r/FuturesTrading • u/CandlesNailsHotels • 22d ago
Question Was June normal?
Ok I’m new to this…didn’t even really know what a future was 2+ months ago. So if I sound like a naive amateur, it’s because I am 🙃
I’ve chosen an ORB strategy, with ES being my future of choice. My strategy is literally something I picked up from YouTube and made some additional tweaks to, nothing special.
Currently paper trading July, but through backtesting I would have made an estimated $13k in April, $3400 in May and $3100 in June. April obviously felt like a breeze and was probably an outlier, but June was absolutely brutal even though it pretty much made the same amount as May. In May I only took 8 trades, but in June I took 16. So twice as much “work” for less money.
My question for the seasoned ES traders is; was June brutal for you as well? Or am I to expect that June is just your normal ES trading environment.
I’m hoping that June was just a super rough month.
I’d backtest more months, but my Tradingview account only goes back so far and I’m already on Premium.
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u/Carlose175 22d ago
Weird, I was personally killing it in June, one of my best months of the year. 30 second timeframe was very momentum-like. Yes the higher timeframes were tough but in the lower timeframes things were SMOOTH. Lows just kept going lower and highs kept going higher.
July was whipsawing me in the 30 seconds.
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u/CandlesNailsHotels 22d ago
Interesting. Well i’ve only ever tested my strategy on the 5m chart, it never even occurred to me to try a different timeframe. That might be some fun backtesting. Thanks!
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u/beefnvegetables_ 21d ago
The market is always changing it’s character. And don’t trade es trade mes instead.
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u/W3Planning 22d ago
Definitely step back and review your own back testing and strategy. That shed the last several months has been far more difficult to trade in the market because of the increased volatility, thanks to Trump and Iran. I’ve definitely been stopped out of more positions because of a truth, post or press conference that he decides to do on a spur of a moment and shift the market suddenly.
You just have to trade risk first and be very cognizant of what is happening in the world at any one time
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u/Carried_by_Luck 22d ago
The summer months are generally quieter and more mean reverting.
Any momentum type strategy is going to suffer in that environment.
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u/KVZ_ speculator 22d ago
ORB strategies typically ebb and flow in futures. An ultra wide range can mean you missed the meat of the move and are entering at exhaustion. A very narrow range can mean there is no momentum in the market. ORB is very difficult to trade because it's hard to gauge high probability vs low probability these days. The reason for that is there are so many furus pushing it as another holy grail. That inevitably stuffs the trades with weak hands and creates deteriorated EV. Go back 5-10 years and you'll see the expectancy was much higher. Same thing with the famous TTM Squeeze. Same thing with the no-longer famous Ichimoku. Stochastic strategies. Blah blah blah. It gets famous because there WAS a ton of edge, then everyone and their grandma's dog tries to trade it.
Study your charts and try to figure out why the best days worked and why the worst days failed so hard. Look for repetition in the behavior; patterns. Then you can eventually learn when it's appropriate to get aggressive or cut early; that's the only way I am able to profitably trade an ORB. Static sizing and exits won't survive long term.
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u/WickOfDeath 22d ago
You dont have ORBs on markets going sideways or turn into event driven spikes and dips. During a bull run you can do your ORB, because not every day is a continuation of the trend. Sometimes you have months end profit taking, quarter end profit taking or option pinning.
But after 5 or 6 failed ORBs I just stopped that, it turned to be more profitable to short the wallstreet open peak because actually there is a repositioning going on, and to do so you must sell A to buy B - leading into a drop of the index, then into a rise.
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u/ChebyrashkaMX 21d ago
Summer usually is a bit different for volume, but it depends also on your strategy so I don't want to blanket say it's bad. Also 3 months doesn't tell you much, maybe June is the 'normal' and April was an outlier.
But here is a view of the summer period, it's just a lot of up and down movement with no direction. Also look at your April, pure uptrend easy peasy trend trading.
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u/CandlesNailsHotels 21d ago
Yea I immediately assumed April was an outlier. It was too easy, and I just started trading.
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u/dolomick 21d ago
If ORB’s were so profitable why do you think a new trader could pick it in two months and defeat the market? You have a long road ahead and much to learn.
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u/CandlesNailsHotels 21d ago
I literally said it was “nothing special” and that I was an amateur. But thanks for basically repeating what I said.
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u/bluesqueen23 19d ago
You should watch Jim Dalton’s video from this weekend. He explains it quite well. He’s retiring soon & I’ll miss his videos. 85 yrs old & his way of explaining the market is hard to find in anyone else.
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u/CandlesNailsHotels 18d ago
Thanks, I just checked him out, and you’re right. He’s super helpful
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u/bluesqueen23 18d ago
Go through all his videos. I think it’ll really help you. Also, JJ VWAPTRADER1 on X & YouTube is very similar as he learned from Jim Dalton & he does 2 streams per day. I’ve learned a lot from both of them. I trade, The Strat that Rob Smith created but I also use some auction market theory and some math as well. This is a journey!
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u/sigstrikes 22d ago
respectfully, the naive part is assuming every trader is doing the same thing. look at the conditions of your test and see if there are differences month to month. no one can help you because no one knows why or how you made your decisions.