1) Have you thought about WHAT or IF there is anything that separates a High-risk entry from a Low-Risk entry? Whatever that means to you. Is this simply a matter of RR or does it mean something else?
Well, I do think win rate should be considered, too. If you arbitrarily decide to use a 5 point stop - it should be evident that where you enter matters, too. If you do not enter at the right place at the right time - you'll constantly get stopped out. It's no use with tight stops (low perceived risk) if you're constantly stopped out.
So, to me, a low risk entry is an entry at a time and place which lets me enter with a fairly low risk (not much if any counter-movement on entry)
and have a fairly high probability of exiting with a profit without getting stopped out, i.e., buy when price is going higher and sell when price is going lower. Hershey may best have described it when he talked about being on the right side of the market.
Conversely, a high risk entry is one which have a high probability of getting stopped out, i.e., random entry or buying when price is going lower and selling when price goes higher.
Arguably, though, if your bet size is really small and you have deep pockets, you can use wider stops and still do pretty well assuming some knowledge. You may end up taking a really big loss one day, though, and it doesn't scale well. Not something I'd be interested in. I'd rather just park my money in an index fund, then.
You can do well with a lower win rate, too, assuming you're trading in a market which have really strong trends. But it can be psychologically hard to endure multiple small losses waiting for the 'big one' to make you whole.
2) Do different markets serve different purposes?
Of course. They do serve different purposes and facilitate different types of players.
The purpose of futures markets are hedging. You can sell (go short) as easily as going long.
The purpose of the stock market is to raise capital for firms. The secondary market ensures that the primary market works by allowing people to trade stocks.
And so on with other markets... (currencies, bonds, etc.)
The common denominator with all financial markets is that they seem to attract a lot of speculators who trade simply for the purpose of making a profit. As most speculators seems to lose they kindly assist the markets by providing liquidity.
...and therefore OPERATE or FUNCTION differently than other markets?
Technicalities from different markets aside - I basically consider all markets as order-matching engines. Basically, what's happening all day long are orders matching with each other for various reasons and motivations and across different time horizons. Lack of liquidity and/or urgency moves the market higher or lower, i.e., market orders "eating up" limit orders.
Since futures markets are subject to hedging activity I suppose one could theorize or argue that this puts pressure on these markets from both sides. This may be different with single stocks as it's generally harder to short and players may have less interest in doing so for various reasons.
The ES which seems to be the market most discussed here is a very thick market which attracts a lot of different players and is arbitraged against multiple markets. There's also the obvious impact of the options market which is huge for the S&P 500.
At least this is how I understand it.
All this blabber seems to relate to the
why, though. And while interesting, I'm not sure if it's in any way helpful. What seems evident to me is that markets generally trade and move technically. So, in order to profit, learn how markets generally move and trade accordingly. Just as important is knowing when not to trade.
But what do I know...