8:30am or 9:30am? normally I do not care about that, since most time i start to trade crude at 7:30am. I notice some time like today the market starts to move quickly around 8:30am with no news, though shorted it at 60.5, covered it at 58.8. since 2:30pm later, crude is being traded in light volume (someone called AH)
officially, the electronic market is open all day except 5:15 PM to 6 PM. the floor hours (mostly options) are 9am-2:30pm most volume trades when the 'floor is open'. some trades before, about 8:30 (and earlier) but it's choppy. all eastern time zone.
thanks for your reply. do you have any idea about margin requirement in different time? I try to trade more contracts before 8:30am, it seems my order was rejected because of margin limitation. but after a while, it seems I can trade double number of contracts (intra-day margin?) do you have any idea, when I am able to use intra-day margin ?
although the exchange has final say on margin, each clearing firm has their own rules. i would check with them about their intra-day margins. i don't know of any official margin changes due to the time of day. also, if you are close to margin in your account, it is possible that you were over margin if your account was down when you tried to make the extra trade!!
thanks for your reply. I found it out this morning. it seems after 9:00am, I can trade double size of contracts over overnight position (2:30PM to 9:00am, beyond 45minutes break). the reason I want to know is I want to speed up making money, crude is a very awesome tool to extract money from the market. I hate ES, YM, NQ those index, too many traders, very few trending days, most days are very murky. basically i am a trend trader, I hate to buy dip and sell pop. shorted it at 60.3, covered it at 59.5