Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Hey Runningeagle - you are right as Price Action works in every market and every time frame. However you are missing my point.
My point is this; futures markets are for professional traders. If you are a beginner and learning to trade, you need to be in a forex market where the risk is low and the cost of tuition is low. If you cannot consistently earn profits in a forex market, you are not going to in a futures market. Every professional trader starts small and builds his position size over time, within his comfort level.
I want to be clear on this; I am in no way telling anyone they cannot do something. I firmly believe the opposite. Anyone can achieve anything they set their mind to. What i am saying is that if you want to do this long term you have to be able to be objective and develop yourself into a professional. This is not likely to happen if you are trading a futures market where the tick size and risk are large which inhibits your ability to remove emotions.
One more thing. You say this is not "rocket science". You are right, it is not. But in my opinion trading is HARDER than rocket science. In science you have a constant set of variables or theories which can be applied to making rockets / ships / whatever. That does not exist in trading. The closest thing to this in trading is understanding the market cycle, the traders equation and directional probabilities. All of these and all other variables change constantly. Not to mention i can easily go to an accredited school and "learn" to become a rocket scientist. This is non existent in the trading world.
Open: yest sell signal on daily. heavy two sided trading, small TR. DB yest low. AIS but bears need strong BO below for bear trend day. so far some form of TR day looks more likely.
13 L2, F BL rev. but low in large TR. swing short.
15 weak BR FT. large H2 / FL2 but buying into BR TL.
16 BRS STC 15. weak buy. SA.
17 DB, MDB, BB 16. WK BR CH / TR. BLSHS. LOM.
19 BL BO BR CH. BLS need FT.
20 BL BO gap and FT. prob AIL test yest HTR, or poss BVC.
21 EMA GB / FBLBO / DTBF 3 / large L2. WK sell compared to buying pressure. swing short for test of low / LOY.
22 BR EB. WK H1 prob SA.
23 BOPB H1 for FBR rev. buying high in LOM. swing buy. poss SA.
25 2E 21. FBLBO. BLS GU below
26 25 failed to trigger. instead H2. but buying high in poss TR. swing buy.
27 FH2 / FBLBO and 2EMA gap bar. 20 BTC BLS exit BE. AS
28 lower % sell. TTR. RS
29 BR EB. remains AIS / BR CH. prob test LOY and trigger daily sell.
30 BR FT, filled BL BOG. prob SA for BOPBS.
32 H2 HL buy setup. mid of BR CH. 50/50, BRS slight advantage for new low.
33 BL EB. building buying pressure. BO test of BR entry / TL.
39 2ES off BR TL / top of small TR
40 WK BR EB, need FT. less than 10 pip OR. BOM.
41 BL BO, need FT for AIL. poss MG.
42 FBLBO / FF / WBRF
53 FBRBO. rev up from DB / HL MTR. small TR. BOM, LOM, BLSHS.
61 BLBO of TR with FT, AIL. BTC. 60 MG.
Abbreviations;
AS Acceptable Scalp
RS required swing
BL Bull
BR Bear
CH channel
HTR high trading range
WK weak
BOG breakout gap
GB gap bar
FBLBO failed bull breakout
BVC buy vacuum
FBR failed bear
FBL failed bull
GU gave up / give up
2E sec entry
WBRF wedge bear flag
WBLF wedge bull flag
What kind of setups are your students entering - reversals, continuations, range fades, breakouts? I'm trying to understand how your learning methods actually work. How large are stops? When do you scale in and for what kind of trades - how far away do you students scale in (scaling greatly increases risk quickly and if you are already on the wrong side of the trade)?
The markets are very volatile and even a 1 point stop loss in the ES is not enough a lot of the time, especially the ES where there is so much HFT activity that the market, even if it goes up say 5 points might make a very zigzag-ed way up there. Most of the time if you enter in the ES there will be at least a 1/2 tick pullback entering with limits or stops, usually more.
I have to agree with Mastercraft here for "most" beginners, it would be highly recommended to try either forex or something like TST. There is no way you won't lose money regardless (again statistically speaking, most retail traders fail) so if you use futures, the risk is so much greater and the emotions are very real, unless you are rich and don't care about losing money.
I'm not attacking you, your methodology might work but can we see some entries, exits on charts, also to get a better idea of the timing on these trades? (1/2 tick trades happen way too quick, only computers/algo can do that fast of decision making consistently and reliably).
Also in the ES making 1/2 ticks is way different to +3/4 points. You can enter and due to the volatility can get 1/2 ticks almost any time, but to make 2/3 points you need some directional bias.
okay, that's a big list of stuff but you didn't answer my question, show some trades - do a print screen and show entries and exits for one day in the emini and write down the rational for the trades so that we can make a fair assessment on your teaching methods. For example for today ES - 7/21/17:
1) First ES trade I shorted a below a bull reversal bar because I was expecting a second leg down. The ES has been very tight recent so I didn't trust the setup too much and got out quickly. I shorted using a sell stop 1 tick below a bear reversal bar breaking out below the 5 min and 15 min 20 EMAs, it was also a short pullback following a bear leg correcting an earlier wedge
2) I bought a reversal up following a test of the earlier lower trading range (I entered at the market as I saw a relatively big bull drive hence why I got at the top of the earlier bear bar, but following the bull reversal bar at support, I thought it made sense to look for a reversal trade). I wasn't too sure of the trading this late in the day (never traded this late on a friday) so i got out due to risk of a short pullback setup but should have remained in the trade.
Earlier in the day was trading the NQ where I made some better trades
Futures are alot safer than forex and traded on regulated exchanges, forex is NOT. I traded futures right from day one. Saying forex is safer than futures and futures is for professional traders is completely wrong. IMO Forex is the very last instrument I would tell a beginner to trade.
A beginner should trade sim at least 6 months prior to any type of real trading and have a general idea of what they are doing and why the market is doing what it's doing (i.e. if the market is selling off, why this is happening, gauging the strength of the selling, etc), as well as have an idea of how to manage risk which is incredibly difficult, at least 1 year of study (you can't argue this, it's just not possible to quickly learn trading).
Both forex and futures have merits and drawbacks but both will lose you money if you don't know how to trade, it just happens that this can happen very quickly with futures. Unless someone is willing to put in serious amounts of time into learning how to trade (thousands of hours) and stick with it even through really upsetting times then they shouldn't trade.