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How does 24-hr. trading affect swing-trading e-mini contracts?
I'm new to Big Mike's so I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but here goes. I'm not new to technical trading, but have been away from the markets for several years. When I was in the futures markets previously, there was an active day session with very thin after-hours electronic trading which could be ignored for all practical purposes. The around-the-clock electronic trading that is now the norm may present some problems with my trading methodology. Perhaps some of you can help me with this. The methodology I will be using would have me entering trades during the day on short-term timing charts (approx. 15 min.). Trades would then be monitored until either stopped out or confirming signals are received on higher timeframe monitor charts (approx. 60 min.) One potential problem is that the confirming signals could come during after-hours trading when I can't monitor the market (and by the way, the methodology doesn't lend itself to total system automation). Trades would then be monitored on this timeframe until either stopped out or confirming signals are received on daily charts. For optimum results, stops will be adjusted very frequently, perhaps bar by bar. This would be considered swing trading with positions sometimes held for days or even weeks. The problem is, if trading is fairly active with significant price movement outside of my normal trading day (US Central time), it may be difficult to properly follow my trading rules, especially during the early phase of a trade on the smaler timeframes. As the trade scales up to higher timeframes, this would be less of an issue. I realize that this would be no problem for day traders, which most of you probably are. Do any of you swing trade any of the emini contracts, and how do you deal with after-hours activity? I believe certain platforms like NinjaTrader allow you to chart only certain session data, but if you ignore the rest, wouldn't you end up with large gaps from after-hours price movement? Am I missing something simple here? Any advice would be appreciated.
Ninja's charts can default to 24/7, Regular trading hours or the extended trading hours from Globex. Ninja has a good til cancelled feature for your orders or an option to cancel all orders at the close of regular trading hours. You could swing trade with the GTC orders.
I think it depends on your trading method as to whether or not you chose to hold trades over night. Certain instruments have very large swings over night that would take a tight trail stop out. I trade crude oil which can have 300-500 tick intra-day swings and this can certainly take you out of a longer term position.
If you are swing trading, you would be ill advised to trade a 15M or 5M chart for anything except very fine tuning of your entries. Once you've entered and you intend to hold a trade for several days or even weeks, you would be served best by using stop placement on the higher time frames to avoid be whip sawed out prematurely.
For instance I trade a one min chart but use a daily, a 15M and a 5M for context. I sometimes use the 5M chart for stop placement IF I want to see about looking for a larger trade than my normal scalps. But as I am testing a swing trading method on crude oil, I have come to the conclusion that a stop on anything less than a daily chart will take you out of a larger move pretty quickly.
I would set my charts up for the default 24/7 template and look at what the normal daily range is before I decided to hold trades overnight with a tight trail stop. I would virtually guarantee you will find that unless you are using pretty large stops, you'll get taken out.
By the way, some traders like to see the gaps using only the regular trading hours. There are many methods of trading based on the idea that the gaps will be filled. There is a thread devoted to that here on the forum.
Hope this helps and good luck on the journey.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris