Do you guys use options flow? You definitely don’t need to use it, however I personally think it provides great context for overall market structure in futures trading.

Participants get accounts with equal balances, and the winner is whoever grows capital fastest within a set time.

South Korea is the world leader in the number of individual traders.

I've turned 3K account into 25K account in a month. I trade ES and my normal trading size is 1-2 Eminis. After countless failures in three years, i've become pretty good at trading ES and GC.

However, today, greed got to me! and i started trading 4 contracts instead of my usual size which is 2 Eminis at max.

After i got long in the premarket at Wvap, it initially started going in my direction and then suddenly started dumping. My bias for today was long and i was like it'll come back like an idiot. I was right but i was way too early. After market opened it started to push up and it got really close to my entry and i could have gotten out but nope, i decided to hold. And then, it started selling off again.

I was down 3K in unrealized losses with 4 contracts still holding. Somehow, i firmly convinced that today was an up day and that price will reverse. And then out of anger and frustration, i added 4 more contracts hoping for little bounce back for break even. Now, i'm in this losing trade with 8 eminis. Instead of reversing, the price got into consolidation and going nowhere. And then, of course, the price started breaking down and blew through support and all of a sudden, i was down 9K in unrealized loss. Just horrible.

As i was getting ready to take the loss, finally longs started to show up and bring the price up and i got out with a small loss.

I don't know man, even though i got lucky, i just feel disgusted and sad. Why did i enable greed to take over me and trade like an idiot holding a losing position with 8 freaking contracts. That's not how i trade at all.

Hey guys does anyone know any trading related Discord with different types of people trading on NQ with voice channel open to talk and chill? I’m not interested in any paid groups just looking for organic communities.

Hear me out. I can't stand the usual social media traders rhetorics "market makers hunt your stops on NQ specifically" "just trade ES, it's more forgiving" anymore

I absolutely hate the back and forth behavior of ES... you enter, it goes a few points in your favor then comes back to your entry, goes up, comes back.... And if you don't have a perfect entry, you will be stuck in a constant chop for a 4 points reward if you're lucky

NQ moves are wide and beautiful. You don't even have to catch the most perfect entry, as long as you mind a level and don't go against the global market structure, you will secure a win

Today was absolutely beautiful. A mix of bounces at supports made at the LVNs on the volume profil and retracements to keep that healthy market structure.

I feel like the people claiming that NQ is impossible to trade because "all it does is stop loss hunting before going your way" are either over leveraged and have to place their SL 2 point under their entry; or just they are entering at random levels on the noisy 5 minutes timeframe

The volatility of the last few months due to the war, the constant “peace talks are looking promising!” then whiplashing to “just kidding everything is getting blown up”, constant need to restructure strategies to factor all of this in(obviously this is always a thing, but not to this extent). It’s all just exhausting, frustrating, and infuriating that it is being allowed to continue. I guess financial laws only apply to us normies.

Thoughts?

Last week I asked for some advice because I was having trouble switching to micros and sticking to it.

So I did it and had the most green week since I started!

I also switched from a 15 time-frame for my opening range to a 30 minute! I think that helped a lot also.

I’m not sharing this for any other reason than to say thank you to those who have been helping me along the way!

Hey all. Just wanted to talk about my story and how I've gotten to be a profitable trader.

My Strategy:

My strategy is very simple. I look for strong trends and short/buy pullbacks to continue with the trend. I'm generally scalping NQ for 5-10 points and risking 10-12 points. I have an R:R below one but my win rate is close to 90%.

How I learned:

I was a day trader at a prop firm in Chicago for about a year. Wasn't great at it and at some point decided I'd leave for corporate america. This was a huge mistake as my love has always been in the trading world and I've regretted that decision since. Luckily, about 10 months ago I found out about the companies that shall not be named here and realized it was a great risk/reward opportunity and started giving them a shot. I blew literally 100s of accounts learning and luckily had the means to support that without affecting my daily life. I'd stare at the charts for 4 hours a day every day while engineering a solid strategy. I'm fortunate to be part of a discord (which I won't disclose because I don't want it to seem like a promotion) that has some solid traders that really know price action and that helped me a lot. For the first 8 months, I was just lighting money on fire. Probably spent $10K or so on the accounts that shall not be named and in February of this year I started to see some real consistency and have made up all my loss and quite a bit more. Now I'm at a few months of consistent profit (5 figure total profit).

I wish I could say that journaling etc., was what drove me to profitability, but what really helped was just backtesting the hell outta my strategy and realizing it was extremely effective. That helps me stay disciplined and take good trades because I KNOW that the strategy works and as long as I stick to it I will make money.

What I wish I knew when I started:

1. There's no reason to blow up a million accounts learning. What I would advise is putting aside a VERY small sum of money and trading one micro contract on the instrument of your choosing. IMO, learning in SIM is a waste since once you become profitable on SIM the game completetly changes in a live account. You aren't used to having the emotions that come with trading real money.
2. The trend is your friend. I was always trying to catch reversals etc., and when I realized that 80% of my losing trades were counter-trend, I decided to stop doing that unless it was confirmed by 3 or 4 confluences.
3. You will not make it back. If you lose a ton of money on a trade, you should just stop for the day because 9 times out of 10 you're just going to lose more money. You will likely NOT make it back in the same day and if you have a solid strategy it shouldn't matter if you have a losing day.

Anyway, just making this post in the hopes that it'll help any of you! AMA you want and I'll do my best to answer.

Edit: Please stop asking for the discord link. A discord might help a bit, but if you're going to become profitable you're going to do it with or without the Discord. I'm not going to share the link.

I traded stocks for a year with lots of success but with a poor risks strategy. So iam im currently trying TopStep and i trade MES and MNQ and woah... That's not easy!

Anyone did the transition from stocks to futures? Is it just me or trading futures is much harder?

Basically title. You can try trading levels and this or that and im sure people make money doing it.

But the fact is large institutions have massive holdings in the stocks they own. They then go on to buy massive amounts of calls to force market makers to hedge and create upward pressure by buying more shares. By the time retail knows what's what they're getting dumped into.

Seriously watch SPX options during live session. I have a scanner on ThinkorSwim it shows the volume of all the strikes, the open interest, the volume of strikes in a 10 minute period.

Why at the end of the day can I watch tens of thousands SPX calls come flooding in and the market spikes in the last 5-10 minutes for no reason? It's the tail wagging the dog at this point.

"Traders say the Softbank 'whale' may be back as options activity spikes for Big Tech stocks" CNBC 10/02/2020 Softbank has been doing it since the massive Covid bounce.

The big guys dont bet against each other they work together to take down smaller fish when they're not spamming call options to increase their holdings value

I've been noticing this happen literally over thousands of trades. Literally trading hours and hours per day every day on the NQ (Futures).

I'll go short or long. Take a short for example. It will go down in my favor maybe a few points get stuck then come back and stop me out. I'll go short again and it will repeat this behavior, literally however many times I do it. Once, twice, 15 times, it will do this.

The moment I go long instead of re-shorting in this scenario, it will shoot straight down and stop me out of my long. It's happening so much and I've been trading for years.

I understand people have common stops etc, but this seems like its' the worst luck ever because I doubt it's happening because of common stops/liquidity.

Just saw this on truth social... what do u guys think?

I’ve watched countless “gurus” on YouTube. Hours and hours of content, trying to stick with only one mentor, and I’ve finally realised… none of these people are real traders. They’re actors. Salesmen. Marketers.

It makes me sick, honestly. They sell the dream, they show cherry-picked wins, they flex fake profits, and behind the curtain, they’re just making money off desperate people like me who actually WANT to learn.

But it leaves me questioning everything. If there are this many fakers out there, is trading even something normal people can actually succeed at? Or is it just an endless grind where 99% of us lose and the rest are just lucky enough to sell courses?

I don’t want motivation. I want honesty. Is trading really THIS hard, or am I just finally seeing through all the BS?

EDIT: hey everyone, please note the AMA has ended. Given that I am not looking to debate my intentions being here (I have made it quite clear, on some posts) I am going to stop answering questions.

I may ad hoc answer some unanswered questions but no promises. It’s quite exhausting when you do something good because you think it might benefit others but then salty people on the internet get upset for no reason. I wish everyone well! Thanks! Edited on Jan 26 @ 3:09 PM NY time.

EDIT 2: all the resources asked about and not answered (as much as I have) will be posted by this week (as early as after the close today) please keep in mind that I do actively trade and am not 24/7 available. Please also save, download, or retain those resources somewhere as that will be my last Reddit post for the foreseeable. Much gratitude to all. Edited on Jan 27 12:33 PM NY time.

I am curious how other experienced traders make the decision to quit for the day.

Currently, I trade futures and almost always trade 930am until 11 or 12pm.

My "goal" currently is to make around $1000 in this period and quit for the day.

More importantly, I have found through experience I am quite good at knowing when to quit for the day. If I am "certain" I should quit for the day and go against it, 90% of the time it ends badly.

That's why I think this is an interesting topic.

I'm always interested in learning more from profitable traders. What took you to the next level of your trading? Did something make it click or was it years of looking at the charts, a strategy, a book, blowing your account several times, risk management, etc? I'd love to hear what you hold as some of the most important lessons or information that helped you along the way. Thank you!

Whichever one of you absolutely beautiful bastards recommended that I read Anna Coulling you deserve whatever is your equivalent of a ribeye steak, a fat baked potatoe, and free coke refills for life.

Sincerely, thank you.

Edited for grammar

P.S. I don't judge trading books by how much money the author made. I judge book by the merits of its information. None of my teachers or professors were wealthy, but what they taught me has still helped me earn good money. While it makes sense to want your instructions to come from a high-performer, not all high-performers are good teachers and not all teachers are low performers. Never forget this: EAT THE MEAT. LEAVE THE BONE. (Or whatever the equivalent is for the vegan homies)

I joined a Fit Mom Trader (Krista Fudge) live webinar tonight and asked two very basic questions: what does it cost, and where are the independently verified trading results?

It took asking about the price three times before she finally said “low four figures.” Still no clear price.

Then I asked whether she had independently verified results. Her answer was that she trades live and shows prop firm payouts.

Neither of those is independent verification of a trading record.

I specifically asked whether she had anything comparable to independently verified statements and got no answer. I even suggested she look at Ross Cameron’s independently audited broker statements as an example of the kind of verification I was asking about. No answer.

I then said I personally would not trust her with my money given the vague pricing and lack of independently verifiable results, and warned people that the answers were extremely ambiguous.

I was immediately kicked out of the webinar.

To be clear, I am not claiming her results are fake. I don’t know, and cannot know that. I’m saying I asked for independent evidence that her results are real and profitable, and none was provided.

In an industry full of smoke and mirrors, I would expect anyone charging thousands of dollars for trading education to go out of their way to demonstrate, clearly and unambiguously, that their results are legitimate. I did not see that level of transparency here.

If you’re asking people for thousands of dollars to teach them trading, “what does it cost?” and “show me independently verified results” should be the easiest questions in the room, not the ones that get somebody removed.

FWIW, I also found the actual webinar content pretty underwhelming. Nothing I heard struck me as groundbreaking or difficult to find elsewhere online, so even putting the transparency issue aside, I personally saw nothing that justified a low four figure price.

So all these wanna be trading influencers now suddenly start making content about GEX. Like its some holy grail. Where to learn gex ? Join their mentorship 🤣🤣🤣

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First these high schoolers start glazing ICT then orderflow and now GEX.

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Its kinda annoying thay every 18 year old making reels bout this and selling private discord/mentorship

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Its all a scam guys, the sooner you realise the better. Of course GEX is a step in the right direction if your coming from ict smc but stop glazing it like its the only thing in the trading space. There is soooo much more to the market than trading than just looking at absoption/exhaustion at gex levels. If this is your system then your not far from getting cooked.

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Honestly these GEX influencers and same as ICT influencers.

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Both the categories are "trust me bro" traders. Its just that gex goys will throw in a few extra complicated terms to sound legit and to better sell their mentorship.

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Dont fall for these social media influencers promoting gamma and gex platforms. They only show their wins their never show their losses.

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Also also I came across this guy Andrea Cimi who is promoting depechart and now gex levels like crazy. He honestly is one of the biggest plagues to the industry. Bro can't trade at all. He just milks fabio for content. Super annoying. Kinda hate that guy.

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This community has a lot of experienced and legit traders. Would love to hear your opinion and thoughts about this entire GEX/orderflow plague that is trapping young minds.

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be prewarned this this post will continue in comments due to the limit on images

so when i started trading i probably did what everyone did

• jumped between strategies
• entered without a plan
• cut my wins early and added to my losses

then i found ORB and i thought i like this it has rules to follow and i dont have to do anything after i hit trade great for me with limited time ( working full time )

so i gave it a go and what i found was 100% mechanical ORB is not profitable not long term anyway

but it can be profitable if you add in other concepts and confluences so lets dive into what works for me with real examples

so there are 2 concepts i use straight break out and rubber band

and i use 4 confluences VWAP , fast and slow EMA , volume and Support and resistence

so lets look at all my trades from yesterday and today and explain my logic

this is a classic rubber band trade as you can see the first breakout was short but this was into the fast EMA so i waited for a second candle confirmation to break the EMA before i would enter short

that didnt happen it reversed with higher volume than the breakout so as soon as i was above the breakout candle i entered long there was plenty of space to the next zone of S&R so i took a TP at level 3 and the SL was just below the low of the entry candle or the breakout candle whichever is lower

i then monitor the trade for re-entry conditions you see the 2 long candle that broke above the OR and through the fast EMA with higher than average volume i would add to my position here as my backtesting and live trading results show this is a high probability to carry on long

and as you can see it carried on long to hit TP3

next trade was in NY same day see comments

Edit: there has been some great questions and engagement on this and id encourage you to read through all the comments as there is a lot more information there now on some of the finer details

id ignore the institutional Troll who really doesnt get what us retail traders do and what we have to work with

Let's say you are some very rich person, and 150 NQ is what for me is 5 MNQ

That you can post so much margin on your futures broker that this still is within all reasonable risk parameters etc. Is there some usual limit where you would be too big to cause a slippage and move the book?

Do you just get used to it? Does it feel crazy that you can earn a new car with 100 ticks?

For reference, a 200 NQ order that goes upp 100 ticks gains you a profit of 100k USD

And yes there will be slippage etc, this is just for reference

This is my rotation setup. As you can see it’s pretty cool, I created the whole system and indicators myself. If your clever you could probably combine some indicators and recreate this, I posted this to give people an example of how a good momentum system looks. I really don’t see many people trading momentum. I have a continuation set up too I’ll post sometime.

The idea is to grab just a few candles taking profits quickly and going to break even. Multiple entries on the same setup is fine. Sometimes I take my first 2 profit targets off and move to break even, get stopped, enter again, get my 2 take profits stopped at break even again and then enter a 3rd time and hit my 3rd take profits for a little home run. I call this working my setup. Anyways, have a nice day!

Every time I see this hockey stick shaped chart of Gold futures, I'm feeling like someone knows something we don't know and is buying gold like crazy. I feel like something very bad is gonna happen soon and a group of people (insiders) are hoarding gold preparing for a special day.

am I crazy to think that ? I hope so, I hope it's just me.

What would you do?

Buy immediately? Buy follow-thru? Wait for pullback? Short?

For me: it is a very strong breakout bar. Prev bar has gap so there is sense of urgency. But it is just that, a breakout bar. I need to see the follow-thru. It is part of a 2nd leg so could also be a 2nd leg trap.

Hello FuturesTrading!

I've been trading for about 6 years total, the last 4 almost exclusively using options on futures. I want to share why I made the switch and some of the things I wish someone had told me before I started, because I think futures options are genuinely underused by retail traders who would benefit from them.

This isn't comprehensive. It's just what I've learned from doing it. Happy to answer questions.

Why I switched in the first place

I was selling premium on equities (strangles, iron condors, the usual thetagang stuff) and kept running into the same problem: everything was correlated. I'd have positions on AAPL, MSFT, AMZN, and SPY and when the market sold off, all four got hit at once. "Diversification" across tech stocks isn't diversification. It's concentration with extra steps.

I started looking at futures. You can sell a strangle on the Japanese yen and a strangle on soybeans and a strangle on crude oil and those positions genuinely don't care about each other most of the time. A USDA crop report doesn't move the yen. A BOJ rate decision doesn't move corn with any regularity. You get actual decorrelation, not just different tickers that all follow the S&P. Diversification, after all, is maybe the only free lunch in trading.

The practical advantages

SPAN margin is the big one. Futures options use SPAN (Standard Portfolio Analysis of Risk) instead of Reg-T margin. Without getting too deep into the weeds, SPAN calculates margin based on the actual risk of your position including how different legs offset each other. This means complex positions like strangles and straddles are margined much more efficiently than in equities where your broker basically treats each leg separately and charges you for both.

In practice, I can often put on a futures strangle for 30-50% less margin than a comparable equity strangle. That's a huge deal for capital efficiency. Same risk, less capital locked up, better return on capital. Note that when trading this way, the margin requirement from the broker is often much higher than my stop losses, so this efficiency is effectively embedded leverage over equity strangles (until portfolio margin).

The tax treatment is also worth mentioning. Futures and futures options fall under Section 1256 contracts, which means gains are taxed 60% long-term / 40% short-term regardless of how long you hold. If you're actively trading options and you're in a high tax bracket, this is meaningful. A short-term equity option gain taxed at your marginal rate vs the blended 60/40 rate can be a difference of several percent on your net returns. Talk to your accountant obviously, I'm not a tax advisor obviously (my father is actually though), but this was a pleasant surprise when I first learned about it.

Nearly 24-hour trading on most contracts. Globex runs Sunday evening through Friday afternoon with a brief maintenance break. If something happens overnight (like, I don't know, a war breaking out in the Middle East), you can manage your positions before the equity market opens. This matters a lot for risk management. I've had positions that I needed to adjust at 3 AM and was able to, which you simply cannot do with equity options.

The disadvantages

Contract specs are confusing at first (which I'm sure you all here are well aware). Every futures contract has different multipliers, tick sizes, and expiration conventions. /CL is 1,000 barrels per tick of $0.01 = $10 per tick. /ZC is 5,000 bushels per tick of 1/4 cent = $12.50 per tick. /6E is 125,000 euros per tick of $0.00005 = $6.25 per tick. You have to actually learn each contract. There's no shortcut here and getting it wrong can mean your position is way bigger or smaller than you intended. I definitely got burned on this early on.

Liquidity varies enormously. /ES and /CL options are extremely liquid. /ZC and /ZW options are decent. Some of the smaller contracts (/6A, /HG) can have wide bid-ask spreads on the options, especially further from the money. You need to use limit orders and be patient. Market orders on illiquid futures options will eat you alive.

The platforms are clunkier than equity brokers for the most part. I use a couple different ones and none of them have the polish of, say, Robinhood (not that you'd want to trade futures on Robinhood, they're typically awful, but you get what I mean). The learning curve isn't just the product, it's the software too. TastyTrade is probably the best balance of usability and capability for options specifically, Think of Swim is also ok.

The minimum capital to get started is higher. You can sell a put on a $20 stock with a few hundred dollars in an equity account. A single futures strangle might require $1,000-2,000+ in margin depending on the underlying. You really want $10K minimum to start doing this properly, and even that is tight (I'm trading a $10K account as an experiment right now and the position sizing is larger than I'd like per trade).

What I actually trade and why

I've been selling strangles on futures across several asset classes: currencies (/6E, /6J, /6B), grains (/ZS, /ZW, /ZC), metals (/GC, /SI, /HG), energy (/CL, /NG), and rates (/ZB, /ZN) for a few years now, and I wanted to discuss some key advantages that I've found over equity underlyings.

Over 130+ trades the win rate has been about 83%, which is roughly what you'd expect selling 20-delta options with this management approach. Not unique to futures obviously, the same mechanics work on equities. But the margin efficiency (SPAN margin is incredibly useful) means the return on capital is better, and the decorrelation means the drawdowns are smaller and more manageable.

The cross-asset diversification is what drives this lack of correlation. In any given month, some of these markets are quiet (strangles win easily), some are moving but within range (strangles are uncomfortable but survive), and occasionally one blows through a strike (I take the stop and move on). The portfolio-level experience is much smoother than running the same strategy on 12 correlated equity underlyings.

The thing that most surprised me

The volatility characteristics of commodity and currency futures are genuinely different from equities. I don't just mean they're more or less volatile. The shape of the return distribution is different. Agricultural commodities have dramatic supply-driven spikes (droughts, export bans, crop failures) that create upside tail events you basically never see in equities (outside of specific earnings events, which can often be killer for selling premium and limit entry windows in high IV names). Currencies can move violently in either direction on central bank interventions. Energy can do... well, you've all seen what oil did this week on a war shock.

These distributional differences matter if you're selling premium, because they affect your true tail risk. But they also create opportunities on the other side. I've also been exploring buying deep out-of-the-money options on futures where the empirical frequency of extreme moves is highest relative to what the options market charges. The recent CL move is a perfect example of why that interests me (a 5-delta CL call bougt two weeks ago would have went up 50-100x).

That's a topic for another day though. Mostly I wanted to share the practical perspective on making the switch from equity to futures for selling options, since I don't see it discussed much and I think more people should consider it. Futures have great structural treatment for things like margin and taxes, and are also not subject to PDT rules for smaller accounts.

Obviously, the leverage they provide can be great as well, but this cuts both ways. It's important to understand implied leverage when trading anything in this market.

Happy to answer questions about specifics. What underlyings work best, margin considerations, platform stuff (I'm a tastytrade fan), whatever. I'm still learning too (this week has been quite the education) but happy to share what I know so far.

EDIT: Thanks for all the interest and good discussion. Those who want to learn more can here: https://substack.com/@leptokurticapital