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Intro to Futures Index Trading Mentorship

Jun 20, 2024

Intro to Futures Index Trading Mentorship

Overview

  • Initial teaching for futures index trading
  • Introduction video recommended to set proper expectations
  • Focus on futures index trading, mainly paper trading on TradingView.com
  • Demonstration on ThinkOrSwim’s live data

Key Trading Markets

  • Main focus: NasDaq E-mini futures
  • Also important: E-mini S&P, E-mini Dow
  • Differences:
    • NasDaq: Faster, more aggressive
    • S&P: Steadier
    • Dow: Less frequent trading focus but favored by some students

Goals and Expectations

  • Focus on understanding price action
  • Learn specific trade setups in demo/paper trading
  • Not enticing to trade with live funds
  • Most teaching through TradingView's paper trading or hindsight data

Basic Concepts

  • Intraday price action: How price moves during the day
  • Focus on learning to anticipate price movements
  • Handles: One handle = four ticks (e.g. E-mini S&P: $50 per handle, NasDaq: $20 per handle)

Practical Setup and Analysis

  • Compare live trading vs educators on YouTube
  • Highlighting reversals, capturing significant moves
  • Example trade setups
  • Identification and execution of trades using charts from ThinkOrSwim and TradingView
    • Short-term and long-term analysis
    • Example session: NasDaq futures on a one-minute chart

Key to Finding Setups

  • Understanding liquidity (buy stops and sell stops)
  • Market structure breaks
  • Imbalances in the market
  • Algorithms and market behavior
  • Weekly and daily chart analysis
    • Weekly chart: Forecast the next week's movement
    • Daily chart: Identifying key swing highs/lows
    • Hourly and minute charts: Execution

Practical Example

  • Trade in NasDaq futures, March delivery contract via TradingView
  • Analysis of weekly chart for price movement expectation
  • Mapping daily highs and lows to hourly chart

Entry and Exit Strategies

  • Identify liquidity points above and below swing highs/lows
  • Understand market's draw to liquidity or imbalances
  • Execute based on structure breaks and fair value gaps
  • Examples: Recognizing, entering, and exiting trades

Homework and Practice

  • Study E-mini futures charts (S&P, NasDaq, Dow)
  • Look for breaks in market structure after key liquidity events
  • Identify imbalances and fair value gaps
  • Log observations and backtest using historical data
  • Analyze the number of handles each setup offers

Future Lessons

  • Building on this foundation in next episodes
  • Next lesson: How to log trades and further find setups
  • Additional insights for repeating setups weekly
  • Next upload: Tuesday at 10 AM New York local time

Hope you find the material useful as you practice and grow in your trading journey!

Summary

  • Understand the differences and similarities between NasDaq, S&P, and Dow futures.
  • Practice identifying and trading based on liquidity, imbalances, and market structure.
  • Engage in homework assignments for consistent skill development.

Tips

  • Subscribe to the YouTube channel and enable notifications for updates
  • Use additional resources like TradingView replay mode to study price movements

Full transcript