OK second trade in the SSF's. I figured I can use the QQQ fut to take position intraday with a longer term perspective. That's what i did today. I also traded ONE DIA I watched it intraday and figured I can always hedge with the cash if ONE goes down. I missed a great trade around 10:40. At this point I hadn't made up my mind yet about whether trading ONE DIA or not and I saw it take off. I went to the grocery store and realized there was a big rally going on, at the same time I knew it was late to get into a daytrade with DIA, kind of situation where I get upset watching the market going up . I came back home and all indices looked like ready to breakout again. OK here was what I was waiting for... At the same time I was anxious that the BO would actually work because I wasn't going to take it . When it dropped good I bought 1 QQQ fut at 28.30 (2:20pm) I tried to post a bid but there aren't alot of trades, nobody takes it. so I just took the offer. This was for an overnight but if I get out before the close I don't lose any "daytrade" Of course QQQ kept going down another dime. So I got hesitant about buying DIA as it dropped like a stone . Result I missed the better entry point and bought on a retracement after the bounce (around 2:50pm.) This time I took the offer right away, not trying to play around. When it started moving back up to 86.10 (cash)the spread widened to 9 cents as MM's were raising the offer(usually it's 4 cents). After that i tried not to watch too much as it just chopped for some time and I decided to wait the close to take another 200 Q's. I kept both contract at the close . ONE shut down right at the bell pretty much, NQLX a couple seconds later. I traded the May contracts, I don't plan to hold them until next week expiration but do they become illiquid close to expiration ? Is there a delay between expiration and the time the shares are in your account and you are able to liquidate them ?
Has anyone tried to hedge intraday gains with SSF's? Say for ex. you bought XYZ at 10:am rode it for a huge point gain, you think maybe with the return of the bull market you could make a point and a half or even 2 if it breaks resistance. You could sell the proper amount of SSF's and if resistance is broken convincingly buy them back. If the stock drops you keep your gain. Also you could unwind the hedged position the next day so your daytrade is not a daytrade anymore and you screwed the SEC. Or you could use them as bullets, couldn' you? you short a stock, box the position with SSF's when the stock drops like a stone, you sell the SSF's. Any thought?
Just a note again on ONEChicago Diamond Futures. It is supposed to trade from 9:15 to 4:15 ET however it doesn't really start until 3 minutes into the NYSE open and then it sometimes shut down right at the bell. Go figure. Also DON'T try to split the spread and post your bid/offer. NOBODY will take it until the market moves against you. The spread widens up to a dime and more sometimes when the market is at a critical point. You can't daytrade this POS unless you trade on signals generated in a higher time frame. Too much vig for trading time frames under 60 min. imho
I was only paper trading the DIA SSF so far but I was thinking about this. Basically I was worried I wouldn't be able to "sell into the buyers/at the ask" and so on if there are hardly any buyers basically, only MMs forced to make a market literally against their will. You can get liquidity at the posted bid and ask only, where they are forced to honor their quote. This means if you want to sell into the buyers, you need to sell at the bid while the stock is still raising and lose the (very big) spread. Too bad. However for me the eminis are too big right now, and I can't trade stocks due to PDT. So I guess I'll have to manage this until I gain confidence to trade the eminis. SSFs could be great for swings though Cheers 50
SSF's: guess what the spread becomes huge on economic releases(20 cent+). Actually yesterday during the Fed announcement, the quotes for DIA SSF simply disappeared for a few seconds then they had a 20 cent spread for a while.