Micro E-mini Madness (2% per day)

sstheo said:
Hmmm. Maybe so. Any suggestions for me?
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I would suggest you stop entertaining others' ideas for now, and just go with your system live as you have it in your head. You have your track record from the CME contest, so implement, and see how you do!
 
Overnight said:
…"One of the exciting things about the new micros is the margins are only $50 to $100, so you can play like a big trader and finally learn how to scale in and out. The best traders usually take the bulk of their positions off at the first target but then let their winners run. And with an overnight margin of about $500, you could even do a swing trade and not get stressed out..."

There is one flaw in your thinking...The current volatility environment on the equity futures is the EXACT reason you should NOT try this right now. This high-volatility environment is what drove many trader to the micros in the first place, me included.

And while everything is proportional, your idea of 1000 to 10,000 is admirable. But 10,000 to 100,000 is not.

While you may be able to scale in and out of the micros to your satisfaction, everything changes when the scale goes up ten-fold. Mostly on the psychology side, but also just the practical side. If in your first go you when you switch to the minis at $10K in your account, you scale in a bit and you get a position against you in, say, 3-4 contracts? You will take a major loss if not in the position, but on the margin call at closing time.

You may see this in the micros, too. Be very careful with your idea here, please. I would love to see you succeed, but do not think it is going to be painless.

I have an account that could accommodate a very large number of minis, but I am sweating this volatility even with micros. The now unpredictability and huge swings of the equity futures weighs heavily on my mind, and is causing me to be so conservative that I am making bupkus.
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Thanks for the thoughtful post. Indeed the market is highly volatile right now. And I may need to scale to 1% or 1/2% or just "2 ticks" average per day! But at least now with the Micros, I now have a tool in my tool box I didn't have before.

I agree with you that the emotional side of trading is much larger than us rational types are prepared for. And we have to be careful.

Knowing I am not alone in my frustration with the market I want to share my journey. Hopefully I will have some good results to share in the next weeks and months.
 
Looking forward to watching your Journal. I'm waiting for the volume to pick up in the MGC contract. The MNQ has plenty of volume already. Good luck!
 
caacapital said:
What was your contract size? was it daytrading?
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The CME challenge felt like a fun crazy free-for-all. It was 24 hours a day for 5 days. And there was lots of volatility that week. The contest did not foster safe trading principals at all (and I told the CME as much afterwards!), but created a frenzy. There were no commissions and no limits on the number of trades. It was all about identifying big market shifts and holding on to winners for the duration of the move. I was in the top 10 most of the time, but flamed out on the last day. We were able to trade up to 10 micros each of MES, MNQ, MYM, and M2k. It was a good experience and I did lots of scaling in and out. It was a blast, but I was really tired near the end.
 
Overnight said:
I would suggest you stop entertaining others' ideas for now, and just go with your system live as you have it in your head. You have your track record from the CME contest, so implement, and see how you do!
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I was being mostly facetious. I plan on doing what I do, especially now that I have advertised it to the world. But I do keep 5% of my mind open to new ideas, so I wanted to give myself a chance to try on a potentially new golden nugget of wisdom.
 
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Turveyd said:
The pressure gets hard as the $ value of trades increases, but as he’s scaled up to get to 10k he’ll likely be trading full emini sizes by 10k anyway, then just increasing the same although bigger steps.

So i don’t see an issue at all.
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Indeed the epiphany for me came when I realized with the micros I can add contracts one at a time and scale up gradually. I will post my official rules, but I will probably add 1 micro with each additional $500 in the account balance. $1500 would then allow me to trade with 3 micros. If I keep looking at a % growth and keep things reasonable and not try to swing for the fences, then I should succeed.
 
TickProphet said:
Looking forward to watching your Journal. I'm waiting for the volume to pick up in the MGC contract. The MNQ has plenty of volume already. Good luck!
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Thanks for the interest.

I agree that MGC certainly needs more volume to really be tradable. And I heard there are some pretty vocal bodies try to get an MCL created. That would be nice....
 
fwiw..spent last few months testing various AMP platforms for MES trading..decided to go with AMP Global EU..they only offer MT5..but with Stereotrader it is fine

what software are you using with AMP..what is your strategy ( one liner will do)..what time/s can you trade..how many monitors do you have..have you a papertrading account set up..can you trade another account (for micros) with a different broker using your MT5 account

keep in mind the only big difference to trading the ES is that you are risking more ticks per contract..at the end of the day you still need to know exactly what you are doing and have a sound strategy to achieve consistent profitability with a given no. of trades!!
 
sstheo said:
Thanks for the interest.

I agree that MGC certainly needs more volume to really be tradable. And I heard there are some pretty vocal bodies try to get an MCL created. That would be nice....
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MGC is perfectly tradeable with the volume it has for us retail-types.
 
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