Im just trying to shorten this guys learning curve. When you look at the quarterly holdings of any fund I want you to tell me what percentage their holdings are in the eminis or spyders....... enlighten me...
I don't fade TICK extremes, it only ever got me creamed. I do use the TICK to help me confirm sentiment to help me go with trend, as opposed to against it. If the TICK closes above X value my bias is now long, if TICK closes below X value my bias is now short. The above strategy gives a very reliable result, good luck!
Those are INVESTMENTS not trades. You see them because they are required to publish all long term holdings.
let me take another stab... The typical view is that the index represents beta whereas stocks can generate alpha. So a fund may go and buy some stocks and then sell (hedge) to the index. Most quantitative traders also take a "wide view" of the market,i.e scanning "wide" for anomalies rather then "deep". Stocks do have several advantages: * More variety of strategies such as stats arbitrage, relative strength, news, rebates, and other stock specific plays * Playing news and tape reading the specialist using NYSE * Greater ability to play market neutral/weak vs strong However, many hedge funds do play in the futures space. The e-mini was built for institutional traders. Honestly, unless you are playing at a stock specific edge such as rebates or tape reading the NYSE then I don't think it will matter because I track stocks and (for the index) trades and the ones I track follow the index. This is why my suggestion would be: futures for retail, stocks for props I mean the US stock market is very mature. I doubt there is any "game" out there where there is easy "free money". Also, over the recent few years global macro concerns have dominated the market movements with very high correlations among various stocks. Look at the Tuco? records where all their stock traders lost money. They didn't fair so well. If I had an advice, I'd say try many things as possible. If you prefer making trades based on global macro events, prefer technical analysis, and prefer deep vs wide focus then I recommend futures. If you prefer to make fundamental based plays, want to take a wide/stats view, do company specific research, or trade news events then prefer stocks. I myself have some sort of mental aversion to trading Forex but last I heard a lot of professionals were in Forex and having very good success. So there are a lot of markets out there. And Forex is very suitable for a small retail trader.. probably most suitable. @Picaso -- love the explanation!
A little advice FWIW, The nyse tick uses all nyse stocks, if you are trading the ES why do you care what a stock not in the 500 did? My data feed has a tick for the S&P or you could design your own
+1 I completely Agree. "If you prefer making trades based on global macro events, prefer technical analysis, and prefer deep vs wide focus then I recommend futures. If you prefer to make fundamental based plays, want to take a wide/stats view, do company specific research, or trade news events then prefer stocks."
I think the reason I would care is because so many people use the Tick, just like the 50 day and 200 day moving average are worth watching because so many other people watch it, IMO. Does the s&p 500 tick give different signals than the NYSE tick ?
First I read what I wrote and apologize for the tone, it sounded condescending, which was not my intention I have never watched them together; also when I watched the NYSE Tick I looked at a line chart and I use the SP Tick for watching extremes. I only use it for overall "feel" and not for signals.