Probably only 3 to 5 times a day everything in my method lines up and those are the trades I hope to take. I probably "see" about 20 trades a day but on 15 of those times, something is a little bit wrong so I ignore that trade and wait for everything to be optimal. It is frustrating and takes a lot of discipline, but I try to wait for everything to set up as I learned to trade with a small account years ago and a few consecutive losers still freaks me out a little. I sometimes lose focus after that and I can lose 3 days profit in an afternoon Trying to avoid all that and start very small and scale up if I can maintain my discipline.
Too general..but best commodity to day trade
- Thread starter spinn
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I would say that if, as you indicated in your OP, that “noise” was a concern of yours - I have to ask the obvious; why the hell would you consider the “noisiest” futures markets there are? (GC, CL). Why wouldn’t you instead lever the piss out of a quieter, more ‘behaved’ market instead?
I only follow price action. If it follows some trend, reversal, breakout, or S/R...it wasn't intentional.
You worded my question better than I did I actually meant to ask what are the quieter and more well behaved markets? I have not day traded actively in a few years and CL and GC were what we watched back then. The noisiest I ever saw was the emini SP because that is what the "Gurus" taught. I have been at this about 15 years and lost my recent jobs due to lyme disease and do not want to go back into a job market I never wanted to be in. I have no doubt my method works but it requires almost perfect dicipline
@spinn you mention this in your opening post
and mention that you are with IB. How much are you paying for that data and how much are you willing to pay for data?
Most Polite:
Intramarket Futures Exchange Spreads - especially Butterflies and Condors whose front month does NOT include the three prompt months. There are, quite literally, thousands of these combinations. Energy, grains, stirs, softs, etc.. One example might be: HO Dec18-Jun19-Dec19; another might be: GE Dec19-Dec20-Dec21-Dec22. And thousands more.
Genteel:
Certain Intermarket Futures Exchange Spreads - Examples like: CME CBOT 2’s-5’s-10’s Butterfly; CBOT NoB 10’s-30’s; Soybean Crush; Energy Cracks (they get chippy but they trend like crazy)
Hospitable, quaintly rangebound outrights:
ZN, ZF, Sugar, Coffee, usually but not always the grains. I’m leaving out some - but I wanted to mention a few with significant commercial interest but maybe less spec order flows than ES.
Hope that adds some color.
ES... slow moving and noisy. The faster something moves, the more technical it is and easier to trade in my opinion.
Noise would also be called “Chop” by traders. It’s like a random back and forth without a sustained directional movement. All markets will exhibit this to some extent - but some markets are more notorious for it than others in terms of trapping traders into taking false breakouts.
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Depends on the market characteristics and the trading system and your risk tolerance.
If you have a market that moves slowly but trends crazy well, is that a bad thing? It might be a good thing in fact. If the margin is really inexpensive - I’m talking hundreds of dollars not thousands of dollars on a one lot; would you be willing to hold that position for days or weeks and swing trade it? There are quite a few independent traders that do it, and for stupid size.
Here’s an example of the slowest mover I know of with the biggest independent and prop traders you’ve never heard of: Every single day like clockwork the Eurodollars Trade 1.5 million contracts. Open interest is well over 14 Million ! It made the CME. They’ve got listed expiries through 2028. Don Wilson, the founder of DRW made his bones Trading Eurodollars.
Personally, I like to see my clients hold intramarket spreads in several different products if the trading system fits it.
If you just want to super concentrate on one DOM your entire career that’s fine. But there are other ways to trade. And if you can find markets where you can hold positions overnight for not much money - it’s going to make you a better trader and ultimately a MUCH better PM or CTA candidate if that’s a thing you might one day consider.