Hey everyone, been spending a lot of time lately trying to get up to speed on what involved day trading the ES mini. I'm coming from the crypto scene and bored with it currently. After looking extensively through this board I came to the decision to go with AMP and Tradingview since thats what all of crypto uses and I'm extremely familiar with it. I live in the MST timezone in Canada. Chicago is 1 hour ahead of us. When I look at the CME's contract specs for GlobeX they say these are the hours:CME Globex: Sunday - Friday 6:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) with trading halt 4:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. But for- TACO on CME Globex: Sunday - Friday 6:00 p.m. - 9:30 a.m. ET. Monday - Thursday 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. ET; no 11:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m. ET session on Friday. Monday - Thursday 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ET daily maintenance period. Which would I be trading? the Wikipedia article states that the trading halt is at 3:15 and not 4:15, also it says that daily maintenance is from 4-5 and not 5-6 as CME states. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mini_S&P) Then on AMPs trading hours site(https://www.ampfutures.com/trading-info/trading-hours/) they state Sunday open at 5pm and then 3pm open and 4pm close. Tradinngview shows me that it doesnt trade all day sat. Is that for the perp swap contract and not the monthly? I'm assuming y'all are trading the perp contract intraday? Help? Thx
I am not experienced or well-versed with BTIC and TACO contracts. Perhaps @bone or @destriero have experience and can chime in. Also important to point out, AMP does not offer the BTIC and/or TACO contracts. In fact, none of the retail brokers that *I* deal with offer them. Given the purpose of BTIC(Basis Trade at Index Open) and TACO(Trade at Cash Open) contracts, I would not be surprised if BTIC and TACO contracts are only available to accounts opened directly with an FCM. That thinking may be wrong however, IDK. As for the times, the 15 minute "halt" listed on the CME site is in simple terms, for the exchange to do accounting procedures (open positions and "margin" requirements of member firms for example). The discrepancy in time between AMP and the CME is that AMP (for purposes of this post) is a member firm, and must ensure each customer account meets the margin requirements necessary. This is the time when intraday margin is removed and exchange minimum margin is applied. Once the (accounting)"halt" is complete, AMP reinstates intraday margins. Again, this is in simple terms, and it can/does vary from broker to broker. The ES contract is an outright, with quarterly expiration, March(H), June(M), Sept(U), and Dec(Z). The ES contract is not a monthly or a swap. There is no Saturday trading. Hope that helps a bit.
@tiddlywinks Thanks that definitely does clean up a few of the items for me. Thanks for the response. If I'm not trading the TACO GlobeX and just regular GlobeX then why is there no listed hourly mainenance downtime? (Top option) https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/e-mini-sandp500_contract_specifications.html So you pretty much have to have the exchange maintenance in your AMP acct if your trading across the 15 minute maintenance period? Best to just close before and trade after I assume? My tradingview shows me Continuous, continuous in front, and then the monthlies. Thats why Im confused. Thx
@MattZ Im in MST(-6) and the exchange, broker are in Chicago so CDT (-5) (1 hour ahead of me) correct?
@excrypto have you taken a look at your trading platform? If you would zoom in on the bar charts you could probably discover during which times trading is taking place, and during which times there is no trading. You know roughly when the start and end times are, so you could zoom in to a 1 minute chart.
If you are in Mountain time, these are the times you should watch for: Sunday, the market opens at 4.00 MST. It closes daily at 2.15 your time and reopens at 2.30 your time. Then it closes for an hour between 3-4 MST. A new day is considered on the open of 4 PM your time. I hope this helps.
The TACO contract is of zero use to retail, so just ignore it. TACO is pricing the basis at the open and BTIC at the close. Your AMP quote conventions (ES1!, ES2!) are simply that... AMP is rolling the quote to the new contract when volume leads. Use ES1 if you want the front end to handle the rollover or choose ESU2019 if you will rollover manually.