What is it about futures that make them harder than stocks?

IMHO, since trading futures gets you out of the PDT rule, meaning you can make as many trades as you wish......

That folks get sucked into the whole "make a hundred trades a day for 2 ticks each" scenario. Especially for newish traders that have been frustrated by the PDT rule trading stocks. Your broker will love you if you're able to pull this off.
 
Quote from Audi_R8:

A hand full of the guys on here that successfully are trading stocks (lescor, dustin, ericp, a few others) say DON'T trade futures.
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Because that's what they built their edges around. Give any of them an equal amount of time learning the nuances in futures, and they'd do equally well. Stocks versus futures do not make the difference in their success... even if they don't realize that fact. They'd win in the end regardless.
 
Quote from austinp:

Bingo. Absolutely 100% correct. There are relatively few profit opportunities in eminis intraday for anyone using any approach that has any edge known to man. 6.75 long hours of picking needles from haystacks.

It ain't the leverage. It's not the algos. Not at all. It is the individual expectations. 100 turns per day is merely someone without a true edge throwing s(tuff) at the wall hoping a little bit sticks somewhere. That's how a majority of emini traders of all account sizes approach the day.
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This actually makes sense, I could see this being a major cause of failure.
 
Quote from Audi_R8:

I don't understand what leverage has to do with it really.

If you have a million dollar account and are trading 1 contract does that make it any easier?
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Yes. You can stand a 200 points move against your position easily. So unless the market is trending in the long term, sooner or later it will come back and you will be in the green. A very good example would be B1S2's trading in the ES Journal thread, look it up.

Of course using low leverage has downside too, even when you are right you don't make much...

Leverage has to do with psychology. Look up how bucketshops made money back in the old days. They provided incredibly high leverage and most costumers were QUICK losers....
 
Quote from Pekelo:

Yes. You can stand a 200 points move against your position easily. So unless the market is trending in the long term, sooner or later it will come back and you will be in the green.
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wow, i truly don't get what your saying here and what this has anything to do with my original question.
 
Try scalping one active market driven stock all day, its not much diff than trading the futures.

A little more noise in the futures, but the boxes pull the same shit in stocks.


You want to see how stocks used to trade in the good old days before the scum with co located computers infested everything?

Watch an otc stock trade.

PS is you think scum is too harsh, you must like your pocket being picked.
 
Quote from Audi_R8:

..what this has anything to do with my original question.
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Because the answer to the original question is: leverage

Maybe somebody will explain it to you...

P.S.: The stock moves 5% against you, you lose 5%. With futures when very highly leveraged, a 5% move against you whipes your account out. See the difference?
 
the spread.

but, imho, they are the same thing.

dia vs. ym
i'll take either the ym.

spy vs. es
i'll take the spy.

preference really.
 
I believe the ES is a SIZE game. Meaning, you find those 1 or 2 good setups that come around maybe 2 times a week and go real heavy to which you only net a point or 2. This makes it difficult in that any system with low amount of trades kind of blows for a few reasons.

I think this is how the ES is meant to be played unless you have a market making bot that has the the cost structure and infrastructure to make it work.

imo.
 
Futures is a pure zero sum game (before commissions). You must be really smart and hard working to make money trading futures. Stocks are not a zero-sum game for value investing. Some really dumb people have made money in stocks because they were at the right place at the right time or new the right people or were plainly lucky. Luck plays little role in futures trading.

Those that think leverage makes futures harder is because they confuse margin and leverage. You can trade futures without leverage at all. Same with forex. It is the fact that in futures trading all there is, is wealth redistribution from inexperienced traders to smart and experienced. I knew of a security guy in a college that bought 10k shares of MSFT in 1987 for about $1 and forgot all about. He took delivery of the stock certificates and kept them in a safe deposit box. He woke up one day during the dot.com bubble and realized he was making 1M after hearing on TV that MFST stock split or something. He bought MSFT because a computer science professor told him that a small company MFST would become a big company one day because of some things called PCs they were buying for the college to replace VAX machines . Right place, right time, right people.
 
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