This is why its important if you trade the 6E( as I do ), then its better to wait till 2am-3am NY time when London and rest of europe start getting into the game thus offering best liquidity for good fills. And of course beginning around 7-8am NY time I would stay out of the micro contracts until higher sustained volume is realized on a daily basis. I think it will take at least a yr or two for that to happen, IF it ever does.
I'm not following your issue with stops. Are your stop orders resting on the CME order books or on your broker's servers released after a price is touched? Many brokers manage advance order types (trailing stops, OCO's etc) on their servers which may allow price to skip through. Stop Limit orders resting at CME should process fluently.
The stops rest at the exchange, but they are triggered by the last transaction not by Bid/Ask. If there are no transactions/trades the stop will not get triggered. Unless there is something that I don't know. Please feel free to correct me.
I disagree...again, this is the perfect "practice" Forex futures contract...you can hold overnight at small margin and even trade intraday. Honestly the slippage and volume is no issue if you are wanting 20-100 plus points...
You are correct. If there is no trade at your limit price the stop doesn't trigger. They do have stop limit orders with protection but that will only keep you from being filled at extreme prices. CME's version of market orders... trade will fill inside of 50% of the no bust zone for the instrument or remain on the books as an order at the limit price. Page 30: http://www.cmegroup.com/globex/files/ElectronicTradingConcepts.pdf
hey Jaba122: "I scalp 6E intraday. However I use smaller leverage," - clarify please - how do you scalp the 6E but with smaller leverage ? - using the E7 or M6E ? PocketChange, thanks very much for posting the CME manual the manual's really a 'must read', at least the parts releating to futures one thing that worried me was if I was in the market and my isp went down, as it has done and expect will do so again, how do I close any open position/s ? AMP's trading desk will close trades: hours: 7am - 4pm USCT - ask for trading desk: 1 800 560 1640 or 312 893 7050 other numbers: http://www.ampfutures.com/tradedesk.html only other matter is I have an audio alarm set to 1:50pm PST to warn me the market is closing at 2pm attached M6E and 6E 60 min charts displays 11 daily sessions' volume: 6E based on 300,000 contracts traded on current month: 84180 secs in 23 hour day = 3.56 contracts traded per second, 217.4 contracts per minute E7 and M6E est: 6,000 contracts = 0.07 contracts traded per sec, 4.35 per minute for the most part the volume peaks match; most peaks at 8am PST which is 11am NY time, 4pm UK time the peaks look as tho they're a one way trade, I mean you could surmise buying or closing trades is going on, but you don't see a peak for an opposite trade or close for instance on 2/16 - Buys but little 'take profit' volume at the end of the session 2/17 and 2/18 come out flat tho there's a rally into the close on 2/18 and 2/28 looks like the volume peak was after the highs of the price will add a volumes chart for the E7 on the weekend, tho I think its volume is similar to the M6E
the attached shows the story of 3 Demo/Sim NinjaTrader trades, 2 M6E and 1 6E first 2 trades Sell 5 M6E and Sell 1 6E the 6E executed right at the market price but the M6E fill was way off as you'll see on the chart, and the same when using Close to exit the trade, 6E was left open a second 5 M6E Sell but using the Sell Ask and closing with the Buy Ask, or Bid ??
Simply put, I don't calculate $500/contract, I will trade with around $1500/contract, 6E. Some people, especially newer traders get excited about the possibility to trade 1 contract in a $500 account. Not me, been there done that. Right now taking control of the risk is my #1 concern. Risk management, Position Sizing, Trade Management, etc... boring stuff like that. Longetivity is important to me.