Futures trading

[superfrank]

I've not traded crude oil before. What sort of Market is it?

'not sure what you mean...

[jimrobo]

as in is it like the e mini and a rotational market or more like the t note and a trend trading market?

Whats the liquidity like?

[superfrank]

you'd have to have a look at the charts and decide that for yourself.

very good liquidity in US trading hours and not bad outside.

many intra-day traders seem to trade oil.

check out this guy's blog...
http://protradered.blogspot.com/

[Euler]

Somebody recommended http://www.velocityfutures.com yesterday to me.

[jimrobo]

thats who I am with

[superfrank]

Somebody recommended http://www.velocityfutures.com yesterday to me.

They were a broker I considered before settling on Mirus.

'also heard good things about Interactive Brokers http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/main.php.

don't go near Infinity Futures.

[jimrobo]

you get data free though with infinity

[superfrank]

you get data free though with infinity

same with Mirus, not sure about IB. I guess you get lower commissions when you have to pay for data, swings and roundabouts.

[jimrobo]

not for the charting package I use though

[Iron]

“Pure market making strategies have no view or opinion on which direction the price 'should' move. Indeed, as we shall show, the most profitable scenario for a market maker is one in which there is virtually no overall directional movement of the stock, but rather a large amount of non-directional volatility.”

From http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~tanmoy/papers/CK11.pdf

Market making sounds like a lot trading the range on Betfair…

Jeff

[superfrank]

Tom Baldwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Baldwin_%28trader%29) made tens of millions market making (intra-day scalping) on 30 year bonds (ZB) described in his Market Wizards interview (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Market-Wizards- ... 211&sr=8-1).

[superfrank]

I've been doing quite well on futures recently so I decided to invest in the full version of NinjaTrader (http://www.ninjatrader.com/) - Lifetime License $995. The standard version (which I've been using up until now) is free.

The full version allows you to automate stops/profit targets and also gives you access to NinjaScript so that you can create your own indicators/strategies (and download existing ones and share with others).

This is a video of automated trade management from the previous version of NinjaTrader (the girl's voice is fab!)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrEc_sk6mOA

[RafterP]

Aaargggh its the return of the chipmunks!

[Euler]

Is breating in helium a requirement of using Ninjatrader?

[superfrank]

A simple indicator example for those interested.

'Spread' simply tracks the difference between 2 prices.

You apply a multiplier to one of the prices first (so they roughly tally up in terms of dollars) then the difference is plotted automatically.

In this example the Spread shown (at the bottom) is comparing the oil price (main chart) to the dollar index (the oil price and dollar strength are obviously related).

http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/8536/cldxspread.jpg

Probably works nicely with correlated stock market indices.

All indicators are lagging by their very nature, which is why I don't go mad on them, but they can provide some useful info.