I signed up in the last few days with Ben Lichtenstien`s live S&P 500 futures squawk box, i found it difficult to decipher at first but it is starting to make a little sense but still hard to catch everything. How long did it take you to fully understand whats going on? I only trade stocks. Does any one else use this or any other squawk box,how do you find it ? Has it improved your trading and how do you use it?
I subscribe to a chat room where the moderator has an open phone line to the floor - I like that better than better than squawk box because it filters out the noise and often provides "local color" - like who's doing what, who's been doing what, who's turning red, green etc... PM me for link - I dont want to get erased for pushing the site.
from one of those sites for a free trial for monday and tuesday ... I wish they did nasdaq and bonds I think they only do spoos
I don't understand the advantage of a squawk box. I can tell if the price of the spoos is moving and the volume just by watching the chart. I don't need someone reading it to me. What's the big deal?
Obviously it depends on your trading style. For me, the squawk has become my eyes on the chart. I only look at a spoos chart once in a while to note recent highs/low, support/resistance. The rest of the time, I can focus on other things and always know what's going on in the market, even when I'm not watching the monitors. The other big advantage is knowing how loud the pit is and how much oomph there is to a move. I don't have to look at a nyse volume number, I know how active a day it is by the pit noise. When doing extremely short term scalps, I know exactly when to pull the trigger on an exit as the bids and offers stop chasing the momentum and things are stalling out. I find that a squawk box with a good squawker gives an excellent feel for the market. Some guys listen for who's doing the size at what prices, but I don't pay too much attention to that. I certainly make note of 200 lot offers and the like though. The emini leads in price often though, but a good squawker will also let you know when the mini is much ahead or behind.
http://www.los.net http://www.realtimefutures.com http://www.xsquawk.com Michael B. P.S. Open Ecry FCM has one too. But you got to be a client I think. http://www.openecry.com
Did anyone try the new squawke e-mini product from realtimefutures.com yet? I listened to the free trial today instead of Ben. There's a couple of differences, but seems like basically the same info. just a different guy speaking. He speaks slower and not as loud as Ben, so he's easy to understand, and you can hear the background noise better than with Ben since this guy doesn't speak non-stop. There are a couple of things he includes that Ben doesn't. He tells you when the buy/sell programs kick-in (according to their proprietary filter). I found the levels to be different then the ones I calculate based on the numbers on programtrading.com. Also, he tells you the volume for each previous 5-minute bar, and he tells you where the large volume is in their proprietary book. Overall I like this guy, and I'm gonna listen to the free trial the rest of the week and then decide whether or not to switch over.