KING - NQ, ES, YM or still something else?

The short answer is that it does not matter that much.

That's because KING is a very versatile e-mini trading methodology. One could drop the "e-mini" part from the last sentence and it would still be true, I believe. While KING was originally designed for YM, the Dow Jones e-mini futures market, it should work well for many other markets because its ideas are universal. I never doubted it and there is some evidence that lends credence to this claim. It comes from more than one source.

That ES, the S&P 500 e-mini futures market, can easily be traded with KING should not come as a big surprise for ES moves very much like YM and so you should be able to trade it rather easily once you have mastered trading YM. That was shown to be the case by Katherine, the first unofficial KING student and you can see her results trading ES on this page. She was not the only person to be doing well trading this market. Dick, a brave Dutch trader and one of the original cohort of KING traders, moved from YM to ES at some point. I know it from one of his e-mails. He is not the only KING trader to trade this market.

I traded ES on several occasions in the past using the KING methodology (as you can see from the daily e-mini trading reports from the years past) and I have just revisited this market (see a screenshot below that comes from October, 17th, 2013. I prefer YM, but for some ES could be as good if not better a market as YM.

emini trading results #530

I used to trade NQ a bit 8-10 years ago, but never using the KING methodology, until very recently (see the next screenshot from October, 16th, 2013). NQ has the same tick value as YM ($5), though originally it was $10, but it is less dynamic than YM and that's the main reason I prefer YM over NQ. You really get more for your buck with YM. NQ does not move the same way as YM or ES, but you can still trade it. On some days, all three markets move very much in unison, which makes them even easier to trade.

emini trading results #529

But YM, ES, NQ are still not the only markets you can trade with the KING methodology. PRH, who was kind enough to offer his review of KING a few years back, used this methodology to trade foreign (non-US) futures markets as you can read in this e-mail of his. That's one more evidence that KING's ideas are truly universal and versatile. I believe that you could also day trade stocks or Forex with it. It's mostly a matter of practice.

Like PRH, I too prefer YM. Its tick size is prefect for me and I like how it moves. It's pretty dynamic, unlike NQ, so it's not that hard to get 5-10 ticks out of it on most trades. And if you cannot do this, exiting with a 1-2 profit is more than good enough to cover your commissions. ES seems the second best, but it can be handled quite well too and its bigger tick size could be appealing to some because only a 1-tick advance in your favor puts you in the profit category, but the same is true for YM if your broker charges less than $5 in total commissions per completed trade, except that you get the bigger mileage per tick out of ES.

Posted on October 20th, 2013.