hypostomus: Regarding your questions/comments:
>>I'm scared of the leverage at this point in my development because a QQQ trade will occasionally go against me in the first minute after my entry, in spite of all my confirming rules and prayers. <<
Good for you. Stay scared. That was the biggest shock for me in switching from Qs to NQs. My first day trading, I was ahead $400 in a few minutes and I thought, "Hey , this is easy!" Then I got behind on the next trade and watched $1500 flush in about 20 minutes. (That is alot for me.) Needless to say, I sold at the lows, still shaking and trembling. Gave me an immediate respect for the leverage. Probably a good thing to happen to a cocky new futures trader.
>>I think the better strategy is to jack up the position size and keep working on the reliability of your system. As a correspondent said to me on another thread, "It's hard not to make a living off of ten cent moves in a thousand shares of anything."<<
Depends. How big are your losses, and how often do you win? At a hundred bucks per win, that is 1 point on 5 futures contracts, or 5 points on 1 contract (before commissions). Ten cents on the Qs is 4 points on the futs. If you keep your stop losses to 2 points, you will have alot of losses in the futs. Your win rate needs to be pretty high, or you need to make a ton of trades each day.
Just for comparison's sake, today I had 12 trades: 7 wins, 5 losses. Average win was 7.5 points and average loss was 2.5 points. (3:1 ratio - pretty good, better than my normal) I netted 40 points (not bragging - you could do the math anyway.) Again, the longest trade was 15 minutes. Several of the losses were 1-3 minutes, the others about 10 mins. I trade based on setups in a 5 minute chart, but often use the 1 minute to refine entry or exit points.
>>May I enquire, how many contracts do you trade? I am a poor boy myself, so no need to be embarrassed if it's modest.<<
I am starting off small (1-2 contracts per trade) until I am more comfortable in this medium. I will add to positions if I get ahead a decent amount. I prefer to have at least 2 contracts to play with so I can take partials and cover my risk when I get ahead a bit, but I obviously can't do this with 1 contract positions.
>>BTW, you are to be much commended for this thread. I have repeatedly searched here, on EliteTrader, on the Fool, and in YahooGroups and have found nothing else I thought was remotely as good. <<
Comment very much appreciated. I, too, searched high and low for an E-Mini thread and couldn't find one, so I decided to start one. However, it is only successful if people contribute to it, so please keep sharing.
Phoenix |
