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Should I be considering another instrument when action has been so choppy? I read one persons commentary that there are much better places to be trading right now besides the ES. Next, if I do stop trading the ES, what are my odds with another instrument as a new trader? Hey, I'm just paper trading right now anyway but it's not something I hear many people talk about so I wonder if most just stick out the ES for better times?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Do you know exactly what you want for a trade to trigger in ES?
If you do know what you are looking for then you can venture out and see if other instruments
accommodate your preferences for a trade.
I trade NQ, TF, YM, ES, CL, and GC during the day.
At the same time I never really thought about, "is this right, is this wrong" at the beginning of my journey.
I was taking in as much information as I could and never stopped to think if something was right or wrong.
I just followed where my mind took me. I also never read too much on what other traders were doing or
what they thought I should do. I went for it. I made a lot of mistakes and still make them every now and then.
But that's how I learned and still continue to learn.
This period of low volume, range, and volatility will come to an end. When, I don't know. But markets have cycles. Personally, ES is all I trade. I know it well by now and would not know it so well if I had been jumping from one market to the next. But, some people do trade many markets; but this does not suite my style. So, it depends largely on the way you trade.
I guess I wondered how different other instruments are. I want to know that if I can follow a trend or spot a reversal in the ES, can I do it anywhere? I learned on the ES and that is all I know. Are they all the same?
Well, markets are made of people (and their machines), so in that sense they are all the same. Every market trends, consolidates, and trends again. But in reality, they are not all the same. Nuances in behavior make each market unique. Why not just look and observe and see what you see? Much in the same way, people in America are like people in China in many ways -- all are humans and have similar human characteristics. But differences in culture make the countries very different.
Personnaly, i think it's a good idea to follow two or more markets even if you just trade one market. Over time you'll see some commonalities among them. For example, during peak hours volume tends to show simultaneously. Also, certain news may impact one market more than another. For example, last Friday there was an important news about employment in Canada. I was expecting some volatility to kick in and this is what occured. This event alone provided a very good opportunity. My broker sends me two times a day relevant cues to this effect. Here is the message i received last Thursday:
"The main event tomorrow is the Canadian employment report with a 6K increase to jobs expected. Given the flight of the loonie lately, this could have a big impact on trading in USDCAD (6C) tomorrow morning."
You don't want to get married to one instrument either except in your learning phase. Your method should not be tied to one thing but be able to exploit common phenomenons among the many symbols offered by your broker.
Other instruments you may want to explore are CL, NQ, TF, GC (Gold) and 6E (Euro). Learning to watch other symbols may also help improve your reading of the action as it occurs.
Thank you for the many outstanding replies. Actually I got a bit from each of them. I think it will make sense to take a look at other markets. After all, it you spot a nice long term trend in a different market, why not? At the same time, I am still in my learning phase and while I do know how to spot a 2 legged pull back to the EMA, I don't know when to trade a breakout yet. There are many situations yet that I am not familiar or comfortable with. Likely I will stick it out with one instrument but browse some others as well.