After searching and searching with no answer, I turn to ET... What prices, in terms of time, do you use to calculate the pivot points for futures that trade 24-hr.? Is it the price of the NYSE close? Tx
You've turned to the right place, my man... Lots of knowledgeable folks here! Probably, if you're going to trade pivots, just use the Open, High, Low, and Close of the normal trading day. For example, take the ES emini. Yes, it trades 24 hours, but I think you'll find that the majority of pivot traders calculate the 8:30 open, high, low and close (3:15) of the day for their next days pivots. Hope this helps and good luck!
Hi, I use data which are provided by barcharts. http://www2.barchart.com/mktcom.asp they provide end of the day data and these I use next day to calculate pivot points.
If you're going to use the open in your pivot calculation (which I don't), I'd use the open at 3:45 ET from the day before. I use the simple hi + lo + close / 3 for my pivot.
We use the 9:30-4:15 trading hours because those are cash market hours. S&P and Nasdaq pivots e-mailed daily for free. jbarry@proedgeonline.com
See...what'd I tell you. Also, here's a handy little download if you're lazy like me. www.simple-as-123.net/downloads.html Just left click on "Bruce M's most excellent calculator"
I just found them a week ago. Btw. breakout, do you trade futures or stocks ? What about today trading. I am sitting on my hands because there is no volume and volatility for my QQQ daytrading.
For old style pivots, just get the open, high, low, and settlement price from the CME. However, after comparing the older pivots to other S/R methods for quite a while, the most interesting thing I find is that while pivots might still be usable enough for some folks to get by, just when you really need them they seem to end up being grossly wrong. It seems that whenever pivots have deviated quite a bit from other projections, it's been the pivots that were wrong. Good luck.