Hello, I live in the central time zone in the U.S. and have a 8-5 job that doesn't allow me much time to trade. I would like to know what would be the best markets a person could follow and test trading ideas on that trade during the evening, late evening or early morning hours in the cst. Does the s&p and dow eminis have enough price movement during these times or do I need to look at currencies, forex or some other markets that happen to be day markets when it is evening in the cst. Thanks. LB
I am in the same boat as you, 9 to 5 EST. I trade the EURO futures because it's the most liquid of all forex futures. It's 24 hours and it's daily ATR is around 90 pip.
trading the Nikkei through Singapore is a great thing to trade. opens at 3:45 pm pacific time this is a very smooth contract to trade, with nice trends. or Hang Seng Index futures through Hong Kong (HSI) is good too. this is more frenetic and arguably harder to trade than Nikkei futures. definitely trade nikkei through singapore, not japan. better spread and it opens premarket.
Many recent threads with similar questions like this. Basic answers are the Asia markets, Eurex Derivatives, Euronext Futures and EuroFX. As for the U.S. Eminis...they usually don't become active again until around 3am est which is the first hour of active trading in Eurex and Euronext. Yet, once in awhile you'll see some increased price activity around midnight but such dies fairly quickly within 30mins and the volatility will not reappear until around 3am est. There are exceptions to the above rule for the Eminis such as during U.S. Presidential elections in which you'll see the Eminis being active (almost volatile) during such political events during almost the entire overnight trading session. There are several other key market events when the U.S. Eminis are very active most of the night but they don't occur often during the trading year to be too concerned about unless your swing trading. Mark (a.k.a. NihabaAshi) Japanese Candlestick term
I'm feeling stoopid and left behind... How does retail trader specify which exchange to trade? I don't think I have this capability thru my clearing agents RCG and/or Rand. Although NKD is available. This idea of trading on different exchanges is even discussed on the CME NKD pages http://www.cme.com/trading/prd/about_NK3107.html Osorico
i use interactive brokers, and it's very easy. just enter the symbol. on their account options page, you gotta sign up for the exchanges. some are free, a very few are like $10 a month for market data. but most are free. and you just enter the symbol into the trading program and set it up in the charting program (i use quotetracker). this is totally broker dependant of course. IB lets me trade practically anything, on any exchange.