Christopher Farrell, in his book "Day Trading Online", states "The other gauge most day traders use is the S&P 500 Futures Contract." On my particular trading system there are symbols for S&P 500 Index - Settle on Close, S&P 500 Index - Long Term, S&P 500 End-of-Quarter, S&P 500 Index, and S&P 500 Index strike price overflow. Which one of these symbols was the author referring to?
$SPX = S&P 500 (CBOE) $SPQ = S&P 500 End of Quarter $SPL = S&P 500 Index Long-Term $LSY = SPX Index 12/94 LEAPS SP U2 = S&P 500 September 2002 pit-traded futures contract ("full") ES U2 = S&P 500 September 2002 e-mini futures contract ("1/5") regards wild
none of the prior answers really answer the question he was refering to exactly what he stated - and he meant any and all movement of the S&P pit traded futures contract and not the emini contract (although the out of hours big electronic traded contract is a leading indicator as explained below) i haven't read his book and i assume it is the same old rehash of all the stuff that writers have been spuing out for years, so he might have meant end of day values only, but of course, it is intraday movements which are key, as well as end of day in other words you would have to watch the movement of this contract intra-day in order to guage your position in any other markets, since this is a leading indicator across all markets, including of course securities, but also other US and foreign stockmarket indexes, currencies and bonds hence the saying, no S&P, no gain! you would have to check with your quote vendor for the right symbol which will probably be SP U2 as wild stated - but it would defiently not be SPX which is the cash market symbol
I appreciate your help. On my system it looks like "$SPQ S&P 500 End-of-Quarter" is the index that Farrell was referring to. -- John