MES is larger than my "I don't care" size

The current market conditions are not normal.  I'd say its not a good time to go live.   I was finally doing well but now I am struggling as well. The bars are not normally 10 points tall, even on a quiet day like yesterday. 

I got a big enough account to trade several micros and last week I broke even on the week, this week I'm down 3% on the week so far. My confidence is totally shook. I win trades I lose trades. There's too much going on in the world right now things are crazy.  My account manager told me hundreds of customers a week are blowing accounts right now.

You could try M2K which is the Micro Russel 2000 - yesterdays entire range was $180 per contract compared to $350 on MES.

Or M6E which is the Micro version of EURUSD, but the bars sometimes look a bit sketchy.

You could also trade a 3 min chart of these. Looking at yesterday there was loads of nice stop entries on M2K 3 minute

If I were you I would keep practicing until things settle down.

Correction... now down 3.2% on the week, I just got stopped out a tick above a bull bar on the breakout of the Globex low only for it to then run away without me and hit my first target. 😫 

Hi Michiel,

As always with trading, you have choices that come with pros and cons. If you are concerned about too large of losses you can:

1.  Continue to sim trade while saving and growing your account from personal income. Boring, but practical.
2. Trade a smaller time frame. This is what I switched to with a small account, I went from trading 3 and 5 min charts to trading 2 and 1 min charts. DOWNSIDE is obvious time restraints on decision making and order entry. Less obvious is slippage is a bigger concern. For me, risk management was only part of the reason of the switch, as I have only 60-90 mins in the morning to trade. Smaller time frame allows me to hold to my swing trade rules more consistently. I would find I was too impatient on 5 min chart when there was TR action for the first 2 hours. Then I would try to scalp - but I'm not consistently good at scalping.
3. Trade the SPY - this is what Al usually suggests.
4. You can do Forex, but for me personally, the timing of Forex is harder. The ebbs and flows are less consistent since it does not have a traditional opening and closing to the day. Slippage is a big concern, and it usually makes sense to trade 15 min, 60 min, or 4 hr charts.

Happy trading!

Thanks for your replies and suggestions! 

@Kevin I've tried simtrading the M2K with a single contract for a bit yesterday after reading your reply, and I made $25. It was much easier psychologically. It was long after the open however, so the market was much more quiet than it would be during my regular hours.

@Paul Some good points! My problem is purely psychological. I'm a pretty risk averse person, when Al speaks about beginners fearing the death of their dream to become a trader, I feel like he's talking about me personally. I'm reading Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas at the moment, and he suggests trading the smallest size possible. Some traders even need to scale down to 1 stock, 1 future contract per trade, risking cents. That's me I think.

I have noticed the same in my behaviour, I'm also a pretty impatient guy and much more consistent in my entries and management on shorter timeframes. I trade the 1500 tick chart on MES usually.

I hadn't considered trading SPY. My plan for next week is to sim trade the M2K and SPY, see which solution I like best. It's probably going to be the M2K if I like trading it around the open, since I won't have to switch brokers and platforms that way. Thanks guys!

I am so glad I am not the only one struggling in the last few weeks.  I was absolutely crushing it on the sim every day in January/Feb and then literally the day the war started the scalping skills went out the window and I've been struggling on the sim since.   I guess its my mental state, paired with the abnormal markets full of FUD.  Don't be hard on yourselves.  Take a break (I'm realizing I need one and will be taking one).

If you started on ES or MES and want to, I would continue trading that instrument. I was probably in the same boat as you starting out, I wanted to gain experience but even the average risk per trade in the MES was too much for me to handle. I also did not have $25k to beat the PDT Rule, so... I opened up 5 separate accounts with a minimal amount of money in each. This allowed me 3 trades per day - the max amount of day trades you can make per week, in an account <$25k. I typically watched the ES chart and then placed my trades in SPXL/SPXS (3x Leveraged SPY).

I get it's a huge inconvenience, but it actually had a positive impact on my trading. 3 trades per day is not much, so I just tried to take the absolute best trades I could... Waiting for good context, higher time frame confluence, etc. Plus, if you are swing trading you should be looking for the best couple trades per day, so 3 trades should be enough. 

@ Michiel, I read your post and it resonates with me. I'm probably the most noob in this forum, with also a modest account, so for what it is worth. My guess is you're trading somewhere from Europe, where lucky for me you have the option to use CFDs. Use of leverage, no commission, and, dependent on the broker, these days tight spreads (my broker offers for .4 points on the US500, which for me is reasonable. The smallest unit in that case is 1 contract, which is 1/5 of a micro SP500). Despite the tiny account I have I made substantial losses, and also consider these crazy times proper field work. I also trade too much probably (about ten a day, going long and short). I'm still in the middle of discovering my style, interests, psychology, etc. My aim now is not to lose too much, lol! Very steep curve. In any case, the CFDs could be an alternative for you if you want to continue playing the game with real money. All best, happy trading!

Wow $300 a day on an MES is amazing. That's $3k in an ES

Update: I'm doing much better now. Over the past 3 weeks I've done a lot more experimenting. I've tried a lot of other approaches to deal with my nerves. From M2K to CFDs, to stocks, to crypto and funded future accounts. It started to make sense when I opened a funded future account (free trial). The strict rules of that funded account really limited my trading. I learned that I was scaling in too much.

Coincidentally, I was also at the point in the course that discusses scaling in and it all started to make sense from then on. After creating this post and some help from Brad, I now work with a system for scaling into my trades. At most 2 parts, never more than 2 parts and always based on price action. I went back to the MES and started trading live again. Right now, my daily goal is $50 a day on the MES. Some days that takes me 10 minutes to achieve, other days 2 hours. I'm earning a lot less,  but I'm also losing a lot less in losing trades. I'm a lot calmer. So I guess the problem wasn't the instrument, but scaling in.

I'm glad to leave sim trading behind, but at the same time I need to realize that I'm still learning a lot. I've finished the first half of the course. I will trade with this tiny account and tiny profits until I've at least doubled the account size. The next big hurdle for me is learning to take losses better.