hope this may be instructive for would-be 'news' traders attached chart illustrates the difference between the 6E and eurusd during the 8:30 est minute following Friday's non farm payroll release, 6E left, eurusd right the 6E chart is a bit deceptive since it's now frozen, it's a 10 tick chart and there's approximately 140, 10 tick price bars between the white vertical lines that designate the start to end of the 8:30 minute, each price bar formed at 0.4285 sec per bar - 60 secs / 140 = 0.4285 sec per bar info: - tick chart from NinjaTrader, minute chart is MetaTrader 4 - 6E is the Globex Euro FX futures contract, daily av vol about 180,000 see: http://www2.barchart.com/mktcom.asp EURO FX (E6U9) click on C very thin vol during evening hours, best trading range often begin 2am est, highest vol for the day often noon est - end of european business day market closed 5pm - 6pm est otherwise forex hours - minimum account margin $2 - 5,000, day trade margin $500, o-n $3500 ? roundturn commission - in and out - is about $4.50 per contract - a minimum P4 chip, 1GB ram and XP Pro is required to run NinjaTrader high speed internet, the Zen-Fire data feed doesn't filter ticks - reduce the quantity, a modern computer is recommended with 3 or 4GB of ram there are of course several other charting/order entry programs available that provide tick charts - the Zen-Fire feed doesn't provide historical Daily data but the MT4 eurusd data is close enough imo to the 6E except when the 6E first changes to the new contract month - Sep, Dec, Mch, Jun historical price data can loaded into NT - a few MT4 indicators have been converted to NT and seem to convert well, not sure if Experts have been converted, see: http://www.ninjatrader-support2.com/vb/index.php NinjaScript File Sharing - Indicators, Strategies - NT demos are available, 30 day limit, email address based: http://www.ampfutures.com/ http://www.mirusfutures.com/index.htm and etc http://www.ninjatrader.com/webnew/index.htm
Do the EURUSD and 6E contract move the same pretty much? Why would one choose to trade one instrument over the other?
yes, they do, and leverage and commissions are considerations . . . big difference between 1 6E contract and 1 mini lot, for example
I need good liquidity so mini lot is not an option. Would like minimal slippage too. What are the spreads like when trading FX over the future?
an fx 'no dealing desk' broker: a bank/s accepts - declines your order, however the price you see on your fx dealer's chart or the quote doesn't have relevance to what the bank/s will buy/sell at, fx brokers 'market' orders are a price range spread - not the buy/sell spread - but + 1, 2, 3, ??? pips of the quoted price, or 'guaranteed fill' a price at who knows what , + 1, 2, 3, ??? pips of the quoted price - 'slippage' fluctuating spreads widen considerably with fx brokers, while many recommend Oanda's low spread - eurusd 0.9 pips, as can be seen on their Spreads page the eurusd regularly widens to 10 pips as do the other majors and the usdcad shows an instance of reaching a spread of 30 pips: http://fxtrade.oanda.com/forex_trading/why_trade_with_oanda/spreads/recent_oanda_spreads.shtml and some fx brokers are not above temporarily stopping the feed/order entry in order to control their risk - to hell with the spread if the margin to trade 1 fx eurusd lot is $1,000, that same margin amount will allow 2 6E contracts to be traded make 1 pip in an fx trade, pay the spread x 10 â a loss make 1 pip in a 6E trade, pay $4.40 commission â the profit is $8.10 one of the points of the chart is the trading volume, which at 10 per bar would equal 140 x 10 = 1,400 , possible total +/- 2,500 for the minute, i doubt you could find any fx broker showing a chart volume for that 8:30 minute anywhere near the quantity of the 6E volume 6E fills and slippage is clearly illustrated at the indicated 8:30:09 bar, where the previous bar drops 12 pips in less than half a second and the bar after the :09 bar jumps 14 pips, similarly throughout the minute. in the time it takes for one's eyes to travel from the price bar to locate the mouse cursor on the correct button to click to enter the order, the price may have jumped a couple or several pips, whereas at other times the price will seem frozen and unmoving for minutes and one gets 'that price' the one great advantage of fx trading is overnight margin, it doesn't change, it's the same amount whether you're day trading or holding a position for days buy and hold fx, day trade the 6E