I have designed a very profitable daytrading system for trading Crude, but don't know if I should use it to trade the big C.L. or the mini QM ? Any daytraders here that can recommend which ? Appreciate your imputs.
On which product did you develop your system? Are you sure that it will function equally well on both?
Definitely CL...this topic has been covered on numerous threads. CL has much tighter spreads by nature (trades in penny ticks instead of 2.5 cent ticks in QM) and volume has been increasing and is much higher since CL went on the screen last summer. The only reason to trade QM would be if 500 bbls. is your risk tolerance.
This thing has been discussed before. QM appears (sometimes) to have more volume on the bid/ask becaus the min tick is 0.025 so you may see (for example)BID 75 @ 62 vs ASK 70 @ 62.026 on QM against bid 10 @ 62.01 vs 13 ASK @62.02. Although it seems more volme on QM on the big picture the CL is trading nearly 2 times the volume of the QM and 4 times the dollar value because the CL contract equals to 2 QM contracts. Regarding the topic question i have to say that CL is the way to go because you have less slipagge ( and more ticks, so less chance you stop got hit) as well better cost. The bad thing is that some brokers (like MBT) doesn't allow to trade this kind of product and you have to finish on the QM that is settled for cash at the en end of the month,