Question futures trading
- Thread starter amitman
- Start date
amitman
could I please suggest back testing
go look at the one day, one minute, charts in the same way you would look at the real time charts except the end results are already available right now
try your system on the past first if it doesn't work EVERY TIME back testing it wont work paper trading or with REAL MONEY.
if all else fails come back here and read the instructions until you find a system.
top indicators: price (real time), volume (realtime), stochastics (delayed by one minute).
hot tip: the most dangerous part of the day is a flat market.
i've been told there is a 95% failure rate among daytraders perhaps you might want to do some homework to make your odds better.
there is a 95% chance I just wasted the last 10 minutes.
could I please suggest back testing
go look at the one day, one minute, charts in the same way you would look at the real time charts except the end results are already available right now
try your system on the past first if it doesn't work EVERY TIME back testing it wont work paper trading or with REAL MONEY.
if all else fails come back here and read the instructions until you find a system.
top indicators: price (real time), volume (realtime), stochastics (delayed by one minute).
hot tip: the most dangerous part of the day is a flat market.
i've been told there is a 95% failure rate among daytraders perhaps you might want to do some homework to make your odds better.
there is a 95% chance I just wasted the last 10 minutes.
Unfortunately this is true. YM has become as back-fill happy as the ES since it changed exchange at the beginning of the year. Up to the change the YM was reasonably smooth and much less erratic. I don't like trading it as much now.
Quote from Schaefer:
My good deed of the week for the community. It is a common misnormer among ET community, that the YM is suitable for the futures beginners. It is far from the truth.
YM, even though, the tick size is only $5 per tick, can be extremely noisy. Unless, you're an experienced trader with impeccable entries/exits, the noise alone would require about 15 to 20 tick stops. That's $75 - $100 risk per trade off the bat.
Assuming the trade goes your way, it is uncommon for the beginners to ignore the noise, and to ride out the profits to at least 40 ticks, essentially 1:2 R/R to make it worthwhile. A beginner would be itching to take the profits at the first sign of green. It would be a losing game after a few plays, due to poor risk, reward ratio.
From my experience, NQ is the most beginner friendly emini of them all. The tick moves in .25 increments, instead of whole points, and it is still $5 per tick. And It is very rare, that you have to risk $100 (20 ticks) in NQ.
Happy trading
Schaefer
EDIT: I just saw your reply above, ER2 is even worse, ER2 is essentially YM on steroids (make that lots of steroids). If you want proof, just take a look at the journals section, take a look at a couple of journals recently started by newbies, trading the YM. The results are what you would call, "expected".
1) I plan to use tick or vol charts since i find them more reliable and combining both price and volume together.
2) I've been testing the stochs for quite a while and i've found them less reliable them some MA's cross.
3) I don't intend to trade with real money right away i want to watch the ES and NQ for a while, learn it and test my system with paper trading.
Amitman:
If you are just testing a strategy and willing to wait to apply it to futures, you can trade the SPY or DIA ETF's that trade just like stocks. You have to trade in 100 share multiple lots, so if you trade 100 shares you can keep potential looses small. If you want even smaller you can immediately sell off 50 shares for a couple of dollars loss (in an IB account anyway - $1 commision on 100 shares plus slippage which is small on both SPY and DIA). This is how I have started.
If you are just testing a strategy and willing to wait to apply it to futures, you can trade the SPY or DIA ETF's that trade just like stocks. You have to trade in 100 share multiple lots, so if you trade 100 shares you can keep potential looses small. If you want even smaller you can immediately sell off 50 shares for a couple of dollars loss (in an IB account anyway - $1 commision on 100 shares plus slippage which is small on both SPY and DIA). This is how I have started.