Toughest trade in the world: S & P 500?

Quote from andrasnm:

why play in the card game where you know they cheat and the deck is stacked?
I learned long ago to avoid any games where I can't be the top dog. That's why I trade spreads. I follow the trends and only stick my neck out when I am relatively certain that they can't chop it off

Correct...why would anyone play in that kind of card game?

Don
 
Quote from stockfrosty:

the ES quotes from Echo pro (sterling) are right on point and rock solid. I have no complaints.

Cool...oh, yeah, ours are too....imagine that...LOL

But the squawk box is a few seconds quicker...tested it, yes it is... and a bit more info than just numbers... Call Jeff, I'm sure he'll put it in for you...

Don
 
Now that's pretty funny Don.

If your futures quotes on your stocktrading platform are "only" a few seconds behind the squawk box then I have news for you . . . your futures quotes are WAYYYYYY BEHIND anyone that is also using a futures trading platform running alongside a stocktrading platform.

Most people that I know have both up and running.
Again, you'd be surprised how LATE your S&P quotes are.
It isn't even funny, and not an effective "leading" indicator for anyone to use for trading equities.
 
I think the QQQ's are a difficult trade also. Frankly, I think all indexes are a difficult trade. I haven't been able to make money on them consistently. Every so often you get a high probabilty set up (like the gap up this past Friday). When you've traded the thing long enough those set ups will just call you on and you'll have to trade them. And if you can exclude your trading activity to only those high probability set ups then the QQQ's and SPY are great due to the liquidity (you can really pile it on size wise) and downtick rule exemption.

But among my peers who are successfull filter traders, none of us have been able to make consistent money trading the indexes. A few of us have been stubbornly tryin to "figure" them out, but having used up allot of mental and financial capital we all finally reached the same conclusion. Indexes are a tough trade.

If you are going to trade them I think you need allot of patience as well as the experience to recognize the high probability set ups, few of which are the standard patterns you'll find in a typical book on TA.
 
Quote from theplumber:

This is just my opinion so take it as such.I ONLY trade ES

4) Intraday price isn't random. If it was price cycles (yes price cycles not time cycles) wouldn't be possible. An example of that is here http://www.ttrader.com/mycharts/display.php?p=21168&u=theplumber&a=theplumber's%20charts&id=889 where the sequence from 9 to 5 is nothing more than a completed cycle, with 5 ending the price cycles. This one http://www.ttrader.com/mycharts/display.php?p=21401&u=theplumber&a=theplumber\'s charts&id=889 shows the Pesavento Map (that comes with Ensign) in blue and mine in yellow overlayed on the chart. Mine is a z-score of single and cross spectrum analysis of time series (no I'm not trying to pimp my model like Harrytrader).

Could you elaborate on the 9 - 5 sequence. I'm not sure what point you are making with it.

FWIW, I think the S&P 500 is a little harder (or easier) to trade because it is a workhorse instrument for so many different trades - index arb, basket trades, portfolio hedges etc. So many different actors are in the market for different reasons that the price action tends to be more herky jerky and display an apparent lack of clear direction than other instruments.

That said, I don't think it is necessarily more difficult to trade the S&P. I think good traders try to isolate evidence of the presence of some of the actors and use that information profitably.
 
Commodity funds tend to avoid the SP like the plague because of many false moves and choppy nature of the markets. Commodity traders tend to lose big when they try to trade stock indexes, and I can attest by past experience although that situation is starting to change.

Marty Schwartz trades at 3:1 leverage, and that's ok if you're time frame is in measured in the minutes, but most people cannot daytrade.
 
I think the Hang Seng is one of the toughest to trade. Paradoxically, the ES is more my style (low index value), but I can't trade it during working hours anymore. It was tough at first, but now I have a hard time adjusting to after-hours futures with higher ATR (e.g. HSI, DAX).
 
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