Believe it or not, the ES is most probably the best in terms of cheapest future. On a given day that the ES will move 10 points during RTH, the NQ can easily do 50-60 points. Consider that 10 points for ES is $500, but 50 points for NQ is $1000. YM is the same story. It doesn't matter that its only $5 per tick because it will blast through dozens of ticks in no time. Looking at this another way, consider a stop of $100. For NQ, that is 5 points, and this means your stop can hit in about 1-2 seconds. For the ES to move $100, which is 2 points, it generally takes more time to do this. The swings are smaller. When the ES does move 2 points in only seconds, its generally quite significant, or at least a move orchestrated to run many stops, which isn't easy to do.
You really have to look at the charts yourself and figure out what your own definition of trendier is. Its the only way to make it work because later, when you look for trades, you're the one that will have to see what you need to see in order to put on a trade.
It depends on how you define “cheap”. If you mean the translation from price to contract value I would suggest short term bonds such as Korea 3yr, German SHATZ and US 2yr. For equity NIFTY and XINA50, both being traded on the Singapore exchange. For currencies M6E. Then you have GE (Eurodollar) and V2TX (“European VIX”). Those give you some possibilities for diversification as well.
There's a mini-kospi?! I thought the KOSPI was super expensive per point. I want to be able to scale in like 20 contracts without it being $250 each move against me.
Which market do I need to find KOSPI? I saw KSI and KSIC on SierraChart but couldn't open the first index.