I prefer after some backtesting to trade the Dax instead of the more liquid ESTX50 or sp500. There is not much difference but the vol is slightly higher and the times are slightly better for me since I live in Europe and I prefer the granularity.
Good question sometimes they are not quite in sync. As far as I have seen during US hours it's the US major indices that lead. However my intention is to trade Dax on it's own.
I trade the DAX CFD in my UK morning session, then move to ES futures when the US markets awaken. At that point, they are certainly highly correlated.
Thanks for solving a problem I was still strugling with TraderDaveUk. Idd it makes more sense to trade Dax in the morning and then switching to sp500 in the afternoon. Doing that solved a problem I was still having on a certain day in my backtesting.
I've noticed this with the FTSE100 too (I'm in the UK). Its schizophrenic intraday - it can be madly bullish all morning but when US futures start to be quoted before the NYSE opens, the FTSE becomes a little lamb and just trails it around. Holding the FTSE across the NY open is a pure gamble.
morning Dax: long 12713 after an RT opening hour from hell and the second hour hardly any better where I managed to sit on my hands / out at 12729.5 and off course now it goes through the roof .... well this is a marathon not a sprint.
afternoon trading s&p500: short 3658 (15M ib break) / exit at 3610.5 (once again 15M ib break) for a more than satisfying afternoon.