Just started with the micro emin mes

[george99]

First off,

thanks to everyone on this forum. I have been lurking for a while and have got a lot of really useful information here!

 

Well just after xmas i setup a live futures account with ninjatrader brokerage. I put enough money in so that i could trade one or two micro es and stay about 2% of my account. I have been using a combination of manual chart markings...s/d..trendlines..sr...day high and low and moving averages coupled with orderflow. I am using ninjatrader 7.

 

Two weeks in, it has been a fun and very educational experience!

[george99]

Broker and computer setup:

I started with ninjatrader broker. When all is said and done, it costs about a $1.20 for a one micro round trip, exchange fees are $7 a month for the micros with several levels of level II data. If you want to use two computers, you need another login at $10 per month and another $7 for the data feed. I did that so $24 per month plus round trip fees. Later about the effect of the expenses on my trading.

 

I started the demo while waiting for some funds to become available. Well I quickly found out that the 2 laptops i was using were much too slow. So my first problem was what to upgrade to. New laptops and desktops are currently pretty expensive. I looked around amazon and found that refurbished computers looked pretty good price wise. I decided on an older hp 8300 ultra small form factor. Computer is about a foot square by 3 inches high..16g of ram...512 g solid state disk drive...and a beautiful quad core, 3 gig processor...also came with the wireless and an hdmi adaptor. I also purchased an acer 22 inch monitor and a wireless keyboard and mouse...

 

The new acer monitor was about $90..the wireless keyboard and mouse was $22 and the computer was $249. So for under $400...I got a setup that screams....at least for what I need...it all came and plugged it all together and everthing worked right away...One aside...I paid a bit more for the computer then other vendors were asking, but i researched my seller and he was running 95% satisfaction and from comments posted...he honored every request...Refurb Ninja..and he sells all over...not just Amazon.

 

Parts are very cheap for the older computers...I can replace the processor for $18 verses the original cost of $200. Never be first with hardware...you pay a big premium to have the best.

 

So all working with the computer setup...next data replay!

Edited January 11, 2020 by george99
additon

[george99]

Replay:

I couldnt make sense of the replay that comes with ninjatrader...didnt want to go through the recording and all that so i looked online and found a vendor who supplies forex and the futures stuff i needed for $6 a month..download level 1 and 2 as much as you want. I setup a new workspace in ninja for the replay and that worked fine...tick data and everything...no fuss...I plan to use it to check out highs and lows...etc. Think i got it from marketreplaydata.com....I am very happy with the replay. It drives the heavy indicators fine. So far recurring expenses are $30 a month for replay, two logins and two data feeds. I had an iqfeed for $35 a month...so i dropped it and am comming in less than i was paying for the old forex feed to use with ninjatrader.

[george99]

Ninjatrader:

First off...i learned to keep a backup of the ninjatrader in users/documents/...when something gets screwed you cant import or export scripts...you can track it down by editing and compiling any indictor..when you do it shows all errors for all indicators...tracking errors is a real pain, it is much easier to keep a working backup handy.

 

After getting the brokerage account, i had to update ninjatrader 7 to the latest version in order to get the micro symbols..did it on my new (old) computer and got the error that it needed net framework 3.5...checked it under settings (win 10) under add windows features ...microsoft updated and gave me an error that i couldnt fix....finally i went to microsoft to their get windows media creation tool...it automatically gives you the latest win 10 for free...even if you were running 7 or 8...license has to be valid...updated and tried for the net 3.5 and it worked fine...Now ninja is working and i have the micro symbols...

 

So...looks like i am good to trade. lol...on to the next problems!

[⭐ Iqbal]

Enjoyed reading it and looking forward to the next story. Thanks George.

[george99]

thanks iqbal...well...here we go!

Session times:

I dabbled in forex over the years...never won...but I learned a lot about what works or rather might work and what doesnt..from the market maker stuff I know that you need volatility. The forex pairs are only running about 30-40 pips now so no fun..The es swings 10 to 40 points so nice...Since I know nothing about it, I try to find the session times...and the best way to set up my sessions...Of course like anything else important, it takes me a lot of time to discover that there are two main sessions...day and evening...and that i can get by by using 5pm sunday till 8:30 am monday, central standard time...i also learn that in the day session, 8:30-9:30, the initial balance moves like a bandit...heavy volume...12pm till 2pm the big boys go to lunch, liquidity dries up and crazy nonsensical moves can happen...and liquidity returns after 2 till the market closes for maintenence for an hour at 4.(cst) So I settle on using two sessions at first and remind myself to be aware of the personality of the different sub sessions. And as in forex, to check on the daily news events. After trading it a bit, i think that using one big session is fine.

 

Next question is interesting...i am trading the micro es...so figuring that the mini is more important...i decide to watch the emini..thinking that the micro will follow...so use the emini for analysis and the micro for setting trades, and to be conscious of the small time lag between the two.

 

Trade mechanics:

Several levels of order book depth comes with my feed...unlike forex which has no central exchange. So for entering and exiting a trade I am using the super dom...after enabling the one click trading, I can set my orders with one click on price and I pretty much get the price i clicked on...and no worrying about stop, limit orders etc. I also learn that the futures have no stop or take profit on an order....if you want to exit a buy order...you enter a separate sell order and visa versa..and i quickly learn to cancel all orders and flatten all positions after every trade so nothing is left laying around that can bite me later. boy do i ramble ... lol

[george99]

Charting:

After a couple of weeks I have decided on a two step approach...every morning I draw supply demand boxes and support resistance lines on multiple time frames...and set the 5/13/50/200 and 800 moving averages...(market maker stuff) and throw and rsi on the chart for divergence...I also mark up obvious trend lines....This is my daily guide...For trading i use orderflow and I watch the order book....The real volume on the es is such a pleasure...I see the same stuff the big boys do. I keep a time and sales window open and am starting to get a feel for it.

 

For counter trading, at daily peaks or other important levels I find the 5/13 moving averages give a nice indication....If there is angle in the direction of the trend walk away...dont even think about counter trading till their slope levels and be conscious of divergence between price and the rsi. if you watch the orderflow be consious of the amount of orders at ever price level...if there are a ton of sell and buy trades expect the market makers to bounce the price back and forth to knock both out before starting a reversal. When you expect a reversal wait....expect the stop hunts as the market makers dole out a lot of pain to both the shorts and longs. They provide market liguidity so if everybody is shorting an obvious peak they would always lose and be out of business fast so...wait...dont look for that obvious resistance to hold...expect the price to blow by it to create doubt. and when you think it is ready to fall...wait some more. I am trying to get into a frame of mind where I think what the big boys would do to be profitable and i am starting see little things here and there.

 

So learn to mark up charts first...and then watch the volume clusters and time and sales and order book...i think you need a good feel for the interaction of all the pieces to become profitable.

Edited January 11, 2020 by george99

[⭐ RichardGere]

Thank you for your journal. Very interesting. I only trade forex but am curious how to trade ES.

[george99]

Well i have been trading the micro futures for about three weeks now...about a hundred trades a week...so almost three hundred short term trades....down about $150...double that lost in one day where i went insane...but i now have a pretty good feel for the micro futures and am developing a loose trading plan.

 

The approach i have decided to use is a combination of order flow, two momentum indicators...short and long term, and robert miners elliott wave approach...with emphasis on the elliott wave. I have decided to trade off the one minute chart. I have also decided to concentrate on the micro mnq....I like the elliott wave because it gives me a hard stop loss....the mnq is two dollar a point....so entering a trade within a couple of points of an elliott rule limits my loss to about 4 to 6 dollars and the mnq seem to run 12 to 24 points on a typical move, and it is amazing how well the elliott wave rules are respected on a one minute chart...

 

The order flow shows accumulation and distribution along with nice volume spikes at key levels...the mom indicators are a nice quick indication of trend and possible turning points and the elliot wave gives nice rules to trade by...example....wave one should not be violated after the first of wave three...stop a point or so below the peak of wave one...at resistance areas several big directional spikes in buying or selling volume shows a good attempt to cross and the overbought areas of the mom indicator warn of a change while and also add confirmation to direction. Robert Miners approach to elliott wave is very simple and his two books are a quick read if you just focus on the two momentum strategy and elliott wave approach...

 

the mnq moves nicely during both sessions and i now have a pretty good feel for the times of day to not trade...

 

i had one venture into another path...a lot of things will run off of an ascii file and will update in real time and i couldnt find a ninja indicator that writes the historical data out to a file and then appends incomming bars to it....amazing how this simple process was not available...so i took that simple file read write routine that is mentioned in the ninja support forum and started modifying it....the example just put out the day date and didnt provide volume...so i added the hh:mm:ss after the date....added the current volume to the output line and eliminated the code that checked for an existing file...i just deleted the old file if it existed and let it write the history from the current chart to a new file along with updates....so i open a one minute chart on ninjatrader, add the file indicator...and i get a real time file with historical and current information...i tested it on dt and it seems to work pretty well so i now have a feed out of ninjatrader for the futures data...i just need to mod it to use the instrument name...date and chart period for the filename...

 

so this should be a fun week...i will be serious about stalking trades...only taking when i have a potential for a strong move and will always set a hard stop loss....maybe some pictures this week..lol

[pure]

Hi,

 

I've just started with the MES myself.

 

Curious to know about your progress throughout the year!