I am paying $10 to qcharts for the privilege of getting real time feed for emini s&p and nasd futures. The only reason I need them is to keep an eye on the overall market. I am trading stocks only and do not have any plans to trade eminis any time soon. Would it make sense in my case to cancel the futures feed, save myself $10 and watch QQQ and SPY instead? Granted $10 is not a lot of money, but I am not profitable yet either . I do not mind the expense at all if it is useful, but in this case it appears to be a total waste. Or am I missing something and qqq/spy will not give me same information that I am currently getting from eminis?
Unless you want to know what is going on significantly outside regular trading hours, when the QQQ and SPY are illiquid.
A couple of thoughts come to mind: 1. If you're worried about $10 per month, profitable or not, you're in no frame of mind to be trading and you shouldn't be at this stage (even tho I know you think you should be). No nice way to say that, sorry. 2. The emini charts are much smoother and cleaner than the QQQ/SPY charts. There are no bad prints and they usually lead the ETF's by a slight amount.
Magna, I really do not remember saying I was worried about $10 a month. I am more then adequately capitalized, have a trading account significantly exceeding PDT minimum requirements and enough money to cover living expenses for quite a long time. (I am worried about making it as a trader, but it is a totally different matter ) I just do not want to pay for what I may not need or may get for free and this is what I was trying to find out. Your point on some lag in ETFs vs futures is well taken though. I will try to watch them side by side tomorrow and see if it affects my trading. How big do you think the delay is - 5 secs, 30 secs? I cannot imagine it is bigger than that. Thanks a lot to everyone who responded, the information was extremely helpful.
It's a few seconds at best most of the time, these things are arb'd and kept in line very quickly. Occasionally it even feels like the QQQ are slightly leading the NQ, but again, it's fleeting. Don't overlook my other point, as the emini charts are much smoother. Not only are there no bad prints to throw things out of whack, but if you use candlesticks there are far fewer and smaller tails on the majority of candles. Tough to describe but put them side by side (especially the QQQ and the NQ) and you'll see what I mean.