Very inspiring Journal, i love the ES micros(I trade it too) good luck with your goals, will follow this thread

https://www.cmegroup.com/futures_challenge/challenges/183/landing?utm_source=par..._content=maincta07012019

Click the link above to enter the 5 day challenge from CME. It starts Sunday night July 14.

You can trade up to 10 contracts each of MICRO es, ym, nq, and rty. Also known as: MES, MYM, MNQ, M2k.

You have a simulated $100k account and can trade a max of 40 contracts simultaneously until Friday.

Prize money awaits the traders with the biggest balance at the end of the week. I could not find any other trading rules.


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sstheo 

https://www.cmegroup.com/futures_challenge/challenges/183/landing?utm_source=par..._content=maincta07012019 Click the link above to enter the 5 day challenge from CME. It starts Sunday night July 14. You can trade up to 10 contracts each of MICRO es, ym, nq, and rty. Also known as: MES, MYM, MNQ, M2k. You have a simulated $100k account and can trade a max of 40 contracts simultaneously until Friday. Prize money awaits the traders with the biggest balance at the end of the week. I could not find any other trading rules. .

Very cool challenge. I’ll be participating this week!

FIO has done some great webinars on the Micro's.

I really appreciated FuturesTrader71's webinar. It really opened my eyes

Here are two more videos on micros:

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sstheo 

I am a momentum scalper who is learning to use volume profile and bigger targets. Let's see what I can do with this account. I am watching the ES, RTY, NQ, and YM. I use cumulative delta and volume profile, and Support and Resistance levels. I watch the 50 SMA on multiple time frames on the NQ and YM. On my fastest chart I use HA candles and a standard MACD. I will be happy to post more info later.

Thank you sstheo for sharing this journey, you are encouraging many trader here and I am one of them, a month ago I started trading the MES using NT and Dorman Trading and I find this thread really helpful.

We will appreciate so much if you can share with us more info about your trading techniques.

sstheo 

I have been doing the "Funded Trader" route with TST, OneUp/MES, and LeeLoo, for the past few years. I have a journal on my journey with MES. In that journal I got some comments that helped open my eyes to the benefits of the new CME Micro E-mini contracts and how someone might do better opening their own micro account and slowly building it up instead of getting on a "combine mill" that most people fail -- and only enriches the combine company. Specifically, I have to thank @lemons and @caacapital for helping me see the light: My MES Live Account Journal (OneUp) Daytrading margin is only 40$ Its cheaper / better to open you own account. My MES Live Account Journal (OneUp) Caacapital, I think your observation is spot on. 100% truth. Five stars to you good sir. I have been hoping for these micro contracts for about 10 years now, and I am excited they are finally here. I just started trading them last week on a $1000 … While I think experienced traders can benefit from the combines and funding, they are very bad for new traders. Most combine participants FAIL. Why? Because if you complete the evaluation in one month, then the required ROI based on available capital is 9% per day! This is clearly unsustainable and puts additional stress on a task that is already one of the hardest in the world. On OneUp, you have to earn 9% per day, based on available capital if you do it in one month. $9000 profit/20 trading days=$450. $450/$5000 max loss is 9% per day or $2,250% growth per year. If you go two months, that is still 4.5% per day growth. Doable? Of course. Realistic over the long haul? Of course not. The best hedge funds are happy to get 25% ROI for an entire year. Therefore, I officially have changed my stance to the following: After you are consistently successful on a sim account, then open a live futures account and trade only the CME Micro E-mini contracts until your account is at least $5,000. At the $5,000 mark, it is large enough, and you are experienced enough to safely handle one regular E-mini futures contract in your own live account, allowing you to keep all the profits. While I am still trading with both MES and LeeLoo, I have decided to put my money where my mouth is. I just funded a live AMP Futures account with $1000. And I will now record my progress. Here are the parameters: I will start with one (or two) Micro contracts. I will allow an additional contract only after adding $500 in profits. (i.e. at $1500 I can trade with 3 micros) I will attempt to earn at least 1% per day. Once I have earned $5,000, then I will switch to one E-mini contract I will continue to shoot for 1% per day I will add a new E-mini contract for each $5,000. This journal will be over once I reach a balance of $12,000 in profits. (1% for 250 trading days) Please follow my progress, and if you are considering the combine mill, WAIT and consider joining me in your own humble beginnings with your OWN LIVE ACCOUNT trading just the Micro E-minis. Not only do you get to keep 100% of the profits instead of giving 20% to the funding company, but you don't have to follow their many rules. While many of these rules are good, they get in the way of some excellent traders who have different styles. Micro E-mini's I propose are the way to go. Let's see if I can pull this off. 1% per day. Is it MADNESS? Perhaps....

I take it that you are not day trading and have a full time job? If so, how do you find time to scalp the market? Thanks

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kazz 

I take it that you are not day trading and have a full time job? If so, how do you find time to scalp the market? Thanks

Great question. And you have caused me to really think about my schedule and commitment again. For this I thank you.

I am self-employed as a real estate broker and I am able to schedule most of my appointments for the afternoon and evening. But I do morning appointments when necessary as the trading is secondary. The market opens at 7:30 am my time and I usually trade to about 9:30 am.

This being said, during the first two hours of the market open, I am also doing research to help two groups of real estate investor clients. For the first group I am looking for distressed properties for them to rehab and resell (aka "flip"). For the second group I am looking for single family and multi-family residences for them to buy for rental purposes. Last week, for example, I actually had a group of investors from California on Tuesday and other group from Chicago on Saturday fly out and meet with me to go see potential rental properties. I had researched most of the target properties between 7:30 and 9:30.

The two activities actually work well together because (1) as a scalper I am not in a trade 100% of the time, but I can easily watch the market for setups each few minutes, and (2) I am doing a lot of small tasks with the real estate that allow me to stop what I am doing easily and give time to the market when those setups come.

But your question begs a deeper issue perhaps-- What are the outcomes in each of these chosen activities and could I be more effective if I focused 100%? The answer the the second question is "of course." Focus is the key to success in all of life. I could be a better trader and I could be a better real estate agent. I readily admit that both outcomes have suffered a bit because of the other. Perhaps I would be in the top 5% of realtors instead of the top 20% in Utah. And perhaps I would not be writing a journal about taking a micro account from $1000 to $5000, but about taking a full $100k account to $500k! LOL.

One of the best traders in our chat room is a former institutional trader. His father, who in his 90's is still trading and loving it and doing well. He says it is great "Alzheimer's prevention." I also know lots of older real estate agents (some should have retired long ago!). So I think I can keep going on both for many years. But if you made me choose one over the other right now, I would choose trading. With my MES and Leeloo funded accounts I am beginning to be profitable. Several of the guys in the room are averaging $1000 to $2000+ per day. If I were doing this I might let the real estate slide a bit. LOL

But until I reach that level of proficiency, I will keep up the real estate too. I still have a mortgage to pay...

I have taken a short break from my own live account, and I am trading in the CME Micro E-mini challenge. This was set up to give some exposure to the new micro contracts, and it seems to be working.

Out of 1400 entrants, about 500 are actively trading, and I finished out the day in the number 11 spot. (I was number 7 for a moment today.)

Look at how many trades some of these guys take!

My goal is to finish on Friday in the top 10. I could still pull it off. The top 3 spots earn live cash.

I agree with some other FIO members that this contest may teach some bad trading habits, but we can overlook that for a week. (It would have been better had they been looking for "risk adjusted returns.")





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jhonsotto 

Thank you sstheo for sharing this journey, you are encouraging many trader here and I am one of them, a month ago I started trading the MES using NT and Dorman Trading and I find this thread really helpful. We will appreciate so much if you can share with us more info about your trading techniques.

I will be happy to share more of my techniques.

I will share them as I see them or use them. Today was a classic drop.

The stop run cascade. Today we finally saw a break of a long bull run since the Fed announced a rate cut was coming. Once this bull run finally ran out of steam, the bears attacked. With each support level that was broken, more selling came in as the bulls had to sell to get out of their positions. So the bears and bulls were both selling! And it picks up speed until both groups say "enough!"

Below is the ES over the past few days. The horizontal lines are support lines placed at opens, closes, highs and lows on the daily chart. Each one hit triggers a rush to sell as explained. The tighter the range of the previous few days, the faster the drop (or pop if reversed) can occur.

This type of action can happen on any time frame. Just determine where the stops are being placed.




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sstheo 

I will be happy to share more of my techniques. I will share them as I see them or use them. Today was a classic drop. The stop run cascade. Today we finally saw a break of a long bull run since the Fed announced a rate cut was coming. Once this bull run finally ran out of steam, the bears attacked. With each support level that was broken, more selling came in as the bulls had to sell to get out of their positions. So the bears and bulls were both selling! And it picks up speed until both groups say "enough!" Below is the ES over the past few days. The horizontal lines are support lines placed at opens, closes, highs and lows on the daily chart. Each one hit triggers a rush to sell as explained. The tighter the range of the previous few days, the faster the drop (or pop if reversed) can occur. This type of action can happen on any time frame. Just determine where the stops are being placed. .

Nice! Thank you very much for sharing some of your knowledge, We'll be looking forward for more.