Emini futures, known simply as ‘eminis’, include contracts on the most popular long-term financial futures, representing the ability to trade ‘on the swoosh’, as coined by financial writer Jack Schwager, on the behest of major indices such as S P 500, NASDAQ-100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average, with a small fraction of the financial outlay offered by full-size contracts. The days of E-minis began in 1997 when the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) introduced the world’s first E-mini futures contract, namely the E-mini S P 500 that was intended to meet the needs of small retail investors and small funds’ interest in trading broad market movements without having to put up collateral required for official financial futures or full-size contracts.
This is why the CME Traquata’s emini (exchange mini) futures trading volume surged nearly 63,000 contracts per day to more than 873,000 in March 2012, up from less than 18,000 in March 2004. It is why at the end of June 2012, 29.6 million trades took place on the floor of the CME group, compared with 11.4 million in 2004, presumably less than 1 million in 1984, and less than 100,000 in the final week of October 1973. It is also why trading hours (except when the major international exchanges are closed at the same time) are almost 24 hours, seven days a week. Emini futures contracts appeal to a wide range of people worldwide. They allow everyone – from high rollers to small players to newbies to buy and sell any time, actively wagering on future commodity, currency and index price movements, or provide portfolio protection against any adverse movements in the same direction. Trades take place in microseconds, which is vital for profitably exploiting short-term market aberrations. These contracts are also standardised so that anyone can easily learn how many points or ticks represent $1,000 per contract, or how much margin is required – unlike the complexities associated with options trading and even stocks.
In addition to trading emini futures on individual stocks, traders can also start to bet on the direction of entire indices moving forward. Some traders will willingly trade eminis with their eye on the macro view, using options for speculation or hedging their portfolios. To do this successfully, traders have to have more of an understanding with broader economic and market direction. If used properly, these products offer even more opportunity for making money, with even more risk of losing money. Risk management is as important as ever.
If you’re interested in Emini futures, it helps to know the basics. After all, for every trader profiting from these instruments, there are many more standing on the sidelines. Emini futures contracts represent a specific financial instrument. They track the movement of a particular stock market index, such as the US S P 500. Emini futures are traded by electronic means, in contrast to older forms of futures. And Emini contracts are generally smaller in size. These and other features make Emini futures more affordable for average investors and traders.
This makes them ideal for the small investor who wants to gain exposure to the key market indices without having to trade ever larger sums of money. The essence of Emini futures trading is that you are trading a future value of the underlying index to which the Emini is linked. Traders tend to trade off the fact that they believe either the market will move up or move down, buying (going long) if they anticipate an increase in the value of the index, or selling (going short) if they anticipate the price will fall.
The contracts have heel-and-toe dates, and traders must either exit their positions before or upon these dates, or they will be forced out of their positions with cash settlement. Eminis allow small amounts of capital to be used to control vast amounts of contract value, meaning that risk as well as reward in the market is magnified. To be a successful trader, it is not enough to know how these contracts work. You must also understand the leverage being used to trade them, and what this implies for your possible gains and losses.
Finally, liquidity is another positive for Emini futures. There are large amounts of volume traded and the price of the futures contracts moves higher or lower every few minutes. This means it’s easy to move in and out of positions at almost any time during the trading day.
If you want an Emini future, someone else wants to sell one. Eminis blend the best of a liquid, open, and highly transparent market into a great risk-management package for traders. High liquidity is just one of the major benefits of participating in Emini futures trading. It means tight bid-ask spreads, which minimises transaction costs. In turn, tight bid-ask spreads make buying or selling Eminis simple, closing out positions almost cost-free. Moreover, much of that liquidity comes in large volumes, allowing a trader to enter or exit the market as they please, if they so choose.
Further, the margin required to trade Emini futures is considerably lower than that for standard futures contracts and, as a result, such contracts make these instruments available to a broader group of investors, who can magnify their leverage while, crucially, not proportionally increasing their risk exposure. It is this dynamic that attracts those looking to diversify or hedge their investment portfolios without requiring considerable capital reserves.
Moreover, the cost of trading is lower with day trading Emini futures, which trades in electronic form in real time thanks to the better transparency and execution available from such exchanges. There are very sophisticated feeds and trading tools available on these exchanges offering day traders valuable information to improve their trading and the flexibility to decide and act quickly.
Ultimately, Emini futures trading packs together the greatest synergy of liquidity, access, leverage, and technological advancements in trading infrastructure – a marriage tailored to meet the requirements of a vast spectrum of speculators and hedgers, while also magnifying the efficacy and attractiveness of financial markets as a whole.
How does one get started with the process of Emini futures trading? It requires a systematic approach to understanding the market, learning which tools to use, and formulating a trading plan. First you need to fully understand what Emini futures are – they’re electronic-traded futures contracts, representing part of a standard futures contract based on an underlying index such as the S P 500, and traded with lower capital requirements than traditional futures. This has made them accessible to the individual trader.
The first task, therefore, is to teach yourself basic information about what it means to trade futures and exit a position (ie, liquidate, or unwind), and what particular features of Emini markets distinguish them from others. You can learn at least part of what you’ll need to know from an online course, a book, or market-information providers you trust to render credible financial news, such as The Wall Street Journal or The Economist. Among the information you’ll want to understand is how leverage comes into play and why margins (deposits) are so important in futures trading, and why liquidity – how easily an asset can be converted into cash – is vital.
Next comes choosing a reputable broker that offers a competitive commission rate and a rich trading platform. Those need to have fast data feeds, charting and execution methods that process your orders quickly, which are particularly instantaneous in an Emini-trading environment that runs on nanoseconds.
You can certainly make the leap to live trading without doing any practice, but you’ll be very glad if you practise by simulation (or paper trading) on a test account before you start trading with real money. You can also use this ‘fake money’ mode as a kind of practice drive to get the feel for Emini futures trading. The last step is to develop a rules-based trading strategy with a pre-determined mix of entry rules, exit rules and risk-management rules. This strategy will describe exactly how you plan to behave in the market. For a great many reasons, including the need to minimise nervous tension, discipline yourself to a system. Emini futures trading isn’t a spectator sport where anybody can win by sheer luck. It’s a competitive theatre of battle, and you’ll do best if you’ve been through training and have fully armed yourself with good trading skills.
Simultaneously, traders attempt to get an inside track on the daily e-mini futures trading world. To do this, they need more combat tools than those used by those who read newspapers for fun. Of course, a good futures trading platform is a primary tool for trading e-mini futures. A good platform would either come from the broker or a separate company which specialises in futures trading platforms. It provides real-time market data, allows advanced charting and has fast execution speed.
In addition to providing execution services, they also offer charting tools that let traders perform technical analysis and back-test strategies against historic data and then execute those trades in a risk-free manner to hone their tactics.
Another essential item: a solid source of market news. Because e-mini futures respond to economic indicators, geopolitical events, and shifts in monetary policy, it is important to be on top of the news and react quickly.
It also delivers risk management software, enabling traders to set stop-loss orders and track positions, in real time, as the market moves. Finally, there is the continuous learning; day traders have access to educational material: webinars led by seasoned traders, strategy development guides, and much more. Technology can only go so far, however. The appropriate psychology of a trader who wants to secure wealth is essential. Achieving that level of psychological discipline takes time and effort.
Combined together, the duo of tools and their respective platforms form the basis of a profitable e-mini trading business, allowing traders to monitor trends, make swift trades, and manage risks.
The process behind creating an effective strategy for Emini trading is more about finding the sweet spot of mastering market dynamics, proper risk/reward management and self-discipline. Eminis are also a natural gateway to leverage in the world of futures, giving us a taste for bull or bear markets by diving into the liquid pool of financial transactions. But how can we derive a winning strategy to go from hand-holding beginner to confident pro, near ‘Zen-like’ status to start reaping rewards? It’s about building an everyday mindset that is based on the right data and the right approach so that you can use this data to your advantage, increase your potential profits and possibly passively generate wealth. The first step is to understand how the market behaves. Here, studying historical market data is priority number one. Start from learning about elegant price patterns, volume swings and economic indicators that in the past demonstrate correlations with market directions.
This basic grounding helps start to build predictive models using technical analysis or even bringing in elements of fundamental to capture overall market sentiment. The second core principle is risk management. This would require pre-determined stop-loss orders and a clear risk-reward ratio for any trade. Traders would need to set limits for how much they can lose daily or on any given week in order to protect their capital over the long haul.
Additionally, psychological resilience is needed to keep risks under control because any losses not dealt with properly can reduce confidence and add to complaints that today’s markets are different. Emotional discipline keeps decision-making consistent and stops one from trying something different, ‘just this once’. This might be fun or emotionally rewarding, but it’s also the recipe for disaster. It’s all for nothing if there’s an element of short-termism to one’s trading strategy. It takes time to cultivate a discipline; far too many investors don’t have the patience. And so, one involves setting up a long-term trading strategy and sticking with it, adapting it from time to time, learning improved ways of realising ambitious goals and avoiding investing risks. That might sound like a tall order for a single strategy, but it’s not really such a grand ambition. After all, nothing happens quickly in markets, and the wealth one builds up gradually will last a lot longer.
It is important to find out what has changed and to change your tactics if you want to remain profitable.I’d have to trade the Emini every day for years on end to generate revenues – and losses – that suggest I had repeatedly excelled. Trading Emini futures involves risk management. Every trade has to be placed within a framework that limits the risk for each trade and will lead to greater profit if the trade goes as anticipated. Given the high leverage afforded by futures (often up to a 10:1 ratio), even a modest move in the market can result in a significant impact to the trader’s account. Risk management is essential, not optional. The very first thing risk management requires is deciding how much capital you’re prepared to risk on any given trade.
Typically, this will be a percentage of the balance of your account that you will lose on a single trade, with many experienced traders risking no more than 1 or 2 per cent of their account balance.
A second cornerstone of Emini futures risk management is the very often-used stop-loss order, designed to automatically exit a position at a predetermined price level if the market moves against the trader. Stop-loss levels should be used: 1) only after a thorough analysis of the underlying market and 2) never at a level determined by the trader’s emotions.
Furthermore, diversification can help to reduce risk. The Emini futures, for example, invest in a broad market index but individual trading can also help to manage risk by spreading investments across asset classes or sectors where appropriate.
However, such informational advantage can be offset by a good relationship with a bank or broker who can monitor market trends. Lastly, continuing education is critical. Market volatility allows us to assess risk. We can track and measure economic indicators, such as GDP, inflation rates, employment and unemployment figures. A good market monitor or educator equipped with data and a keen analyst’s eye enables traders to change strategies at the last minute and protect their trades from sudden market swings.
In short, good Emini futures trading revolves around risk-management discipline that focuses on capital preservation and decision-making.
Understanding market trends is a key component of successful Emini trading – it gives you an understanding of which way the wind is blowing. Needless to say, the Emini is a market, which means that sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down. The Emini futures market is also one of the most liquid and cost Friendly products in the world, and its short-term nature very much relates to the movement of the broader financial indices, making it an appealing product for both the novice and experienced trader alike.
The first lesson is to know what moves markets – we’re talking about economic indicators, geopolitical events and even monetary policy shifts that can influence buyer and seller behaviour, and trading volumes. Traders must learn how to read these signals, and forecast the price implications for a market in the future.
Secondly, technical analysis is also employed in recognising potential trading opportunities in the Emini markets. By analysing patterns in past data on price and volume using charts and other tools, the idea is that traders can predict the direction a market might take. A selection of technical tools are applied to these charts, like moving averages and support and resistance levels, as well as momentum indicators, which paint a picture to the trader about likely entry and exit times.
Furthermore, when practitioners combine fundamental with technical analysis, they can get a better feel for what is going in the market. Traders can evaluate the vitality of economic fundamentals, in addition to their technical setups, and develop more robust trading strategies.
Finally, success in Emini trading relies on continually learning and adapting, as you never quite know which tool will be needed as a landscape shifts, sometimes subtly and sometimes unexpectedly, in front of you. Trading the Emini will deepen your understanding of the forces that move a market, and it will also teach you how to use economic insights to better see and exploit the ever-evolving technical picture.
There are many reasons why new and, even, experienced Emini futures traders get themselves into such trouble, but one of the most common problems is lack of a trading plan. You cannot keep your head above water if you don’t know where you are going. Trading without a plan, without clearly stated goals, perimeters and risk standards, is like navigating the sea without a compass, which leads to emotionally impulsive trading, without any sound basis of analysis that can cause severe losses.
A fatal mistake is to stop learning. The financial markets evolve, and Emini futures are especially reactive to changes in economic data and to geopolitical events, plus mood. Failing to be alert to them, or to stop learning about what is happening in the markets and the economy, can make knowledge acquired over a lifetime of trading suddenly obsolete and impossible to apply.
The other is overleveraging. Because futures offer greater leverage than stocks, traders tempted by the possibility of enhancing profits when the market moves in their favour can overlook the fact that losses magnify in exactly the same way. When losses increase in proportion to profits, a simple maths equation shows that six losing trades in a row can wipe out the profits of a single winning trade. Successful Emini traders are quick studies. The world is moving too fast to waste time on activities that benefit the trader. Technology and Emini trading tools now exist that make trading far easier and more productive than ever before. A system of well-chosen indicators to generate trade entries, managed properly, can be a tremendous time-saver. Advanced charting software, speed-of-light high-frequency exchange matching engines and algorithmic trading platforms all have a place in modern Emini trading, but the trader needs to utilise them.
In short, in order to avoid these mistakes, it takes a certain amount of discipline, it takes a certain amount of continual learning, it takes prudent risk-management strategies, and it takes exploitation of the technological advances where trading is concerned.
Mastering the basics of Emini futures trading is essential but won’t guarantee long-term success in this lightning-fast market. Ultimately, advancing your skills in Emini futures trading involves learning more complex strategies and how to recognize and exploit the subtleties dictating market movements. One of the first steps toward advanced Emini futures trading is developing a well-rounded trading plan, utilising both technical and fundamental analysis.
It means progressing from plain old chart patterns to using sophisticated technical analysis such as Fibonacci retracements, Bollinger Bands and Ichimoku Clouds. These help to better understand the implications and likelihood of market trends and reversals, enabling entry and exit to be incrementally more precise. More powerful still is the drive to constantly improve risk management. This goes beyond using a simple stop-loss order. Markets have inherent volatility, meaning that the price of a trade reverses regularly. If you are in a trade, are you risking an appropriate amount to the volatility of the market and your own risk tolerance?
Going beyond trading basics, advanced traders find ways to diversify and balance their portfolios across various types of futures contracts to reduce risk. Staying abreast of global economic news (and market weather reports) is a given. And advanced traders develop a sixth sense about how things such as interest rate changes, unemployment reports or geopolitical threats might affect Emini futures prices. And lastly, there are some who read books, take courses, watch webinars and even receive one-on-one mentoring from veteran traders, which gives them knowledge about how the markets work that most who play in the Eminis do not know. In other words, the hand behind the mind going through algorithmic formulas is doing only part of the work.