Cool...oh, yeah, ours are too....imagine that...LOL But the squawk box is a few seconds quicker...tested it, yes it is... and a bit more info than just numbers... Call Jeff, I'm sure he'll put it in for you... Don
Now that's pretty funny Don. If your futures quotes on your stocktrading platform are "only" a few seconds behind the squawk box then I have news for you . . . your futures quotes are WAYYYYYY BEHIND anyone that is also using a futures trading platform running alongside a stocktrading platform. Most people that I know have both up and running. Again, you'd be surprised how LATE your S&P quotes are. It isn't even funny, and not an effective "leading" indicator for anyone to use for trading equities.
I didn't get past the dick measuring bit of your reply. I just don't have the time or inclination. Best of luck to ya!
I think the QQQ's are a difficult trade also. Frankly, I think all indexes are a difficult trade. I haven't been able to make money on them consistently. Every so often you get a high probabilty set up (like the gap up this past Friday). When you've traded the thing long enough those set ups will just call you on and you'll have to trade them. And if you can exclude your trading activity to only those high probability set ups then the QQQ's and SPY are great due to the liquidity (you can really pile it on size wise) and downtick rule exemption. But among my peers who are successfull filter traders, none of us have been able to make consistent money trading the indexes. A few of us have been stubbornly tryin to "figure" them out, but having used up allot of mental and financial capital we all finally reached the same conclusion. Indexes are a tough trade. If you are going to trade them I think you need allot of patience as well as the experience to recognize the high probability set ups, few of which are the standard patterns you'll find in a typical book on TA.
Could you elaborate on the 9 - 5 sequence. I'm not sure what point you are making with it. FWIW, I think the S&P 500 is a little harder (or easier) to trade because it is a workhorse instrument for so many different trades - index arb, basket trades, portfolio hedges etc. So many different actors are in the market for different reasons that the price action tends to be more herky jerky and display an apparent lack of clear direction than other instruments. That said, I don't think it is necessarily more difficult to trade the S&P. I think good traders try to isolate evidence of the presence of some of the actors and use that information profitably.
Commodity funds tend to avoid the SP like the plague because of many false moves and choppy nature of the markets. Commodity traders tend to lose big when they try to trade stock indexes, and I can attest by past experience although that situation is starting to change. Marty Schwartz trades at 3:1 leverage, and that's ok if you're time frame is in measured in the minutes, but most people cannot daytrade.
I think the Hang Seng is one of the toughest to trade. Paradoxically, the ES is more my style (low index value), but I can't trade it during working hours anymore. It was tough at first, but now I have a hard time adjusting to after-hours futures with higher ATR (e.g. HSI, DAX).