I agree with tradersaavy's quote: If you are home from your job by 2:00 PM, you can change your sleeping schedule a bit and trade the European contracts. The Eurostoxx, Dax, Ftse and Bund are all much cheaper to trade as well. The European exchange fees are much lower than the US markets. Riskless
one -third of the world markets are open at any given point of time. For EST : 1.Tokyo -evening to late night 2.London - early morning - NY open 3.New York - Since we cannot trade New York, the next best option is Tokyo or London. Till now I find Tokyo to be better as London usually follows Tokyo in the morning and New York in the evening.
rgowka, riskless & tradersaavy thanks for your input. I checked out the Hong Kong market earlier today. They seem to have a fairly good liquidity in the HSI & MHI futures contracts. IB makes it easy to trade HK. Tokyo could also be worthwhile investigating. Is there a liquid futures market there? Recommended broker and other considerations for Tokyo? /J
Ewile, where do you get the charts for those futures? Qcharts doesn't offer that many of those charts. Lojze
Note on foreign futures: Australian SPI can be quite thin. The Hang Seng, last I checked, requires a hefty margin. (like $16k) but is completely electronic and liquid and trends well at times. The Nikkei trends well and has nice range. One thing I like about the European markets is there is a correlation between DAX, CAC, ESTX and the Bonds - BUND, BOBL. The ESTX and BUND/BOBL trade from 100k to 300k+ average daily volume.
I watch foreign markets with Interactive Brokers and Quotetracker...it's good enough to meet my needs.