previous poster is full of shit.
 
Quote from traderslair:



I also want to say that the previous poster is full of shit.
More...

I take you are referring to Justdoingit?....if so,i smell the same fodder being shoveled.
 
Quote from Spooz Top:

If your risk is defined down to dollars at $3750 less commish on a 50....then what you are saying is you are actually hard stopping yourself at 1 handle/4 ticks as you are down 2 ticks from paying the spread on your RT.

With that being said,you`ll be stopped all day long at 4 tiks as an intraday descretionary trader on ES....obviously there are times & setups that will allow one a tight hard stop but to say you go into every setup with a predetermined 4 tik stop on a 50 lot would put you down in a hurry.....5 quick stops will have you down just under $20k..which will have you looking for an 8 point runner just to get back to even on the day.

How many RT`s are you executing in a session & what R/R ratio are you seeking?
More...

Judging by your handle I can assume that you do not trade the ES and judging by your questions I can assume that you have NEVER traded the ES. 1.5 pt stop is based on fill price and by using buy stops to go long and sell stops to go short you will not be fighting momentum nor subjected to horrendous fills. If you are continually getting stopped on a 1.5-2 pt stop on the ES you should reverse your strategy because if you avg. 1.5 pts per trade you'd be doing very well. I merely answered the OPs question and have no need nor desire to get into a philosophical debate with someone that wants to give theory about something that I have been doing daily for the past 7 yrs. My ideal number of trade sequences is between 5-8 per day but I have gotten as many as 10 on a nice range bound day. R/R on any given trade must have a min. of 1:2 as previously stated. 5 full stops has NEVER happened in my trading of the ES even when I was as green as the grass over the septic tank. I'll let someone who has a trading education program or one of the sponsors school you on what is and what isn't a tight stop. Do think a little deeper before asking trading 101 questions because you waste everyone's time doing otherwise.
 
Quote from JustDoingIt:

Judging by your handle I can assume that you do not trade the ES and judging by your questions I can assume that you have NEVER traded the ES. 1.5 pt stop is based on fill price and by using buy stops to go long and sell stops to go short you will not be fighting momentum nor subjected to horrendous fills. If you are continually getting stopped on a 1.5-2 pt stop on the ES you should reverse your strategy because if you avg. 1.5 pts per trade you'd be doing very well. I merely answered the OPs question and have no need nor desire to get into a philosophical debate with someone that wants to give theory about something that I have been doing daily for the past 7 yrs. My ideal number of trade sequences is between 5-8 per day but I have gotten as many as 10 on a nice range bound day. R/R on any given trade must have a min. of 1:2 as previously stated. 5 full stops has NEVER happened in my trading of the ES even when I was as green as the grass over the septic tank. I'll let someone who has a trading education program or one of the sponsors school you on what is and what isn't a tight stop. Do think a little deeper before asking trading 101 questions because you waste everyone's time doing otherwise.
More...

boy,you`ve got me pegged pretty good...completely green & looking for sponsors....spot on.

Sooo by buy-stopping & sell stopping yourself into a position you think you`re avoiding slippage/spread & "horrendous fills" despite your limit order?

my original question was pretty straight forward regarding your 4 tik stop being defined by the dollar amount of $3750.....let`s elaborate on that..how do you say?....& we will leave out the "philosophical" end of it as a courtesy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top