Hi, I am a UK resident with a day job. I am looking to scalp a liquid future between 6.00am and 8.00am London time (which is between 1.00am and 3.00am New York time for the forumers in New York, USA) before I go to work. Could you please advise a liquid future trading heavily at that time? The FESX is not a solution because it only opens at 7.00am and the cash market opens at 8.00am London time. The 6E is not a solution because this future is too thin (there is often gap of 2 ticks between the bid and the offer) so it does not suit my scalping trading requirements My broker is Velocity Futures and they do not seem to offer any futures that trade heavily at that time, please correct me if I am wrong. I believe Asian futures could be the right solution, but I am not sure about the hours they trade at. I looked at the Nikkei 225 Mini from the OSAKA SECURITIES EXCHANGE, because it is heavily traded (over 540,000 contract daily on average) as per the link below: http://www.ose.or.jp/f/news/20956/wysiwyg/news19733_01.pdf Trading hours as per the link below are: Trading hours 9:00-15:15, 16:30-23:30 http://www.ose.or.jp/e/derivative/225mini Are these hours refering to the time in Osaka in Japan??? Osaka is 8 hours ahead of London. Therefore when it is 6.00am in London, it's 14.00 in Japan. 6.00am to 8.00am in London would translate as 14.00 to 16.00 in Japan, but it seem the market closes at 15.15 Japanese time? Can you confirm? If this is the case I would only be able to trade between 6.00am and 7.15am in London, not really ideal as I aim for 6 to 8am...
Hi Xroads, Thanks for your message. HSI contract won't work for scalping due to high commission. IB commission is HK 60 round turn and tick value is HK 50. If I compare with FESX, I pay EUR 2 round turn and tick value is EUR 10. What do you think about Nikkey 225 MINI, can you have a look at the questions in my previous post? The tick value / commission ratio looks much better but I am unsure about the trading hours Thanks
Realize however that the HSI can move 100 ticks in a minute. If you would be scalping the HSI you would mostly likely be going for 10-20 ticks each time. It is by far probably the most volatile liquid future, so commish shouldnt be a problem.
Hi Julian0625, I know what you mean, HSI is comparable with the FDAX in Europe, i.e., quite thin, highly volatile and some people call it a mad beast. It can suit some people, but it does not suit my trading style as I like a deep order book and one tick slippage max. HSI can have 4-6 ticks slippage at times, sometimes more. For comparison, I believe ES trade 1,200,000+ contracts daily on average, FESX around 800,000+ contracts, Nikkei 225 Mini 540,000+, so Nikkei 225 is more than half the volume of the FESX and is definitely more than enough. Fdax is around 50,000+, not enough for my style. I never looked at the order book of the Nikkei 255 Mini, can you confirm it is more than half the depth of FESX? Do you know at what time it trades London or New York time? I can't find a reason to trade HSI, because if I were to trade a thin contract, I could trade E6 instead. I realise it's not easy to find a heavily traded contract between 6 and 8 am London time, thanks in advance for your help.
Would another schedule for your trading session be an option? For example trading after work instead? Maybe you could start earlier in your day time job? Living in Norway, I trade the U.S session, combined with a full-time job.
The Nikkei does a lot of volume thats for sure! The only thing is that the tick size is huge. You can see a day with only a 10-20 tick range regularly. (discount the crash in march) What type of strategy do you employ? Thatll help choose which instrument fits best.
HSI is an excellent product, and your best bet at that time. Forget about volume, forget about the spread, forget about slippage. 2 ticks of slippage is nothing when you take 50 ticks of profit. Compare the size of that slippage to the size of the ES or FESX spread when your profit targets will only be 4-5 ticks and you'll see what I mean. Unless you're trading over 5 lots at a time their is plenty of volume with HSI. You might also look at the India futures which are active at that time, but I really think HSI is best. If you use unbundled commissions at IB the R/T is barely over 30HKD. An absolute bargain. BTW, I've been trading Hong Kong futures for a couple years now, so I speak from experience.
Exactly what I was going to rec. This instrument can be a rocket. You can make good coin very quickly if you're on the right side of the market. Definitely a good instrument to trade.
There is listing of many products and exchanges here: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=products Click on futures and Asia to see the Asian exchange trading hours. The Kospi (Sth Korea) is also very liquid. It can have slow days, but volatility is usually quite reasonable.