E-mini S&P 500

My friend has recommended me to this forum and advised me to create a journal for my trading. I've 'ghosted' around for a bit looking at various threads and learning from the more experienced members, now i'm going to concentrate on writing a journal which will hopefully be helpful for everyone, or atleast enjoyable to partake in.
I'm relatively new to the world of trading and financial markets and i hope i can learn alot from the traders who are willing to share...

My market:
E-mini S&P 500

My aim for this journal is to share my;
Ideas
Research
trades

In the hope that i can develop myself as a trader by doing so.

Looking forward to seeing your trading style. I always enjoy when an Emini trader comes on these forums. One of my favorite markets.

First Journal entry
11th November 2009

E-mini S&P 500

Commodity: E-Mini S&P 500
Symbol: ES
Exchange: CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
Tick: 0.25
Tick Value: $12.50
Size Value: $50 x S&P 500 cash index
Months: H, M, U, Z, (March, June, September, December)
Settled in cash on the 3rd Friday of expiration month.

What is it?
The E-mini S&P 500 is a futures market, that is a smaller electronically traded version of the S&P 500 stock index and it is 1/5 of the size of the larger institutional pit-traded contract (SP). The E-mini S&P 500 is traded on the globex exchange on the chicago merchantile exchange (CME)
You can visit their website @
http://cmegroup.com

Why trade it?
1. Leverage and volatility - This gives the trader the opportunity to gain larger profits with less amounts of margin requirements and therefore makes it ideal for day trading.
2. Broad market exposure with low commision costs
3. The ability to hedge with alternative contract months, hedge portfolios and hedge other e-mini's
4. Opportunity to be profitable regardless of market direction.
5. The ability to trade options
6. Volume and liquidity is very high due to popularity and this reduces the risk of trading
7. Practically a 24 hour market makes it easier to exit trades

Volume/Liquidity



Trading Advantages
- Fast efficient fills
- Low commisions
- Spread of risk
- Less markets to watch
- Low margin requirement

This is the market i'm trading and i hope others do too so we can help eachother,yesterdays volume was 1,833,896 contracts, so i hope a few of you were included in that.

The Basics of the The Trading Plan
The charting i'll be using is eSignal http://esignal.com
This gives me free CME globex products (under special conditions which are easy for me to achieve) and i also have a subsciption to NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ stocks.

Here is a sample/example of Esignal charts.



I like having a plain white background and use a variation of candlesticks and line-charts.
Esignal charts are very flexible and easy to manuvoeur and thats the main reason i like them.

Here is the same chart with a line chart applied.



Esignal allows me to easily manage my charts and observe the market that is important to me; it also allows me to view lots of other important information that i will come on to later; i find it a proffesional tool that does exactly what i want it to do.

Broker
My brokerage account is with Infinity Futures;
http://InfinityFutures
I also have an account with Interactive Brokers for my potential equity trading;
http://Interactivebrokers.com

Both these brokerage accounts were recommended to me by a friend who has used them since he started trading.

Execution Platform

Infinity Futures comes with the Infinity AT platform which is a very fast data feed and very fast execution, its very easy to manage orders quickly and this is especially helpful in day-trading. The customer service is also absolutely excellent and i talk to my broker over the phone, skype and email so its very easy to contact him quickly.

InteractiveBrokers i have limited experience with so i won't comment until i've developed my swing trading plan towards completion point.



With Infinity AT there is many ways of automatically managing positions, with scale ins, scale outs, profit targets, stop losses etc etc

Here is a sample of the Infinity AT



Account size:


I'm going to be trading 1 E-mini S&P 500 contract for every $10,000 in my account.
I'm from the UK and therefore there is a currency exposure, while i had the opportunity to hedge this, i decided not to on the basis of laziness.

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Thats the basics of my trading plan;
Next i'll go on to talk about my methodology, the tools and indicators i will be using on a discretionary basis and the news/fundamentals that i will be paying attention to.

Yeah that sounds good... You can post your setups and charts too to discuss certain topics and subjects and ideas if you want and i'd appreciate that too

I hope this can become interactive; with everyone posting their ideas/charts about the E-mini S&P 500 (And other futures/markets, any infact) and discussing the news/fundamentals so that we can all learn.

Cheers

Are you a full time trader or do you do other work during the day? Do you trade after hours, or only during the US Market?

12TH November;
Pre-market employment data was faded after better than expected results by traders.
11.00pm (US) we saw crude oil inventories with significantly more barrels were held in inventories than previous... Although this didn't carry massive volatility, the market has been going down since the announcement.
11.30 We have the Treasury secretary speaking so i'll be keeping a close eye on that.
Finally the federal reserve budget balance is being reported at 2pm

The Vix showed a low-test bar/doji yesterday, despite the equity markets having an up-day and this would suggest that traders are locking in gains (as we approached the new highs) and hedging their positions = This is bearish for the S&P because it means that the existing buyers are fearful and therefore i'd also expect new buyers to be fearful too, with the dominant emotion in the market place being fear rather than greed. Therefore i'm expecting a pullback in the S&P 500 over the next few days/weeks or atleast sustained range-bound activity.

Heres my trade from today;

Simple triangle setup @ the open, the open usually carries alot of emotions and momentum, so if the market chooses a direction or a breakout, this usually carries some good momentum behind it...
Entry short @ 1094.75
Stop loss was placed @ 1095.75
Exit manually @ 1093.00
$87.50 gain per contract - commisions

My current context assessment is RANGE-BOUND/CHOPPY and therefore i won't be doing many trades as its my non-prefered market climate.

Also i'm paying special attention to yesterdays low and the S1 pivot for scalps.

Full-time trader.
I trade US (RTH) market session.

What about you?