MES starter question.

Ivano said:
* Motivation
I am scared to trade futures and get margin called, but i did my homework and studied market structure finding that are less manipulated than stocks and back testing them manually find more respondent to my technical analysis intuitions. When market is not bullish and want a small capital exposition to day trade long and short side MES looks ideal on paper. Small exposition = I would buy just 1 MES contract per time till I am not profitable in all the market conditions, I have the modesty to consider myself as fresh meat while i see you have also nicknames based on futures as @Overnight:), I really would be pleased to play this game long time #surviving

** 2 Questions
Although i did some paper trading, I miss the years of experience you have in observing this market.

*** Is stop loss safe?
if I have a stop loss reasonably tight on the right daytrading setup ( I would reckon something between let's say 5-10 ticks) will be the SL have considerable slippage in period of black swan volatility?

*** how much can be a bad loss on average in a day without SL?
In your experience in the worst day of the year how much can i lose for a single MES contract if hypothetically do not have SL? I see in paper trading IBKR that 1 contract is considered 4k, that is 2000% more than my average calculated loss.

Thank you and hope i do not bother you too much while you are busy with today trading journal post in elitetrader. Hope to see you ...in the future.
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Because of the leverage factor, the profit/loss potential in futures is fast and furious.

Suggest you make the effort to become good at trading the market before you venture into futures.

Trade individual stocks and ETFs (their risks are not leveraged and therefore lower).... until you feel you've become competent to "handle the markets".

Quite honestly, trading futures is really not appropriate for noobs. (Neither are options for that matter.)
 
Snuskpelle said:
The market can gap even intraday, e.g. because Powell said something. Price is discontinuous and nobody has an obligation to offer you a price that lets you exit with a limited loss. If you need that, look into e.g. options.
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the problem with options is that although i would lose only the premium, if one is not expert to put in place a multi leg strategy(And i am not), would just execute a put or call transaction, that does not help when(= the majority of the time) the market is range bounded because I am betting in a directional increase of volatility.
 
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Daytrade (1 contract MES):
Maximum loss if entry & exit were at extremes of the day.

a.MES.png
 
Ivano said:
how much would be 5-10 points in dollars for MES not ES?


how much would be 120 points in $? I really need to understand what is my maximum risk to understand if I can afford



What a ****! really for 1 MES i risk all this stuff? I can barely imagine people that risk 200k with one single ES then


I have opened 1 MES paper trade in IBKR just 1 hour ago, and is delta 20 dollars up and down, maybe is safe to play when there are not news and the hours the market is less volatile!!
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$1.25 per tick (MES) or $5 per point.
 
even the micros can give you big losses because you'll do dumb things
and "take advantage" of your leverage and average and do stupid shit like that..

if you have 25k id recommend trading like 10 or 20 shares of spy.

or if not, maybe trade the daily chart and swing.

i think you'll get more out of it even if you want to ultimately day trade.
 
Snuskpelle said:
The market can gap even intraday, e.g. because Powell said something. Price is discontinuous and nobody has an obligation to offer you a price that lets you exit with a limited loss. If you need that, look into e.g. options.
More...

Highly unusual, though. At least on ES.

As far as I know, the CPI news releases last year have been the only times in a market session in recent time where liquidity simply disappeared and you'd probably face a > 50 point slippage on a market order.
 
VEGASDESERT said:
even the micros can give you big losses because you'll do dumb things
and "take advantage" of your leverage and average and do stupid shit like that..

if you have 25k id recommend trading like 10 or 20 shares of spy.

or if not, maybe trade the daily chart and swing.

i think you'll get more out of it even if you want to ultimately day trade.
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Take ownership and admit you have zero discipline. Trading spy and swing trading won’t help you. You should move to Alaska.
 
Monobrowtrading said:
Take ownership and admit you have zero discipline. Trading spy and swing trading won’t help you. You should move to Alaska.
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algo trading aside, there isn't a person on this planet that has flawless discipline.

there's a big difference between zero discipline and a crack in discipline which in a small
margin game we play matters a lot.

but you probably don't even trade so im wasting my time.
 
Scataphagos said:
Because of the leverage factor, the profit/loss potential in futures is fast and furious.

Suggest you make the effort to become good at trading the market before you venture into futures.

Trade individual stocks and ETFs (their risks are not leveraged and therefore lower).... until you feel you've become competent to "handle the markets".

Quite honestly, trading futures is really not appropriate for noobs. (Neither are options for that matter.)
More...

I think micros futures is probably the best market to trade for noobs. It's open 23hrs so you get exposure to wider set of trading conditions. 1 contract is not gonna kill anybody if you don't let your trades go to hell.

With etf/stock, you have limited hours, shorting can challenging if it's not liquid enough, higher capital reqs for daytrading.

I wished micros existed when I started trading years ago. I had to deal with "forex"..ugh
 
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