Initial forays into day trading stock index futures reveal a starkly different decision environment. There is no time to dwell on technical conditions. Intraday volatility in the stock indices is far more exaggerated than the daily bar charts of other markets, partly due to the extreme leverage, partly due to the intense attention. And positioning techniques that prove reliable in the action of the long-term trends in other instruments tend to fail in the countertrend reactions of the highly leveraged S&P futures contract...