/esz3 or /nqz3 for a beginner to futures?

mbradley · Dec 10, 2003

Start with one contract and try to lose as little as possible first thing

market_man76 · Dec 10, 2003

Quote from nononsense:

Isn't this what Dominic was asking for? I gave him excellent advise. I clearly stated that 5 contracts was way too much to start with. What advise did you give him market_man?

nononsense

My point was he didn't give you enough information to offer position sizing advice and therefore I can't give position sizing advice.

Now as to which contract to trade, I say start out trading the 5year t-note; and thats NO NONSENSE.........................

hypostomus · Dec 10, 2003

...no offense intended, mistooken identity, the guy I knew was polite. When you have traded as many e-mini's as I have then feel free to be a snot and I'll take it in good humor from a peer. Please do keep us all informed on the progress of your emini trading career. Let me suggest that a thread in Journals might be in order. Posting one's trades in real time for all to see does wonders for the ego.

Hubert · Dec 10, 2003

trade the dow mini it has a bigger margin of error

Dominic · Dec 10, 2003

Thanks for advice. I plan on having a 2 point stop loss in place; do you think thats too tight of a stop? The more I have been watching and studying the E minis, the more I ask why I have been wasting my time on equities over the last couple of years.

jessie · Dec 10, 2003

Asking what the the size of your stop should be without knowing how you are trading is meaningless. The right answer might be one or twenty. Regardless of what else you so, I would suggest that you spend some time trading with auditrack, or something similar before moving into real money. You may want to reconsider the vehicle you suggest, as it moves pretty quickly and is a little squirrilly for somebody just starting out. One last thing, the best advice I have seen given to new traders, and you have heard it here too, is to start with one-lots. Even on the floor, where you can get in and out with relative ease, most new traders start with one-lots for a while (sometimes weeks or months) until they are consistently profitable. Many are 5-lot traders for years afterward, making 6 figures doing it, and never get bigger than that. The others who started too big are gone. You have nothing to lose initially by trading too small, and you WILL lose money getting started. We all wish this business was as easy as a lot of people would have you believe. All that said, if you can stick around for a couple of years, you will probably make it, and it's a good life once you do!
Good Luck!
Jessie

ElectricSavant · Dec 10, 2003

With 1 contract you must be right or wrong.... that's it....

With 2 contracts you can learn balance....... grasshopper

When you get more experience you can go down to 1 contract.

Michael B

nkhoi · Dec 10, 2003

Quote from Dominic:

Thanks for the encouragement. If I keep a tight stop loss -2.0 points, I can live with a $500 hit (excluding comms). No different than having a stop on equities. How many contracts do you trade at a time?

I recom 1 contract with $500 hit, chance is you will see it go + before it go -

dbTrader · Dec 11, 2003

Quote from Dominic:

Going to start trading futures slowly and would like any advice what would be my best future to trade. I plan on starting out with 5 contracts. Thanks for any input.

Dominic

The advice requested was for the best future to trade. Why does everyone get so hung up on size? There is so much else that could go into this thread.

Dominic - how about some more details about what you plan to do here. Are you going to be a discretionary trader or do you have a system? If system, are you testing, back-testing, paper trading, etc. Have you been paper trading either eMini? Maybe you can answer your own question of which by paper or simulator trading for a while. What time frame are you looking to trade? You thinking about grabbing the counter trend/reversals or trend trading?

I hope you answer some of these so that people can actually give advice of value, rather than sound off and expose their own issues and insecurity about the "size" thing.

Peace,

50 cent · Dec 11, 2003

Quote from Dominic:

Going to start trading futures slowly and would like any advice what would be my best future to trade. I plan on starting out with 5 contracts. Thanks for any input.

Dominic

imho,

5 contracts too big for a "beginner who wants to start slowly".
I would start with 2 contracts, that also allows minimal trade management and position sizing.

2 points stop (on NQ) is too tight for any time frame above 30seconds, in my experience. You might end up taking stops all day long.

In my experience,
YM is the most overshooting contract.
ES is the the absolute leader of the market.
NQ, therefore, is the contract to trade, since it's somewhere in the middle. It doesn't rinse as much as the ym and it follows the ES.