The Bear

Look at the Hang Seng Futures. I beleive the time zone is 12 hrs reverse wall street time.

Beleive me, you will go back eventually, even if you are confident with your own skills. If you are a lone speculator - and have no interaction during the working day - I think you want some sort of contact with other people that do what you do. Elite trader is just not the place though - my guess it's made up of all those idiot prop traders who slam on their desk when they get in a hissy fit - type guys. Like really darth - who are all the people on Elite Trader? It is the working day so most people have to work 9-5 and they aren't posting from work.

Thanks guys, I'll check out the trade 2 win. I think i'll stay away from those quant nerds - that's stuff is over the top for me. Just tired of reading the nonsense on Elite Trader like "I just turned 10 thousand into 1 million". "GOOG is up 20% today - Buy It" "Most Elite Traders Will Beat The Market This Year - And Here's Why" It's funny for 10 seconds, but after awhile it's a pure waste of time. I went all of last year and more without looking at the board - and just lately I peek in there time to time - OK more like multiple times a day now, it's becoming a disease.

-48.14% YTD 2008 Over-leveraged position trading (Oil Futures & Stocks) All in all, I was quite pleased with the results. After SEPT I turned things around for the better, and prevented total collapse....there was a time where I saw the total collapse coming though.

Are there any good online message boards guys, that are for traders but more active than Traders Laboratory but not filled with the garbage on Elite Trader?

It is loosely used - what it refered to were the NASDAQ intra-day traders (screen traders) back in the tech boom - who some of them went boom and bust. People who knew nothing about the markets were lured into margin accounts to get in the game - this is typical behavior nearing a market top. I even know a guy who has never traded in his life who took out a leveraged loan from the bank back in the summer and loaded up on mining stock mutual funds, you can guess what was the outcome. This is my hypothesis, but I would say the 2008 crash is different in the sense that the day trader community of back then (all the hoards of prop shops etc.) don't really exist to the same extent. From what I read in the industry, the people blowing up in this crash are overnight 'position traders'...prop desk traders of wall street firms, hedge fund traders....who don't really engage that much in the intra-day thing, and were heavily into emerging markets, energy etc... If anything I would say that the intra-day traders 'day traders' are somewhat protected from some of these outcomes that the position trader has to deal with, ie. not trapped into markets collapsing against themself. I almost blew myself up, in Sept alone I was down -32.03% of my total equity. I got extremely greedy, I was never selling, the gains would pile up (oil) and I would just leave them, then of course comes the rude awakening.

I never found anything on the foreign markets. It isn't a failure, it's just a long overdue fleecing of lambs. Stocks needed to exchange hands on a grand scale, and thank god it happened this year. The correction may not be over, be prepared for another massive leg down. I'm mentally preparing myself...I suggest you do too.

Good to see the site is still going strong. Guys who used to converse with me whats up? Still trading futures? Good to see alot of you still around...it gives me confidence that some people can actually last in this insane market. I left the futures trading last year or maybe more, and now do only (core) position trading in the stock market. I still do a bit of futures maybe 10-30 round turns a month at MOST (YM) but to be honest, I can't make money at it, and I tried for 3 years. I simply gave up, and I got to the point where I kept looking at my financial statements and finally accepted that the losses were growing, and if I didn't do something to stop them, I would be taken out of the market alltogether. Instead at that time (and earlier when I was experimenting in the stocks) I made the switch to the stock market and became profitable...at least so far. I've had to stomach some big swings with this overnight trading, seeing my account move way more than the intra-day trading, but I got used to it. I'm hopeful but not certain that I'll last in the new economy...Let's keep our fingers crossed for you guys too.

I hear you bud. I too got to admit that I love the position trading. I still do attack the short sells intra-day maybe 1 day in a month to satisfy my enjoyment of short-term trading, but that's about it.

No there really is no way to accurately do this for commercial reasons in production & the immediate purchasing of raw materials. See my previous post - I think this will steer you in the right direction and I hope that info helps.

You want to look for resources on commercial hedging strategies in the futures markets. A number of them exist but I don't pay attention to them because I'm not a hedger. Cotton is traded on ICE, Oil on NYMEX or ICE. I too wonder why your company would ask you this. Hedging is pretty involved and could be complicated (I don't know), and done incorrectly could produce a surprise for the company. I don't think the types of books you mentioned are useful to you (they aren't intended for hedgers), since it will take a huge undertaking just to research HOW to hedge, you better start there.

I saw that a few months ago on CNBC. It was fun - they re-ran it so I had to watch it a second time. The best part is the 80's synth music at the end during the credits.

Plain old stock trading is a great skill, and I recommend if you like it and feel comfortable doing it, stick to it. Make sure you don't get suckered in to thinking that more elaborate or esoteric instruments are they keys to making money. I started trading stocks and then moved to oil & gas also....I tried stock index futures too, but never could make much money doing it...i'll do it here and there for small gains, but that's about it, and before anything I wanted to trade options...but thankfully I never did. Now is a great time to be in the stock market. If you can learn and not get killed in todays market, you may just last. I personally don't believe in mentors, but that's just an opinion. Send me a message if you want me to try and dig up a short list of books that I found useful.

I'll only have access to GLOBEX, so I can't trade on any other exchange. So from what I see in your response for Globex - the order is: ES NQ ER2 ES felt really boxy when I was trading on Tick charts. I tried to adjust and use different tick values, but it could never mimmic the way CL is. It also felt much slower than CL. In the oil maket you get these 'blasts' often. I also couldn't make much money trading ES straight for 1 month, like I could in the commodities. I guess what I'm trying to do is impossible - you can't replace one market with another and expect it to be the same.

To make things brief, I'll only have access to CME Globex for intra-day soon, and I need to start investigating futures, solely for intra-day trading, and I've traded the ES for 1 month in the past but I didn't like it - it felt boxy. Can someone recommend me anything similar in leverage and action to oil (CL) on this exchange? I understand that it won't be the same, but something close? Does anything exist that is highly liquid with high leverage, and available on the screen or side by side.

I agree with you on this part. It may look good theoretically - 1000 contacts 2 ticks-1 tick or whatever, but this isn't good unless he has a near 100% accuracy rate, and nobody has that.

That's assuming he never has losing trades and he occasionally has 1 tick losses. Alot of scalpers don't use stops, so if the market runs away on you....ooops.

True that James, it's difficult to say, this move down has been pretty hard so I'm expecting a snap back rally from here, but to put a hedge on at that point? It's iffy, We may have already hit the bottom or are close to the bottom. The market always surprises, and with sentiment so bearish right now, I would be surprised if the market blasts in our face.

hi Brownfan - have you used any of the ETF's before to hedge? I'm not at the point right now where I would put on a hedge, since i'm still bullish, but a 2nd leg down from here on the dow, and I would seriously begin to consider this. I've haven't had the need to hedge in the past few years, but I was thinking maybe shorting the SPY or DIA. I know there are a number of those short ETF's you are talking about, either 1X or 2X, but do you think the SPY or DIA would be a tighter correlation to set up a 'true hedge' to the market? Is there a short ETF out there that is 2X the DOW or S&P?

Anybody do a comparison?

Does Interactive Brokers do personalized quotes?

Does anyone know if the YM will be included with the ES feed eventually? Or will we have to pay 2 separate fees to get both. I noticed in TradeStation that CBOT has no 'mini' data feed, just the 1 normal feed. What's the deal with this?

RE: commissions, unless you are a local or have a membership at the exchange, or somehow have access to the extremely low commissions that these traders have, scalping becomes difficult in the long run for the retail trader. Typically, scalpers who do it for a living make hundreds of round turns a day with a hold time lasting seconds. Now if this is just a hobby of yours, by all means. But watch the commissions closely, you could be spending thousands in a month.

Hang Seng Index

It was a free promotion for a number of yrs but it's over now. I think it just ended a couple of weeks ago.