Why ES is not a slow NQ, and the two sessions that run through the course

Many traders arrive on ES from NQ and bring their reflexes with them. Three things change, and they explain why this course is not simply an NQ course played at a slower pace. The order book, the behavior of price and the source of the levels are not the same.

The three differences

1. The book is thick. Where NQ shows a few dozen contracts per level, ES shows forty to eighty, and several hundred on a wall. A 1-minute candle during the session trades 3,000 to 8,000 contracts. Consequence: absorption is frequent, breakouts require size, and a 200-lot order is an event, not a detail. The templates supplied for ES set Big Trades at 150 contracts on 1 minute and 170 on 5 minutes, and leave the footprint at the tick, with no grouping.