yes , i have noticed the opposite can be true....if there is some sort of big after hours news in the US , the aussie market will lead. LP
unfortunately the SPI makes its biggest moves in unison with the US markets overnight, however the night market has spreads of 3 to 6 points, so its just useless for trading. The opening 20 minutes often results in the high or low of the day. As the SPI can counter trend against the US market during the trading day, you get very jagged non-trending characteristics which make the SPI very difficult to swing trade. You just get chopped out too much. Fading gaps is an excellent technique for the SPI as the market is often close to its daily extreme on opening. As is buying or selling breakouts from initial range. For this reason it really is a daytraders contract. You can also get three levels of market depth which is a great advantage for short term trading. I use lquay. It's very fast and reliable but the commissions are just too high. I'm considering switching to IB for execution and keeping lquay for charts and depth and as a back-up broker in case IB goes down. Also lquay's order system is a bit too labour intensive. Having an interface like bracket trader with IB would make trading the SPI a lot easier. Six or seven points a day per contract is quite achievable. Runningbear
Yeah... with 2% of the world's stock market cap and Japan and Hong Kong in the same time zone, I'm sure it's the Australian market leading things... :eek:
Australia is definately not a leading indicator. Just look at the composition of the index - heavily weighted with natural resource stocks which tend to be counter-cyclical.
I dunno...it seems the ASX isnt going sideways everyday....the right side of the chart resembles the nasdaq in the same way the TSX (toronto) resembles the nasdaq (and its resource based). The worlds biggest economy has put a damper on most other economies. I wasnt saying "watch what the ASX does and trade the nasdaq accordingly", lol, maybe "lead" was too strong a word for y'all. I must've meant "first to react" in the sense that it opens 2 hours later and the SPI doesnt appear to trade 24hr/day. best of luck to all, LP
The SPI is virtually a 24 hour contract. It stops trading for about 2 hours after the night session (close of US market) and about 40 minutes after the day session. One arb method I have used a couple of times and bet the house on literally is as follows. When the US has a big sell off and closes down significantly, then the Aussie market falls the next day, but the US futures rally big in the aftermarket. Sometimes the Aussie market sells down, but it's like no one is watching the US futures or something. Anyway, this doesnt occur very often but when it does, I buy the SPI at the end of our trading day and hold the position into the opening of the US market. As long as the US futures stay up, I stay long. The US market rallies on open and I sell before the US markets fills the gap. As I said, this is very rare as the US markets do not rally dramatically outside of the day session very often. Runningbear
Running Bear, I am also seriously considering making the change to IB for execution.When the end of the working week arrives,I look in the trade diary and size up the situation....the brokerage shocks me. Square weeks could have been positive. I have to make 2 points to eek out a return. The things that keep me at lquay are the Web-Iress software and professional service. It concerns me when you hear about the cheaper brokerages only having a minor outage for a few minutes! You pay for what you get. As for keeping lquay for data,I agree. I have also thought about keeping lquay as a back up broker.If I was to do this it would effect Margin equity ratio,leading to a reduction of contracts I could trade. Go the whole hog with IB, back the leverage against a possible monthly 5 minute downtime, or hedge my bets with lquay and reduce leverage. Decisions,decisisions..... Cheers, T