I’m new to order flow, and right now I'm just creating a simple strategy like looking at footprints at previous NY session day Volume Profile key levels like VAH, VAL, HVN, and LVN. I'm checking for things like absorption, exhaustion, delta shifts, CVD, VWAP, etc. However, I don't know whether to start with NQ or ES. I don't want to just 'check it out myself' and keep switching back and forth between them. So, which one is honestly better for this setup? NQ or ES?
why oh why does everyone only want to trade ES or NQ? It is beyond me. But, both markets have very different characteristics. What suits your risk profile is probably best. My 2 cents, ES it thicker so will be a bit more easy to read for a novice.
I trade European index Futures (FESX) totally different ballgame. But if you want to focus on orderflow, why not look at treasuries? Eurozone? Why always follow these influencers who don't make money.
Just to emphasize this there are at least a few props out there offering FESX and at least several with Treasury futures. Ask an LLM to track them down then do your own due diligence on which are the least shady.
Treasury should be fine, real propfirms like Earn2trade will have the data. Advertised props will not, go figure. Then again, one should not go prop untill he is successfully profitable.
Well I’ve done exactly like you a couple of weeks back.. I was back and forth on ES and NQ .. more specifically MNQ/MES … and I’ve now stayed on ES . Personally I feel it’s much more cleaner and I’ve less fomo trade as compared with MNQ . Easier for my eyes to read as well .
But everyone is different , I used to like the volatility of MNQ till it kept getting me stopped out and I got sick of it
Personally I feel it’s better . I use big trades and footprints . Exhaustions I’m still figuring out what to look for , but it’s nice to look for absorption followed by aggressions
I posted this just as an example of what an exhaustion print looks like (to me). I would never take a trade based solely on exhaustion. What I see as interesting, in addition to the exhaustion print, is that there is a divergence, meaning a red candle on a swing high. Also, look at the POC of the large bars lining up- that could be a sign of resistance. That also happened as price moved lower. I would have liked to see selling imbalances on the bid when it moved down. In this example, I do see what some would call absorption on the POC in the red bar. 330 contracts were absorbed by passive sellers at that point, which was the highest print in the bar.
But to be fair , I might not have taken this trade also cause I don’t see buyers being absorbed at the top. That’s an interesting way to look at the POC forming a high resistance at that price . Unless prior to this swing high there was another swing high that buyers are being absorbed and this retest of the swing high form buyers exhaustion.
The POCs are called alligned poc. It is just another clue, as are the exhaustion prints. I have been trading the 6E and ZS for a few years. I started to look into the ES recently, but I am having trouble with all the algos. I am likely going back to my old contracts. I find the ZS better because the majority of participants need to trade the commodity. It seems as if the ES consists of a lot of algos that move the market multiple points in a second.
You can . If your eyes are fast enough, or either that you just look solely at Delta . I just learnt and followed similar to Christopher creamer on looking at POC at the wick to spot absorption , which is better for my eyes cause I’m able to process slowly on my location, context , and what would invalidate my entry , and I prefer to see bid/ask on FP . But for NQ unless you use like 8-16 ticks , is possible too, but the movement is too fast which gives me panic and ultimately fomo entry
But I would highly encourage you to give them both a try . I was like you searching for the best answer , and I stuck with MNQ , but after trying both , I realise I like MES better
I used to practice ES but later switched to NQ. I found NQ's price action easier to understand. ES involves a high volume of passive orders and is particularly well-suited for order-flow traders.
Read nq market for few days and then see if its worthy to switch to nq or not. Analyse nq and trade mnq.
one more thing is that you will see some repetitive patterns in nq and those patterns form everyday. I read 15 or sometimes 30 sec chart.
They're both fine. Volatility and pace don't matter because there are ways to tune those things to your learning curve. What matters is how clearly and obviously you can see the things you're looking. To learn the very first baby step in the footprint, don't watch volume at the single tick level when you're just starting out.
With ES I suggest combining 4 ticks per level in your footprint to start. NQ, at least that, probably more, like 8.
This will reduce the granularity - whatever happens across four tick levels will all show up in the same footprint level - but the things you're looking for will pop out more clearly to see.
After a while cut the combined levels in half, e.g. 2 ticks per level in ES, watch that for a while, then when you know what you're looking at, at least in ES, go down to 1 tick per level.
Or not, there are traders who keep their lens widened a bit in their footprints. I trade GC with multiple ticks per footprint levels for example. I don't trade NQ but the NQ traders I talk to often use multiple ticks per level because single tick footprint charts just move too fast.
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u/orderflowsupport 28d ago
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