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stocks and options I swing trade most of the time. futures only intra-day.
reason is risk. when markets are closed (weekends or trading halts), the unforeseen could be very costly. with futures pretty much unlimited. with stocks and options (not playing any naked strategies), I know exactly what my risk is.
Thanks. I understand completely. But majority of people on the forum seem to day trade futures exclusively with simple directional trading, no stocks, no swings. So I'm hoping to engage in a discussion with them
This could be lengthy, but my headache is splitting and I'm tired, but for just a quick reply I would say that swing trading is too rich for my blood. You need deep pockets to swing trade for a significant return on your time. Obviously you aren't going to take put on a position levered 10:1 and then jump into bed for the night. Second reason would be strategy. Trading the intraday timeframe is theoretically simpler in terms of planning and strategizing for event risk, which is ultimately what trading is. The farther out into the future you are trying to plan for the more advanced your research need be.
It could be that a swing trading strategy could be quite similar to an intraday strategy if you were just rolling dice based on chart patterns. Hard to tell the difference between a one hour and a five minute chart if you remove the labels. However, I would say most professional proprietary traders in banks, most of which are now disguised as market making activities on delta one desks, and the hedge funds are not using basic directional strategies in plain vanilla underlying. Most are doing some sort of stat arb with etf, indexes, and the underlying stocks, or some kind of delta/gamma trading with options and the underlying.
Hedge funds is a pretty big category and sure there are tens of thousands of them and certainly many doing plain vanilla directional both intraday and intraweek. One does not preclude the other. You are just targeting and strategizing around a different even risk paradigm.
I would really like to focus on my main trading product, CL, intraday, and be able to apply similar principles to larger time frames on multiple assets, to me that would be maximizing my time.
anyways i actually started trading by trading monthly options. and did pretty well per small sample size(about a half of a year) before i switched to day trading futures.. i find that for me i liked the security blanket of not being in the mkt at night and i also like the fact that it does bring with it a little more 'action' than say the monthly options. it was a selling point for me to open my carear trading options with the notion that i didnt have to watch the screens all the time and only really needed to check the charts maybe once or twice a day if at all when i could manage them by the greeks.. that quickly became boring as i ended up watching whatever underlying i was trading ALL day anyways.. i may use the options again one day as a tool in my trading box, but im not sure when.. i do like the idea of weeklies..
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
I have been day trading FUTUREs for a couple months now,I feel its a more hands on approach to trading the financial markets. Later on I may consider Swing or Position trading ETFs. As for now Im learning alot by Tape reading,Order flow and Supply and Demand by Intraday trading.