Timber Hill are highly automated market makers and do not use any external technical analysis. I am familiar with Prosticks just from being in HK and because they approached us (IB). From what I've seen I think they are fine. Data is live. FYI, trading hours: Future starts 9:45 AM HK time. Cash opens 10 AM. The market closes at 12:30 and re-opens from 2:30 -4:15 (cash closes at 4:00)
Gosh def, those times are just about perfect for a night owl living near Chicago: 8:45PM - 11:30PM CST, and 1:30AM - 3:15AM CST. (Sydney would be 2 hours earlier, conflicting with dinner and wife. ) I will probably sign up for the futures charts and data feed from ProSticks and see if I can make any sense of it all before opening appropriate account with IB. Thanks!
dkamp, you may just want to open the account and watch the market (and market depth) for a bit before funding. I'd advise that just so you can get a sense of the liquidity and to gain a good sense of market movement. If you do trade, one other word of advice would be not to trade the expiring month on expiration day. (the expiry price is determined by 5 minute intervals of the cash throughout the day).
Is anyone trading right now from the US the overseas futures (or stock markets) ????? I am intrigued over the idea but I feel it's very dangerous. You are the "underdog" in i.e. the Hong Kong futures markets. News and other information is not the same for the California based trader, is CNBC evening coverage good ??? Let us know of any experience if you are already trying it. The only way I can envision this is being purely chart based.
andrasnm, IB has a couple people trading HK (as well as a few institutions) from the states. News? Hah. Out here in HK we're (timber hill) the most active market maker in index and stock options and are still usually in the dark. I've got bloomberg, reuters, local news, etc. and with the exception of intraday earnings, rarely do I know why the HK market moves. I believe most locals have their own style which rely heavily on the technicals. Believe it or not, there are actually columns in the local press showing technical charts of warrants - yes warrants - not the underlying. This is (HK) one of those markets that you have to study and you'll either hate it or love to trade it.
def, I guess TWS would be the same for a Hong Kong account, so questions about TWS would be handled by IB Chat. But who would I contact with questions about fills or account balances for example -- Would I phone or email Hong Kong? Also, if I want to withdraw funds from Hong Kong, would I make the request on the IB website, or would I contact Hong Kong? Are HK account statements emailed and available on the IB website? I'm sorry to ask you these detailed questions, but I've been thinking a lot about how this would work.
no problem, the help desk rolls to the HK office after 8 PM (east coast time). Due to the lower activity, chats are manned quickly, ditto for phone calls. (the number should be on the web site). Everything else is handled the same as any other account. fund xfers may take one more day due to the time difference.
As a daytrader, my biggest worry about overseas trading is having the IB system (or something its connected to) go down while in a position. Until recently, this was exacerbated by IB's problems with stop orders (but has hopefully been fixed - stop loss orders still make me nervous, however, such as the case where you are relying on them to kick in under volatile conditions). Today, for example, when trading stocks, I lost connection at the moment of hitting "Transmit", and couldn't tell anything about state of order for 10 minutes. This turned out to be a problem with my ISP, but was fooled for a while since it was related to a lowered data rate, not a complete disconnection (yes, I have a backup ISP I eventually switched to). Anyway, seems like it would be useful to have the option of accompanying every order with either an automatic stop loss order, or time-out (i.e., close position automatically after n minutes or at specified time), or close if IB system collapses, etc. In other words, something that directly addresses a daytrader's greater worry about being left in an uncontrollable state, than about the exact price at which an exit is made. Any ideas? Do any other brokers offer such creative solutions? (I'm aware that some offer auto-closing of positions at market close.)
The public in Hong Kong and China are VERY active in the stock market. Even more so than the american public. Imagine a communist country where the citizens all want to become rich. Eliminate a large percentage of entrepreneurial opportunities, and all you've got left is the stock market. I have no idea of the knowledge level of these traders, but I would assume that profit opportunity exists.
Here's an update on state of trading Hong Kong Index Futures via IB. I didn't repeat any info already presented earlier in this thread. If I've made any mistakes here, just speak up and add your corrections to the thread... - Futures on the Hong Kong Futures Exchange can be traded via an IB futures account. Currently this must be a futures account in Hong Kong dollars (HKD, where 7.8 HKD = 1 USD), but in the "near future" you'll be able to open a multi-currency futures account that can be used to trade both US and Hong Kong futures. (These are really cool, as documented on the IB site.) - The major index of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is the Hang Seng Index (HSI), which consists of 33 stocks. A comparison of this index with the Nasdaq composite during the past couple of years shows that they are of similar volatility, and that they roughly track one another on a time scale of months (i.e., the big peaks and valleys line up). - Our ND and NQ (E-Mini Nasdaq) contracts correspond most closely to their HSI (full) and MHI (Mini-HSI) contracts. Their MHI contract is valued at HK $10 per point of the Hang Seng Index (currently at levels of about 12,000). Thus an MHI contract will cost you about $15,000, or about half that of NQ (that's 10 * 12000 / 7.8). - The IB commission per MHI contract is HK $17, or about US $2.20 (or $4.40 for 2 contracts, vs. $3 for the equivalent NQ contract). A little more expensive than NQ contract, but still less expensive than equivalent stock commission (= $6.50 for 800 shares QQQ). - Typical spreads on the MHI are HK $1-10, the average of which, HK $5, is in the same ballpark as the typical NQ spread (i.e., 5/12,000 vs. 0.5/1600). - The biggest drawback to MHI is that volume is low, but this is countered by the fact that it is quickly arbitraged against the larger, higher volume contract to keep prices in line. (And, of course, you can move up to the larger (5x), higher volume, contract when you're ready to do that.) - A lot has happened in last couple of years to make this stuff possible (so I'd bet you won't find this stuff in a book). See http://www.hkex.com.hk for more info. Okay, so these numbers look pretty good to a night owl. Will have to study MHI's real-time behavior to determine if it's actually tradeable. If not, looks like IB still has lots of other overseas stocks, futures, and exchanges worth looking into.