Quote from tradersaavy:
Where would you place your stop on this set up ?
Although usually much more risk-averse (I would have entered a little later, on the actual consolidation), If you ask me on this particular entry, I would have actually taken it as low as 5pts below A / 2pt below B at 9128.
Because:
-Strength wasn't high enough to justify straight breakout, but rather short consolidation.
-But speculative strength, and correlation (ES/NQ) was far too strong to statistically allow for a double top.
-9130 was the next closest dectile number / less likely to be penetrated.
-9129 was were the "semi-smart" traders had their "below dectile number stops". The smarter traders/professionals would have picked up longs here to buy out these stops and get a low-risk entry into the breakout. 9128 penetration thus deemed unlikely.
-Since the speculative market (NQ) was already moving and strengthening, alongside with ES, it was likely that some traders would have fallen for the beartrap in the YM, but pretty unlikely for a double top to happen. Also, there were many other indicators that were in favor of breakout.
To contribute to the actual topic of this thread, and answer some of your questions, Fast_Trader, here some advantages to trading YM;
-YM have lower intraday volatility in terms of ATR per bar in smaller timeframes. ES have to battle more volatility because of the larger ticksize.
-Lagging market - You have two leading indicators (NQ & ES) rather than just one, like in the ES (NQ).
-More precise stops, so better scalping.
-Less competition / dumber traders
Disadvantages would be (IMO):
-Less "emotional leverage", in that I mean that people act more heavily on fear/greed on the larger indexes since tick-losses lose more money, thus create more opportunities to exploit stupidity (=emotions).
-High commissions?
-Trading ES is more prestigious. Most of the great wannabe ES-experts don't even know what the YM is, and get confused.
Well. That's it for now. I might look into trading the YM sometime soon... But I reckon it's probably a great medium for beginners.
Cheers to You all...
~The Scientist
