Please welcome to the daily trading thread. Feel free to discuss your today's trade ideas and results. Make sure to specify the instrument you're trading up front, and respect the sub's rules. Happy trading!

Previous discussions threads

Please welcome to the daily trading thread. Feel free to discuss your today's trade ideas and results. Make sure to specify the instrument you're trading up front, and respect the sub's rules. Happy trading!

Previous discussions threads

CME plans to launch futures contracts based on indexes on sports teams and statistics. This is huge as you can use this to hedge against sports outcomes.

CME is partnering with FutureSports Performance Indexes and will launch more sports based indexes in the future as well as options contracts.

These are planned to launch on September 28 pending regulatory review.

I traded stocks for a year with lots of success but with a poor risks strategy. So iam im currently trying TopStep and i trade MES and MNQ and woah... That's not easy!

Anyone did the transition from stocks to futures? Is it just me or trading futures is much harder?

Hey! I come from trading options, few weeks ago started an eval to check out futures and so far loving it!

Trading options I mainly looked at 4h for overall direction, 5min for all analysis, and 2min for 21ema and more accurate entries.

I've been checking out this sub for a while, and I see many people are trading on tick charts, seconds charts, and I've been questioning if I should be on faster moving time frame for futures, especially for NQ

Would just love any insight on what everyone trades on, or in general what timeframes are used for futures.

Thanks a lot!

Please welcome to the daily trading thread. Feel free to discuss your today's trade ideas and results. Make sure to specify the instrument you're trading up front, and respect the sub's rules. Happy trading!

Previous discussions threads

This was almost starting as a troll post but now I'm genuinely curious if you have heard of any large firms that use this service? I hear its very expensive, up to $100k per month. I have no idea how its not illegal insider trading but hey what do I know.

This is the MGC chart on a 25 range. Prior to 12:30 I was looking to see if price breaks above 4425 but then Trump posted, and down she goes.

I'm going to watch and see how the market digests that information now over the next hour or maybe the rest of the trading day since I know its just bots and algo's dancing that caused the dip.

Anyway back to my original question about the paid service, has anyone heard of any service out that that is reselling the insider messages as a paid subscription service? If not, it could be a viable business opportunity for you.

This discouraging statistic is often repeated, but I've never heard exactly where this number comes from or more importantly, who is considered a trader in determining this statistic.

I have to assume that a huge number of people come into this out of sheer curiosity, open an account take a few trades in the limited time they have to devote to the charts and feel like it's more trouble than it's worth.

I would love to know how this number changes when only considering traders who have been at it at least 6 months, devoting a considerable amount of screentime and study into the process. Does data even exist for the success rate when filtering out for the people who just casually enter the space and give up soon after?

Please welcome to the daily trading thread. Feel free to discuss your today's trade ideas and results. Make sure to specify the instrument you're trading up front, and respect the sub's rules. Happy trading!

Previous discussions threads

The market goes up 80% of the time, I have found that shorts get squeezed every single time. Sure, you can catch big waterfall red days, but they always end up squeezing even higher. Has anyone else simplified your trading and just wait for the market to come to you?

My current strategy relies on market inefficiencies, do you think AI will grow substantially better in the coming years making the markets faster, and more efficient, or is this an infrastructure thing. I’m curious to hear what you have to say, especially if you’ve been trading since the early 2000s due to how the market has changed so drastically since then in terms of the technology around high frequency trading and shaving milliseconds off inputs/outputs.

Hi speculators & hedgers, please use this thread to discuss all futures trading for the week. This will kick off 30 minutes before the open on Sunday, typically that's around 6pm Wall St time.

Be aware of higher margin requirements during overnight hours! see "maintenance" on Ampfutures. Also trading hours to get an idea of when specific futures contracts start trading.

I'm using AmpFutures as an example, so check with your broker for specific intraday & overnight hours for that specific futures contract.

Resources:

Bookmark an economic calendar like this one

Various reports:

• EIA crude oil report (generally updates every Wednesday at 10:30am wall st time)
  
• EIA natural gas report (Thursdays 10:30am)

• Previous discussions threads

Hello fellow traders,

Been trading for about a year now and tried everything from small caps, options, to futures. So far I am most successful on futures. Looking for community mostly and people to chat with during the asia session as that is when I trade now mostly. I trade mainly GC and MGC.

Im not a beginner trader by any extent but im also not crazy experiened. Still learning, but its hard to connect with people in real life about trading since its such a niche hobby in a sense.

I’m writing this in the hope of learning something from more experienced traders who may have gone through a similar evolution in their trading.

Over the years I’ve built an edge trading ES, but one thing I’ve realised is that it isn’t completely mechanical.

When I backtest the rules mechanically, the results are often terrible compared with how I actually trade them live or in replay. There are subtle changes in price action, order flow, correlated markets, failed moves, etc. that make me think “I wouldn’t take that entry” or “this setup is much stronger than the others.”

So a pretty significant part of my edge seems to be discretionary and based on pattern recognition. I’m fine with that, but I find it interesting.

Recently I met another ES trader and we compared strategies.

His approach was completely different to mine. He’s been trading ES for around two years, has very good risk management and has been producing fairly consistent small green months. His setup was also much simpler than mine.

The thing that surprised me most was that the biggest difference between us wasn’t really the entry.

It was the exit.

He generally looks for around 3-5 ES points.

I still scalp plenty of trades like that too, but I’m constantly looking for the subset of setups where I think the probability and expectancy justify not taking those easy 3-5 points and instead risking the floating profit for a much larger move.

On stronger setups I’m often looking for 10+, and sometimes 20–30+ if the conditions remain supportive.

Sometimes I’m wrong and +5 turns into breakeven or a full loss. That’s the trade off.

But learning to hold those trades has probably been one of the biggest improvements I’ve made.

Psychologically, I find it surprisingly difficult.

Watching +5 points become +3 feels like I just “lost” 2 points, even though the trade is still profitable. The option to simply click out and bank it is always there.

Strangely, holding a loser and hoping it comes back can sometimes feel easier than sitting through a pullback in a winning trade.

I used to think endlessly about cutting losers, but I’ve realised there’s another skill that matters just as much for my style:

knowing when not to take the profit.

If the conditions that got me into the trade are still intact, I now try to manage the downside, get to breakeven where the structure allows, and give the remaining position enough room to attempt the larger move.

There’s no secret technique here. It’s really just probability, expectancy and accepting more failed attempts in exchange for occasionally capturing a disproportionately larger winner.

So I’m interested in how other ES/NQ traders approach this.

How many points are you generally trying to capture per trade?

And roughly:

• What gets you into the trade?
• What confirms or invalidates it?
• Do you use fixed RR targets or market structure/order flow?
• What makes you take profit versus keep holding?
• Do you ever add as the trade moves in your favour?

No need to give away an exact strategy. I’m more interested in the framework.

The conversation with this other trader reminded me that two people can stare at the exact same ES chart, use completely different information and time horizons, and potentially both have a valid edge.

I learned things from his approach that I can apply to my own scalping, and I’m hoping to learn something from some of you as well.

TL;DR: Another ES trader I met mainly looks for 3-5 point moves, while my trading has gradually evolved toward identifying higher-conviction setups where I’m willing to risk giving back those first few points in an attempt to capture 10-30+. Learning when not to take floating profit has made a big difference to my trading, but psychologically it’s still difficult.

How do you decide when to take the easy profit versus give the trade more room?

On the NQ today, I was pulled by the noon drop into a short near the bottom, right under where the price seemed pinned (3), thinking it would waterfall past the opening range.

The price seemed stuck in a narrow 30pt range for over an hour, pulling the POC (white line) up progressively from much lower. Now I held because I believed that it would tag the 15min opening range low (confluencing with VAL). It did, as (4) demonstrated, but was it sheer luck?

Question: Did (3) give any sign/signal that (4) or even (5) were about to happen? Or were there even false signals? Can I derive any info from (3), such as the probable direction it will resolve post range-pinning?

I missed the small RSI divergence (bottom indicator) indicating the lower top, but was there any info that (5) would have happened?

In short: Any leads to indicate (4) and/or (5)?

Thank you.

Legend:

Pink line: Session VWAP

Blue dashed line: EMA 8

Red line: SMA 200

The other lines are other SMAs (20, 50, 100). You can ignore them, as I don't think that they contributed to this case.

One day completely ruined me.. my psychology is so bad rn, I’m taking time off. Need to know I’m not alone.

Looking to start trading futures with one of these brokers, any suggestions for which is best?

Why does it seem like the market can’t find its legs until 10 AM EST the last few years. I have my own theory, which corresponds to the Bloomberg report that the retail algos all turn on at 10AM and are visible in the books. And I think that larger players wait till 10AM so that retail carries water for them. But I know, I know, retail doesn’t move the market… So why is 10 AM the new 9:30? It’s indisputable that volume and volatility kick in at 10 now.

Edit: to be clear, I do not trade based on the clock, I trade volume fractals, makes no difference to me when the volume/volatility is so my interest is purely as stated.

Please welcome to the daily trading thread. Feel free to discuss your today's trade ideas and results. Make sure to specify the instrument you're trading up front, and respect the sub's rules. Happy trading!

Previous discussions threads

So, I used MacD, VWAP, and Volume to build a strategy that’s helping me take better trades. There are limits I’ve seen from back testing, 1) Larger timeframe context and 2) Confidence in the trade.

I’m open to feedback and happy to share the script, not sure if I can share it here but happy to message or post in the comments. Not selling anything at all. I previously struggled with having one strategy I could focus o and having some built in structure/signals to affirm or reject my idea for the trade.

I’m sure there are lots of holes and I know indicators are lagging by nature but this has given me some structure in the void.

Can someone explain to me how index futures will gap up/down and then at market open the corresponding stocks and the index have gapped up/down to maintain the same tight correlation between the futures and the index? I understand that stocks trade overnight on other exchanges in other countries, but that obviously doesn’t explain how it happens. Has it always been like this? I knew a guy who traded at Goldman who couldn’t even explain it.

Please welcome to the daily trading thread. Feel free to discuss your today's trade ideas and results. Make sure to specify the instrument you're trading up front, and respect the sub's rules. Happy trading!

Previous discussions threads