thats a good post. they need to have more time in between the close and then the next open. the grain markets are pretty good i think.with a few hours of downtime. the cme livestock markets are going almost 24hrs in june. now that could have some messed up evening sessions.kinda like gold/silver when ecbot got going since i switched to pit trading,this is the best i've ever done exactly becaus eof what you wrote.that there is structure to the markets.and that there is people not robots involved.,but all the negative crap i read about pit trading kept me away.it's been nothing but positve.
same here. i started a post about getting mugged in the electrnic markets and i posted here and boy did i get the business. it seems like there are alot of people that are employees for the CBOT...ha ha. since i started trading the pits again on the 30 year bond futures i have 3 straight winning trades and the profit per trades are very good as far as stop loss/profit ratio risk reward on the money management. they are also wrong by saying that the pits are thin. on the contrary. they are very liquid. i havent had any slippage on any of the past 3 trades. if you look at the open interest its over 800,000 contracts which is huge. the only thing is you have to wait for the broker to call you back with the fill. no big deal since these are short term position trades and not day trades. i dont need the fuill right away. i hold these generally from 1 to 3 days. of course the grains are good. they have structure because they have a pit session. with pit markets you have the gaps that you can use as strategy, you have the points of support and resistance levels that you can use. pit markets are essensial for charting longer term. with electrnic markets you cant use these strategies anymore. if you look at a long term daily chart for electrnic markets its all zig zaged. no structure. no gaps. no highs, no lows, no opens. how are you going to base a trading decision on that? however the electrnic markets are excellent for day trading since you get the fills in an instant and when you day trade you create very short term points of support and resistance anyway. so it works great for that. but as for position trading and putting in a stop loss. forget it. dont see how you can make money. the market has no structure.
I don't understand what you are talking about with pit market structure, gap... The two contracts are the same. The only difference is that when you make a trade you don't control your fill in the pit. In electronic markets, you know exactly at which price you'll be filled.
a lmt order is a lmt order pit or otherwise? i guess you mean mkt orders. something like ecbot isnt all that great either with that damn algorithm.globex is alot better. having both is the way to go i think
not to mention the huge spread between the electronic and pit of the same market. keep in mind its the electrnic that follows the fit. you want to trade the follower you want to trade the leader much like the SP and ES. the ES mimicks the SP...... see what i mean? alot of CBOT employees here claiming the electrnic bonds are the best thing since sliced bread....couldnt be further from the truth..
Do you think the 800,000 Open interest is about the pit volume that trades 3000 lots yesterday (for example)? http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1631,00.html :eek:
you think everything the CBOT tells you is true? they want you to trade electrnic. this way when you get raped by a 10 point spread the broker tells you"what can you do fast market" however if you traded the pit there is no spread. its the leader. as i have said electronic mimmicks the pit. humans will always be the leaders and machines the followers. dont forget it. if the 3000 volume out of the 800,000 contracts is true how do you explain my last 3 winning trades in bonds with the pit with no slippage on stops? don't beleive everything the exchange tells you.
Trigger you seriously have no idea what you are talking about. I stood next to the 30yr futures pit for the last 4 years and can tell you the 3,000 contracts the exchange says traded in the pit yesterday is exactly right. There is virtually ZERO order flow left in the pit. The only reason the pit trades anything is because all of the locals in there are watching their screens. As for when the screens go down, the market never moves, because the locals in there these days are not the leaders of the market (no one can push it anymore). I'd assume you having zero slippage on your stops might have something to do with the liquidity that is there on the screen for locals to scratch it against. Try to put a 3000 lot stop in the 30yr futures pit and then get back to me. Futures pits are only around for calendar spreads these days in the bond room, and even that trade is thinning up as it is one zillion up on the screen a quarter tick wide.