It's not so difficult to trade S&P - if you do it long-term. And look at the fundamentals.
Quote from candletrader:
The starting point of my comment is that I have an intraday, daytrading mentality... I have been daytrading stocks with fair success for a while...
Some time ago, I decided that I was becoming somewhat jaded with the constant scanning for daytrading plays on NYSE and Nasdaq... I figured it would be great to daytrade just one instrument... I tried hard to develop a profitable intraday trading approach for the ES, since I don't like longer timeframes...
I could not get my head around the moves that ES made... it's a faders market, and I am not a fader... its a market for the reversal players, but this goes psychologically against my trading mentality...
For me, the ES is untradeable intraday... I know there are people here doing ES successfully (e.g. OldTrader -- who takes longer term positions -- and NihabaAshi -- who trades reversals and fades moves)... but longer timeframes and reversals are areas that I am not comfortable with...
After a brief experimental forray into the intraday world of ES, I just could not get daytrading it to work for me... this is in contrast to stocks, which are perfect daytrading vehicles for me...
Quote from nononsense:
Hi candletrader,
As you point out, it's all a matter of personal skill. Some years ago, I went through the same reasoning as you about switching from stocks to futures. I decided to stick with futures.
To succeed, I think one must first abandon all illusions about either trend following or fading. Doesn't make sense to me. It is sufficient to buy and sell at the right moment. The art of course is to figure out what is right for you and what minimizes your probability to go broke.
nononsense