What are you looking for in a typical trade? My impression is most days ED trades in a pretty narrow range. I've always looked at it as a great long term trend following market, but maybe I've been overlloking something.
ditto - id be interested in those answers too. also - order types - are u using limits? what r fills like with pro rata - given the average bid/offer size is 2000+ easy, what size do you feel is necessary minimum? cheers
I trade this way as well. Intraday. 5-30 contracts at a time, depending on my target and stop. My trades last 1-2 days, although I will leave something on longer if I have enough into it to comfortably leave a break even stop. One of the beauties of this product is that it is widely used by "price in-sensitive" institutions that can actually move the market your way quite a bit and quickly. For trend trades, I do use spreads, but maybe 4-6 times a year. A base opinion of the Fed is helpful but if your a technical trader, not necessary.
Many do, but much more useful for longer term positioning then day trading. Friends of mine use it to help pick entry and exit levels. I myself, am not that familiar. Ranges in Eurodollars can be very tight for 3-5 days, then explode one way or the other.
I can see having looked at it,that the longer term makes more sense. If you dont mind me asking what sort of moves do you usually look for in a trade?
For me, it depends on recent volatility, and the recent trend. If I get a signal, I'm going with the trend and there is high recent vol, then I look for 4-8 whole ticks (ED futures trade in 1/2 ticks). If I'm scalping counter trend (even with high vol), then usually 1/2 to 1 1/2 ticks.
I typically look for short term momentum moves...sometimes as small as one tick some as long as two and a half...I usually go with the momentum..ie: breakouts. but if we near larger weekly or monthly levels, sometimes just prior days lows or highs, then counter trend positions are profitable...finally, as I mentioned, after economic releases the volatility is beautiful...in terms of how or why I take positions, depends on a lot of things obviously, but mainly I use Market Profile and tend to follow moves in the treasury market...as for the size...because the moves are so small, and the volumes are increasing (75% of volume of Jun05 and Sep05 ED futures are now on screen!) my typical position is anywhere from 250 to 500 lots...feel free to ask me anything else or send me a personal message if you want more details...