Accumulate positions Market opening :11/ 3 / 2010 buy FCX sell PM target : +0.94% buy AET sell TIF target : +1.09%
So how do you come up with your targets, and as per your previous post - do you expect your target to be reached within one day after opening the position??
And you will find the B/O spread wide. CMC are a not a broker -they're a bookmaker. They decide how wide the goal posts are. Stat arb is a capital intensive/low cost dependant business. Starting small at a CFD broker like CMC -even if your trades are successful will just slowly convert your capital into commissions. Trading in the UK has a number of disadvantages: UK Stamp duty(0.5%) means UK retail equity traders are almost forced to trade CFD's where there are few brokers with high transactions costs(either wide B/O spreads or high min ticket charges etc) Stuctural costs of trading are higher in the UK than US Smaller universe of highly correlated stocks. If you go US you can trade IB/Prop where your transactions costs are minimal and you can particpate in rebate capture etc, liquidity is much higher with B/O spreads typically a penny either side. Unless you can trade size UK equities are not the place to be execute stat arb.
If you are using PTF for your trading software you will quickly find out it is biased towards US markets. Outside US/Canada data is only available from Yahoo. Yahoo gets its US data direct from the exchanges. The data is clean. You can also choose IQ Feed if you wish N.American real-time data. Non-US data in PTF is only available from Yahoo which buys it in from third party vendors such as Telekurs. This data is not clean, with gaps and errors.
I did some research on this before and I knew that it applied with spread betting but not so sure for CFD's. Thought the b/o was generally in line with the underlying unless there is low size at the b/o. I might be wrong though. I would ideally trade using IB however since i am already trading at a prop firm i cannot open any direct access accounts by law. Unfortunately since i am just starting out and backed by the firm there is no way for me to deal equities from my desk. Am doing this with cfds in my spare time to see if there is scope for me to jntroduce this to my full time trading. Id feel a lot better knowing i was selling the offer and buying the bid!
Also i am intending on doing this with US stocks not UK, works out better for me this way in terms of trading opportunities as you mentioned but also allows me to get on with my european products during the day.
Took this trade as it met all the criteria. Unfortunately the entry ratio is not as good as it could have been as I am only able to take my entries toward the last hour of US close. Perhaps I should have sat this one out but I figured that since I'm trying to learn as much as I can, I might aswell take it.
Mpat89, I too am interested in the cointegration of pairs. However it is something I currently use visually, as I haven't worked with any linear regression or ADF methods to measure cointegration in my ideas as of yet. Would you be willing to provide some guidance? many thanks
Market opening :11/ 4 / 2010 This signal still available : buy FCX sell PM target : +0.95% and : buy POM sell PM target : +0.69%