Ive been having trouble with my trading platform, I get it fixed and it works one day and then it messes up the next day, I have tried a few other demo accounts and the demos are making faster connections then my real account I'm thinking of switching to another futures broker but today I demoed a fxcm account and it worked pretty good, I can open charts on any computer and I wanted to know if anybody has traded the ym or futures and gone to fx how do you find the charts, they look the same to me, looks like it would be about the same if your a technical trader what contracts trade like the ym I was looking at the usd/jpy and have messed around with it on a demo before but this platform thing is getting worse by the day I've heard people say that forex is the best for technical guys but the chharts seem to be the same as any other any info would help Thanks
You want to switch instuments because of technical problems with your trading-platform? I think thats not the best approach.. The USD/JPY is somewhat correlated to indices because of the carry-trade. But in general, i would say FX is different from indices. Indices got an upward-bias, FX doesnt, and as such one could say FX is more erratic. If one of both is "easier" to trade, depends too much on the trader IMO, so there is no general answer.
IMO a chart is a chart. What I look for in a market is liquidity, volatility, contract size/hours, etc. I love to trade the currencies but I would never trade them exclusively because you're limiting your opportunities. With futures you can trade currencies, bonds, commodities, stock indices, etc. and that puts you in a position to capitalize on whatever volatility occurs. I would first check your local connectivity, PC, etc. to make sure the problem isn't on your end. If it isn't then look for another broker who can provide quality service. With some places you could trade both Forex and futures too.
The long term upward bias on indices is only really significant for people investing rather than trading, as the recent 3 year bear market demonstrates. A big, significant difference between currencies is related to this however - in currencies there is no real "up" and "down", as each cross is another cross inverted. As a result one feature of indices is not the same in currencies - this is the difference in character between upmoves and downmoves. In a stock market index, downmoves tend to be sharp and strong, upmoves are commonly slow and weak, but last longer.
I'm runnng a demo of GFT and the charts are great, I am runnig a prophet.net chart against them of the $tnx the 10 year and the usd/jpy seems to run right with it, I figured it would becaus eits interest rates but I wanted to know if anybody knows any other pairs and what they might run with or do they all run with the 10 year I'm going to back test the contracts to see for myself but I thought maybe somebody knows I like the prophet.net charts so I'm looking for something to back up the gft charts which are pretty nice
I take FX over indices. I try to base my decision on purely technical approach. With indices, there are just too much nice, and the swings are too much for me. FX move a little slow for me, and it's 24 hours. I am very comfortable trading on the 60 minutes chart while having a 9 to 5 job.