Do futures for intraday trading work?
- Thread starter TTT
- Start date
Thanks for your response and not taking offense to my comment. I just felt you were making a lot of assumptions and arriving at conclusions that may not be true -- or at least not true for everyone.
For what it's worth, I prefer trading futures over stocks and I will explain some of the reasons why I prefer them. However, if someone prefers trading stocks, that's fine with me. Trading is all about finding a style that suits you. If you prefer stocks and you think they are the best way to trade, I won't argue with you.
I can only focus on a handful of things. I don't have the time or patience to scan / monitor stocks. Further, some of a stock's movement is dependent on the overall market so now, from my perspective, I would have to focus on the market and scan for stocks to make the best decisions. With futures, especially stock index futures, I can just focus on the market and then bring in other data points to help me make a better decision such as breadth, volatility, etc. Further, even though I'm using leverage with these, futures are going to move less than a highly volatile individual stock (on a % daily return basis) so the leverage may not be as dangerous as you implied. And with futures, I'm not worried about things like earnings releases, FDA approvals, etc. getting caught in a buy-out situation, etc. because I don't have single stock-specific risk.
One thing to note too is that in the US gains on futures are treated much for favorably for tax purposes than gains on stocks.
Now to illustrate possible returns, let's say I trade one ES (e-mini S&P) contract for every $10,000 in my account. And let's say I take a few trades in a day in which I capture 10 points in the S&P. 10 points x $50 per contract is $500. And so now I have a 5% return on my account for the day. Good traders on good days can capture much more than that. For instance, on Tuesday I captured 38 points only taking 3 trades over a 3 hour period. That's not necessarily a typical day but as you can see, that's a nice return on the account for the day.
Hope that helps somewhat.
Best wishes! Peace!
For what it's worth, I prefer trading futures over stocks and I will explain some of the reasons why I prefer them. However, if someone prefers trading stocks, that's fine with me. Trading is all about finding a style that suits you. If you prefer stocks and you think they are the best way to trade, I won't argue with you.
I can only focus on a handful of things. I don't have the time or patience to scan / monitor stocks. Further, some of a stock's movement is dependent on the overall market so now, from my perspective, I would have to focus on the market and scan for stocks to make the best decisions. With futures, especially stock index futures, I can just focus on the market and then bring in other data points to help me make a better decision such as breadth, volatility, etc. Further, even though I'm using leverage with these, futures are going to move less than a highly volatile individual stock (on a % daily return basis) so the leverage may not be as dangerous as you implied. And with futures, I'm not worried about things like earnings releases, FDA approvals, etc. getting caught in a buy-out situation, etc. because I don't have single stock-specific risk.
One thing to note too is that in the US gains on futures are treated much for favorably for tax purposes than gains on stocks.
Now to illustrate possible returns, let's say I trade one ES (e-mini S&P) contract for every $10,000 in my account. And let's say I take a few trades in a day in which I capture 10 points in the S&P. 10 points x $50 per contract is $500. And so now I have a 5% return on my account for the day. Good traders on good days can capture much more than that. For instance, on Tuesday I captured 38 points only taking 3 trades over a 3 hour period. That's not necessarily a typical day but as you can see, that's a nice return on the account for the day.
Hope that helps somewhat.
Best wishes! Peace!
Stock index futures are golden, they can save you a lot of time, especially when market is sideways and you focus on short term trades only..
Goo too Forexfactory under plan the trade(Tradingjournals)there you have 4 ore 5 traders trading NQ futures intraday with good results
if not half sarcastic ...I tried for years trying to trade gold and fx intraday. Nothing I could come up with worked. Now I am doing Dax and it's a piece of cake ... My idea now is you should only trade Gold off the really long term charts doing position trades. With eurusd you can get away with trading the daily chart. With the Dax and SP500 I trade really tiny tf's. So what would be the best way to make a comfortable living you might ask ? Learn to trade somewhere where you can really trade small. I like the microlots on Dax at Tickmill with a spread of 0.75 points immensely. You can blow up a hundred times while you are learning and it will cost you less than a few thousand dollars. In the end you will have learned how to trade. Cause noboday is going to do the hard work for you and give you all the details. If you think they will I got a bridge for you to sell ... At best you will get a hint here and there ... all depends on you what you do with that hint. For me it took 14 years of failure before I got it. Luckily I had other means of income in the mean time. For example I had a really good income as a broker and alsoe a really great income as an options trader arbing vol in one of the most liquid options: DIA. But that lasted only till 2004. So I had to find other means of income. I have been for example a financial advisor for Citibank but sales is not my thing and I have done some simple administrative jobs.
Shouldn't there be a limit on the number of bullshit threads started coveirng the same thing over and over again by the same person. Seriously....
Don't waste your time trying to trade the wrong instruments ... it's just money down the drain ... At least you should simtrade untill you got the feeling you are up to something. Then you should trade real money and forward learn. Real money teaches you things a sim account can never learn you ...