Glad to hear that you are having good results with X-Trader! Do yourself a favor and get COMCAST high-speed cable BROADBAND. They usually have an introductory rate of $19.95 per month for the first 6 months, and then $42.95 thereafter with no service contracts that lock you in like SBC and their DSL. I'm running at 1700 kbps on my download and 230 kbps on my upload with COMCAST and loving it!
no broadband available in my area at all. while I do have a fabulous mountain view from my office I have to struggle for internet connectivity. So don't take your cable connection for granted I'd have to add it all up but I probably pay about $400/month for 256K isdn connectivity. I'm considering office space but that will be a real hassel given I trade DAX and ES, now it's so simple for me to trade the early dax session then go back to bed for a couple hours before the US markets open. The folks at Velocity Futures are helping me price out T1 connecivity, I know it's gonna be steep compared to what folks 15 miles from here are paying for cable access but it's the price of doing business.
the X-Trader Simulator right alongside my Realtime Refco Pro-Trader and believe it or not, the X-Trader is only about a "milli-second" behind! It really is a great platform, and I can only imagine how fast it is LIVE. Trade ONE EXHANGE on X-Trader for the $500.00 monthly fee. Trade TWO EXCHANGES and it is another $250.00 for a total cost of $750.00 per month. Thus, subscribing to both the CME and CBOT would be $750.00 on X-Trader.
TT tech charges the firms per exchange for using its X Trader? has to be cheaper for cme / cbot members using this product I better take a look at moving to chitown and leasing a seat to use X Trader
Interesting info. Is DAX execution with X_Trader really quicker to execute on Eurex, like it is on ES? I wonder if it's worth it for me, since most of my trades are limit-orders anyway, and native (on Eurex). A more accurate reason is that I really love ButtonTrader. It is a great platform I got really used to. As for broadband - Not everyone can get line bundling. My old place had nothing but a pair-gained copper cable, which can't be bundled, so there was no choice but to move into the city. Satellite has far too much latency, and there is no other option. Now, rather than an analog phone line, I've got broadband with ~1.6 down and 512 up (assymetric / ADSL), it is fantastic. But you really need to be as close to the exchange as possible - Thus, city location pretty unavoidable. The new connection stability is 100%, always-on, and super-low latency. It rocks. Funny, same thing here. However, my "cost of business" was to give up a fantastic beach & riverside house and move into "the smoke". Office? Wasn't for me, because of 'weird' trading times. I gave up the view for a city "seaview" (a little strip of sea from one window in the office, LOL) apartment, I am paying a lot more rent, and I am paying a lot more for internet connectivity. Is it worth it? Oh man! Funny, you also trade both the early DAX session and then ES? Is this coincidence, or did you pick that idea up from me? Warmest Regards And Happy New Year! Scientist
My goal is to do what you are doing with the Dax....I already trade the ES in the first 2 hours. Here is my schedule in California: Trade the DAX midnight-2:00am (under construction) Go to sleep Wake up at 5:00 AM pst Trade ZB at 5:20 AM Trade ES at 6:30-8:30AM Go to work Trade NQ from work at EOD 3 times/mo always in. 16:00 or 17:00 take a nap before dinner I do not have the mountain office yet though Michael B.
What I don't understand is how people can trade (scalp!) a market, then straight go and sleep 2-3 hours and then trade again? To me, trading is a bit like caffeine. It'll keep me up for at least 2 hours after consumption. By the time I'd be asleep, I would have had 1 hour. And besides, how about "after-market reconciliation procedure"? I always reconciliate all my trades, logs, etc after I've traded a session. This alone takes me at least an hour after session. On top of that comes preparation for the next session. I thought I was a true sloth, but you guys obviously have a faster sleep than me.
I started doing this around April or May of 2003 so my body has had some time to adjust to short spurts of sleep, I wake up alert and ready to go without the use of an alarm clock. Here's my schedule, east coast time. sleep 11:00pm-2:45am Dax trade 3:00am - 5-6am nap from 5:30-6:00am - 8:30am 8:30-9:30 premarket prep, breakfast 9:39-11:15 Dax and/or ES, depending upon market setup 11:30-2:00pm lunch break.. fresh air walk 2-3:30pm Trade ES "maybe" very optional session 4:30-8:30 nap/dinner family time 8:30-9:30pm prep for next day I've found that if I get one block of good sleep, usually 3-4 hours between 11pm and 3am I'm good for the day, the other "naps" are just to clear my head and re-focus. I've actually found that as long as I have about 30 minutes to close my eyes I can regain my focus and energy. I NEVER trade thru lunch and if I feel spacy the afternoon session doesn't happen but I don't sleep I'll usually do something outside. I think the key to this for me anyway is I always have a very well defined trading plan, If I go into a session without a gameplan I quickly try to catch myself and call it quits. Sometimes that happens, I'll find myself hacking away and realize that either I don't really have a plan that's in sync with the market or I'm not focused enuf to follow it. That's where I try to teach myself self awareness and typically I catch that before it does much real damage and I'll terminate my trading for that session.
Have you ever recorded a trading session and re-played it or parts of it, to revise, or trade even the recording? I have found this to be a powerful way of reconciliating certain market events, opportunities, and sharpen my focus for the next session. It's almost better than going back through your log - particularly for a scalper. ButtonTrader can be a little cumbersome for this, since it only lets you record and play sessions at once, but many good platforms let you rewind, forward etc., to back-track and re-trade certain bits.
I'm sure there are many trading DAX early session as well as ES, besides I thought you said you started trading dax about a month ago, I've been doing it since May 2003 I noticed with IB just that slight delay between the time I hit the order and it went native. Also I just didn't feel like the dom was responsive enuf. I was using ninja trader, so even if I was trading off my ninjatrader dom, I focused on my jtrader dome to time my entry/exits. As I began to develop more of a feel for trading off the activity in the dom I began to really feel hampered by the execution delay time of IB, jtrader execution seemed relativitly quick but suffered from some reliability issues as did IB. Also I began to notice my eurex commissions were a big expense as my volume increased, cutting those down with a more competive broker has a positive effect on the bottom line. I do think xtrader makes a difference on eurex, I also use limit orders exclusively but it seems I'm better able to hit them accurately with xtrader than with either jtrader or IB.