Which contract should a beginner trade?

[tony1d]

Great posts, all make perfect sense. I trade the ES first, then the YM, er and nq in that order, basically whatever is moving the most. I like the ES as i can watch the tape and follow the pros slamming multi thousand contracts and ride along for a few ticks to an easy point. The YM spreads are friendlier and you can have wider stops plus you can look at the 30 individual stocks in the cash market and use that as a guide on another monitor. the ER is wild and if you trade tight stops you'll most often be taken out but when its running you can make a bundle fast. Not really an NQ fan but the NQ follows technicals really well, it loves to test the POC almost daily unless its a big trending day. Moves a bit too slow for me. Only gripe on the ES is that at $12.50 per tick, any slippage and your playing catch up. on 5 contracts you're -62.50 from the beginning. I use limit orders on 95% of ES trades to avoid that. Market only when its flying.

[tim4]

Thanks to you both for good, considered replies. I actually have more success with ES than any other of the eminis. When you're scalping for a few ticks, I've found it's important to be able to buy the bid and sell the ask, which I can do more frequently on ES. If you have more patience than I do, and trade for points instead of just ticks, no doubt you could do quite well with either NQ or YM. I do think that strategies should be tested on a simulator until you get some consistent results. I know to my regret how easy it is to lose real money no matter what is traded if you've got a shaky strategy.

[tim4]

Related to the question of best contracts is one about best brokers. I use TradeStation and seem to get decent fills, which is very important when trading ES. But I hear that since they clear through another house (RJ Obrien) that that can slow the process a little. I like their charts and the matrix trading platform.

Anyone have any comparisons?

[Bird of Fire]

	Quote:	tim4
	Related to the question of best contracts is one about best brokers. I use TradeStation and seem to get decent fills, which is very important when trading ES. But I hear that since they clear through another house (RJ Obrien) that that can slow the process a little. I like their charts and the matrix trading platform. Anyone have any comparisons?

I also used TS but dropped it for Ninja/Zenfire which is faster and is server to server direct. The trading strategies options are also out of sight. I still use TS charts--Ninja's are lousy.

[tim4]

Thanks. I'm not familiar with server to server term; what is TS? And is Ninja enough faster to warrant the hassle of switching over? Also, I do like the ability to see the order lines on the charts; I only wish you could trade from the TS charts by moving the lines directly.

[brownsfan019]

	Quote:	tim4
	Thanks. I'm not familiar with server to server term; what is TS? And is Ninja enough faster to warrant the hassle of switching over? Also, I do like the ability to see the order lines on the charts; I only wish you could trade from the TS charts by moving the lines directly.

FYI - you can 'trade from the chart' with Open ECry as well.

[Bird of Fire]

	Quote:	cooter
	Unfortunately, the OpenECry OEC Trader simulator is one of those that is so "loose" that it triggers limit orders as if they were "market if touched" orders. Pretty poor and shoddy implementation, IMHO. It suckers newbies into thinking that real world trading would match this performance - which, of course , it won't. I did like the Transact AT simulator (same as Infffinnity) since they actually recognized this limitation and made certain that it either trades thru the level on the sim or sits in the queue for a period of time. Your real-world expectations and experience may vary either way.

I find NinjaTrader's sim mode very conservative and probably the most realistic to live trading. In fact, I have entered orders simultaneously--real and sim--and the real get filled before the sim, so if you're having success in sim, you will have more in real mode.

[bunkerdoo]

I have a related question, namely slippage. What would you say is a reasonable value in terms of ticks to attribute to slippage on each of ES, NQ, ER2 and YM
Is 1 or 2 ticks satisfactory when designing a system?

[cooter]

In a word, yes.

[Bird of Fire]

	Quote:	bunkerdoo
	I have a related question, namely slippage. What would you say is a reasonable value in terms of ticks to attribute to slippage on each of ES, NQ, ER2 and YM Is 1 or 2 ticks satisfactory when designing a system?

Design a system that only uses limit orders and slippage isn't an issue.