[Tiobingo]

Any Russell eMini traders finding success day trading the Russell these days? It was tough going for me a few months ago but it seems to have really come alive lately. I'm curious how traders are doing with it. What timeframes, objectives, etc. I like the 377 tick chart with my strategy.

[wrbtrader]

Originally Posted by Tiobingo »

Any Russell eMini traders finding success day trading the Russell these days? It was tough going for me a few months ago but it seems to have really come alive lately. I'm curious how traders are doing with it. What timeframes, objectives, etc. I like the 377 tick chart with my strategy.

ICE Russell 2000 Emini TF is sensitive to volatility. Thus, that "come alive lately" you saw is due to key changes in volatility.

Time frames - 1min, 2min, 3min, 5min and 15min on a multiple monitor setup.

Objectives - Every day is different especially when volatility changes

[tjnoon]

Yes wrbtrader. I follow the vix every day and noticed a huge surge right around the time that the Russell began to open up. I use it to help me determine the time frame that I will apply my strategy to. Like Tiobingo, I like tick charts, range bars and volume bars more than time bars. I do watch time bars and sometimes they even perform better than the tick charts I use, but I prefer a dynamic chart that also adjusts to market conditions.

[cuttshot]

I have traded the TF off and on for the past few years. I have a love hate relationship with this market. I find that when I trade it I need to be on top of my game when it comes to jey level adjustments/stop management. When it's on there isn't a better market out there. When it starts to chop it can be difficult to handle (look at the first few months of 2010).

I also like using range charts on the TF. Currently I am trading the 5 range chart (.50). I'm able to get done with most sessions within the first hour of trading. I target 10 or 15 ticks depending on the type of setup it is (I track 2 types of setups). Like tiobingo said it has really come alive lately.

[tjnoon]

My Russell trading today ended flat. I've seen some fomc days where the Russell was on fire, with many consecutive winners. Today, I would have ended positive but I don't trade 10 minutes around big news events and, needless to say, the winner that would have made the difference happened during the New Home Sales report. I ended up with - .1 today and was content to quit with that. Two of my trades ticked me out at breakeven, one was a partial loss and the other a full winner. Trailing stops had no potential this morning, that's for sure.

[cuttshot]

It's always a tough call on Fed day. I didn't trade it this morning myself due to the Fed and the rebalance going on this week. My system did make it through decent with 3 wins and 2 losses for a positive 9 ticks of profit.

I wasn't expecting much out of the Fed release this afternoon and boy was that the case. Almost a non event in the afternoon trading. Still could see a selloff going into the close but so far a very choppy day.

[markl67]

I just went live (real cash) a couple weeks ago with the TF using a volume bar breakout strategy which I backtested to Jan 4th with a 70% win ratio. The trouble is to achieve that win ratio, my risk/reward is 1:1, sometimes slightly negative and when the losers occur they are "large" which shakes my confidence to be honest. This strategy calls for basically putting on the trade and walking away which I think is best for my personality as I tend to micro-manage, but when the losers occur I say to myself "damn it, if I had been watching I could have managed this better" bla bla....

Not to ramble on or hi-jack the thread, but I'm interested if others have tried this "walk away" approach...?

[MadMarketScientist]

Great conversation on a favorite market. Thanks to the posters on this one.

TF used to be a personal favorite as well, when it changed from the CME to ICE it lost a lot of its luster to me -- but that really seems to be changing and the volume has seemed to return as has the volatility.

I always liked the speed of execution on this market as well. And reasonable margins. I think it's a better market for many than something like the ES which I find trickier to trade despite the volumes.

As to your post, markl67, I do like the set and walk away approach - of course strategy dependent. The key there is can you make your rules virtually mechanical? If you can, and you have a set of rules, then you can do that. Where I think this walk away falls apart is when you really don't have that -- it is subjective or has a lot of conditionals.

However, if you can get it nailed down to the specifics, I find psychologically it's much easier to trade NOT watching every tick then watching it. I've tried many times to have the monitor on and avoid it -- but it's virtually impossible. Instead, I personally sometimes turn off the monitor with the charts, and keep doing my other work on the other monitor or I know I'll just flick back to view the chart a 1,000 times in a few minutes

The key though is having those exact rules, and not beating yourself up over what "coulda/shoulda" if you would have been micro-managing....