Hello Traders, I'm thinking about trading the Mini-Dow (and may be the e-mini) out of normal trading hours. Can I please get your opinion on the type of activity/volatility I can expect? I fully appreciate that neither the mini-dow or emini are going to be as active out-of-hours as they are during normal trading hours. I would love to hear from traders that trade these instruments electronically out-of-hours and what times they have found to be most active. I'm based in England so its not always going to be easy for me to trade 14:30pm to 9pm GMT - which is 9:30 am - 4:00pm EST I really appreciate your suggestions. Cheers P.S. I'm popping out for a while so I won't be able to answer any questions you may have immediately, however I will answer your questions when I get back to my desk. Carlton
openning hours more active as usual,two swings until lunch....then before the closure a bit....you should know this.
Thanks for responding I'm am very much aware of the most active trading times.... That wasn't my question...
YM isn't liquid compared to ES during market hours so that should give you an idea about after hours. i'd suggest trading ES or look into futures FX like 6E or 6J.
I don't trade the Dow, but the ES and the only real activity after hours is when the various Asian and the India markets open, but only if there is significant news coming out of those markets, then a complete lull after India's open until the German and UK markets open. A "big" move during those more active times is about 4-5 ES points in a given direction. Translated into Dow points, I guess that would be about a 40-50 point move. Just a thought on your choice of instruments. Since the overnight session is dominated almost completely by macro news, rather than company-specific news, I would imagine that the movements in the mini-Dow and ES are almost certainly exactly correlated, so by trading the mini-Dow you are unnecessarily sacrificing liquidity for nothing.
ES becomes more active just ahead of 03.00 EST (London open). Sometimes the high / low for the session is put in at this time. It then becomes quiet around 06.00 - 06.30 EST (European lunch) and does not generally become active again until 08.00 EST. For trading the ES out of hours (European session), it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the European markets - ES will tend to follow their direction (although there are exceptions to this). Depending on how you trade and what information you use, this might well be essential as the ES direction is influenced by factors outside of ES. Leaving aside the merits of choosing ES over Dax, FTSE, or EUR/USD during those hours - better to trade ES than YM as the effective spreads will be the same in a few contracts and much wider in YM above 10 lots. YM is a lot thinner overnight and will tend to over extend vs ES. This presents trading opportunities of course, but not for more than a few lots.
I agree, YM is crap in A.H.. I've seen 5-6 tick spreads recently, no joking. The only exception is the hour before RTH open, especially if there are numbers out. IMHO 8:30-10am EDT is the best time to trade YM.
Why not make that a 4-5 tick spread in locations where you know people will be paying up to get in or out? As I said, a trading opportunity but not a scalable one.