futures are a pure supply/demand vehicle. that is why i trade (on an intraday basis) YM almost exclusively.
stocks i love. I INVEST in stocks, and even swing trade or occasionally daytrade them. But for intraday trading, imo, nothing offers more opportunities, return on capital and pure no bulls***t price action than futures.
futures are hard for many to trade because you can't usually use the same models you use for stocks. However, unlike most stocks they are not subject to many of the short term foibles that stocks are. When institutions, big money, small money, etc. want to buy stocks, they fire big ole baskets etc. and these indexes move based on that pure supply/demand. I just find it a much more pure movement to trade on pure price action than most stocks, where the MM's can paint the tape on an intraday basis, and news and hype can cause more unpredictable swings.
The leverage is phenomenal. But you HAVE to use tight stops and tight risk control on an intraday basis, or they can rip yer head off. Personally, I keep 10k in my futurea ccount. That is more than enough to generate a nice income trading futures (2-5 cars is a comfortable contract size),and one can filter off profits every week into more conventional investments and retain capital.
I am not aware of any other trading vehicle that can generate a nice steady income stream with so little capital at risk.
Options on futures are also a great vehicle to use, if you are taking position trades in futures (vs. intraday scalps).
As a side note, imo, YM is a vastly superior scalping vehicle than ES for a # of reasons, primary of which is spread. The fact that most traders use ES is proof positive imo of a faulty decision matrix. Why would you want to scalp a vehicle (ES) with a spread that is vastly inferior to YM. YM spread means you have far more flexibility in setting stops, and you are less likely to get hit. Also, I believe that if your trading methodology uses lagging indicators (MACD, Stoch, etc.) it is much harder to be successful trading index futures. I feel the same way about those whose methodology uses mostly market orders. In futures, imo, you gotta let the market come to your entry level, NEVER NEVER NEVER chase a move.
