Traders' Roundtable

If we are not talking intraday, my understanding is that QQQ and SPY would trade not like indexes but rather almost like futures (they have to -because of arbitrage), the problem with testing on SPY is that its historical quotes have to be adjusted for dividends.

Thank you for the answer. I do fully agree with TWYTTWYT.
I should have made myself clearer.
The system under consideration is NOT an intraday system. What I'm trying to do is to use raw DAILY (O,H,L,C) index data to generate signals for actual futures trading - as PART of the system. I will ...

I came up with a promising system for swing trading index futures. I have backtested the system based on indexes downloaded from Yahoo, and it shows quite dramatic results in particular on ^SPX. However, in the upper left corner of Yahoo Finance Page the link to S&P 500 points to something called ...

I came up with a promising system for swing trading index futures. I have backtested the system based on indexes downloaded from Yahoo, and it shows quite dramatic results in particular on ^SPX. However, in the upper left corner of Yahoo Finance Page the link to S&P500 points to something called ...

Sebastian,

Yes, you are right. The 700+ traders example doesn't illustrate very well my reference to computerized institutional trading. If it were fully computerized - traders wouldn't be needed. But that's the only real life example I have! I can't take those traders out of the picture since I ...

Verec and Sebastian,

You are free to praise each other's wisdom if you enjoy it. To me your revelations are nothing more then collection of platitudes. " Do your own homework ", " No free lunch " - how profound indeed. Now, I would gratefully accept patronizing attitude from many members of this ...

Verec,

I asked a question. You don't have an answer. Why post ?

Kiwi,

No argument here - if one can recognize a tradeable pattern - trade it, no matter against whom. This doesn't deter me from being interested (not preoccupied!) with my question on markets' particpant classification. This interest is not steered to improve my trading, but rather to satisfy my ...

Well, if anyone can classify market participants in quantitative manner, that would really help.

And I am still not convinced by the discussion. :( Ivy League smarts or simply geniuses are needed for generating bright ideas, finding market inefficiencies and developing monstrous software - not for ...

Who are the players in the Future Markets nowadays ? I know there is official statistics on large speculators and hedgers, but that seems skewed, as a speculator would report himself as a hedger etc. I want to have a better sense of who is on the other side of my trades. In this minus sum game what ...

I can see that the tick is indeed 2.5 times wider for ES then SP (0.25 vs. 0.5 on a five times smaller contract). Not so for Nasdaq - the tick for full contract is 0.5 - exactly five times of e-mini Nasdaq 100. Question: is there often more slippage then 1 tick in E-mini trading ?

I'm new to the futures. This forum is by far the best source of info on the Net I could find so far. I have many questions, but let me just start with one.

What are the disadvantages (if any) of e-minis as opposed to pit traded futures? The slippage is supposed to be none (is that right?), the ...