Curious why stock traders still use aggregated depth horizontally and do not use ladders as they do in futures? Has anyone daytraded from both and found the aggregated horizontal depth more useful for the low liquidity fast-moving products?
Futures trade on a single exchange while stocks trade on multiple exchanges. Stock traders want to see where orders are and possibly route there.
qlai this is just not true at all you can simply look to wti traded at cme and at ice or brent or soybeans in brazil futures of course versus cbot. i understood what you meant but many may not and the servers for ice are right down the street from the cme you also have the otc markets and swaps as well as synthetics all of this is and can be used as depth for whatever you are trying to do but yes for the most part the cme has a monopoly on certain contracts
trading technologies has a futures aggregator algo for a global or multi exchange book if you want it and it will even throw trades at multipel exchagnes to reduce slippage even at different microseconds so you could even do a big trade at cme in wti then a few milliseconds later buy more at a reduced price theoretically at ice and get a better oveall average price
Yes, makes sense. I thought about it more and I'll I'd add one more thing as it relates to reading price action—scattered bid/offer depth in illiquid products are easier to read than a ladder with massive price gaps constantly jumping around (which is much more common in stocks I think).
thats a good point i have never put any credit in reading a latent limit order book. many say it works. if u can do it in the emini then should be easier in say lumber or palladium.