attempting ES futures

Cheers! I certainly need it!

At the moment the market appears to be gunning for my stops on pretty much every trade, no matter where i place them! lol

If I blow this account i'll be tempted to save some more money and then try again using random entry like a trader here called 'the hare' apparently does.

statement to follow later.

-$156

First trade was a good winner and I was up by around $400. Then pretty much every trade stopped me out, and then a few winners at the end of the day.

-$57.94

Not had a winning day yet in this journal, lol.

Doubt i'll trade anymore today as I wanna watch the football, but if I do I'll upload another statement later on.

You`ve got quiet a few trades per day . How do you identify potential trades ?

Good luck

At the moment im just using price action concepts, patterns and support/resistance on a 5min chart and also monitoring the longer term charts. Done OK in demo for a few months, but maybe it was just luck...?....I guess one never knows, really.

I've got lots of other ideas that I want to try out, so i'll give it another week or so, and IF I have any money left in this account i'll move on to another concept.
I think a few weeks is enough time to have some statistical significance when one is daytrading making a number of trades per day to access whether what I am using has a hope in hell, or not.

I often wonder if anything available to us retail traders actually 'works'. I know (in person) a number of smart people who have lost lots and lots of money attempting day trading. Sometimes I think that people online who claim to be successful daytraders are actually flat out lying either to improve their online persona or maybe looking for customers for something they are selling - I certainly hope that im wrong, though!

Hi pb,
I have a couple of suggestions for you to consider. In my experience, the ES is a very unforgiving instrument and it doesn't give you much room for manoeuvre. By that I mean it pretty well constantly flickers up and down 2-3 ticks at any given time. By contrast, the YM moves more cleanly as it trades 2.5 ticks for every 1 tick of the ES. Therefore. if you get your timing right, your trade can be 'on side' to the tune of 5-8 ticks with a stop in place at break even - so that if it snaps back (very likely) you'll at least get out without a loss. Alternatively, if the moves don't have much (any) follow through - you can take your 5 tick profit. It's much smoother and cleaner than the ES and, in this regard, it's more forgiving. If this doesn't make much sense to you - put up a chart of the YM next to the ES and contrast and compare the two. You should quickly see what I mean.

You mentioned 'secrets' that only the select few cognoscenti know about. It's possible I suppose - but not very likely. That said, I think most traders have tools and techniques they wouldn't be without, which other traders may or may not find useful. So, not a secret as such - but definitely a key component of their edge - assuming they have one. For me, it's $TICK. I simply couldn't (and wouldn't) trade without it. Study the relationship between futures and equities and note which is strongest at any given time. In the main, the futures lead equities. However, neither will go very far without the other. If you can interpret the tug-o'-war between them and spot when they are 'in sync' - then trading in the right direction will not be too much of a problem. Then it's a question of timing your entries with an appropriate stop which is a tougher gig. On that front, I'd recommend you look at non-time based charts: tick, constant volume, Point & Figure and Renko etc. My trading moved on leaps and bounds when I made the transition.
Tim.

I would say you are 100% correct.

Cheers Tim.
All things to think about, and some of which I had already been contemplating, in fact.
In particular investigating the TICK and possibly looking at the YM.
I've played around with constant volume charts and tick charts with not much luck, but may re-visit them in the future.
In my experience, moving the stop to BE seems to just keep me losing out on potential gains. When I was demo trading it would always give me 2-3 ES points profit, and then stop me at BE, and then go even further in the anticipated direction.

I've also been thinking alot about risk:reward, stops, targets etc.
Of my 40 odd trades made so far, about 30 of them have offered me anywhere from 1-3 points profit before being stopped. It's tempting me to trade with a negative risk:reward ratio based on having a high hit rate, but im just not sure that the idea sits comfortably with me. Just a few wrong trades would eat up so many of my points gained.

I've still got lots of little things that I want to try.

I shall probably be implementing some new concepts/ideas with the ES that id already been contemplating next week.


Concerning