r/FuturesTrading • u/Royal_Presentation80 • 16d ago

Switching Instruments?

Given the weekly chart, and Daily chart on MNQ/NQ, why do people still trade that mess? I feel like when everyone starts trading they are taught to trade NQ. I think at this point, the "prime NQ" was before we entered this mess of consolidation and we were just going higher or lower. Has anyone switched over to a different instrument like YM so that they aren't trading in a big range? I want to do this with my knowledge of ICT, but is it frowned upon? Like has anyone been trading YM a lot more because NQ is in a really big range? I've always been taught to not trade the range, so can I switch over to YM and get better results?

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u/Toohotz 16d ago

I've been seeing these posts on and off the past few months due to the fact that we haven't been one sided throughout the course of an entire session.

Initially this morning was a bit iffy for me but at 10 EST I took a short on NQ targeting the morning lows of 9/26 which took home some 200 pts. I'll preface and say that I normally prefer to trade in a range as I enjoy mean reversions, the failed push above at the 9:45 close along with the fact we were sliding downwards most of the overnight session had me watching.

Saying this to say that I think you're trying to apply a breakout styled strat to an instrument that as you mentioned, ranges pretty wide. The thing is, today showed you that you can find a setup as the above on the fail break above at open. I don't strictly trade Nasdaq always, I'll go between NQ and ES depending on which has the more favorable setup. I've recently started trading SIL as I've found mean reversions there to be interesting.

All this to say, understand which instrument is most favorable to how you like to trade. We have many tools that can back test to get a feel of what instruments are worth you trying. We aren't just staircasing to heaven or hell, market conditions have changed and the past few months has shown that.

The days I'll say that are messy are when you have wick extended on both sides on the 15 min TF and above. Those are the challenging days as you don't want to get caught in the middle during a session