Yes and no.
ES / NQ may not always be "friendly", although the idea is an interesting starting point.
Edit -- issue with the relative contract size also.
ES / NQ:
Futures spread trading
- Thread starter Lucias
- Start date
ES / NQ may not always be "friendly", although the idea is an interesting starting point.
Edit -- issue with the relative contract size also.
ES / NQ:
last I checked ES/YM had about a 95% correlation, which means it is almost impossible to make money unless you know what you are doing.
If you stare at every tick of ES for years and try to scalp it you will know what you're doing whether you want to or not.
I probably lost a week off my life expectancy for every 1k I made.
I've got my own thing going on now in forex which is nothing but spreads
A good one for me this week has been
long AUD/CAD
short EUR/AUD
short EUR/CAD
If I was keeping score in EUR I would just be cancelled out, but I'm in the good old USA
* A 95% correlation with a non-random drift may be unpleasant.
the bid/ask is implied from existing outrights. you dont cross anything.
Example:
Sep Bid @ 75.90,
Oct Offer @ 76.83
Oct/Nov Bid @ -0.52
generates
Implied IN Bid in Sep/Oct spread @ -0.93 (1st Generation)
Implied OUT Offer in Nov @ 77.35 (1st Generation)
Implied IN Bid in Sep/Nov spread @ -1.45 based on the Sep Bid and Nov offer above (2nd Generation)
Right, but it has to match with other spreads then, yeh? Different order book.
Quote from bone:
Many traders that have done both well might profer the opinion that it is easier to be more consistent trading spreads. And of course, once you are truly consistent then you lever the piss out of your strategy and away you go.
Most traders who are truly proficient in both strategies believe that spreads certainly "behave" and model better than singular flat price instruments. Below, the bar chart is the ES vs. NQ intramarket spread differential, and the line chart is the ES future by itself:
What does H/J Nat Gas look like historically for here to expiry- flat ?
Not sure if it has made its "collapse" for the year ...
If one's interest lies in simply capturing a bid/ask spread and avoiding "non-random drift" (??) then a very restrictive pure arbitrage strategy is your only real option.
And you will not find a technically pure arbitrage opportunity in a retail setting - at least, not for long.
And in a bank or HF desk scenario, the returns will almost certainly be too modest to justify the sunk capital costs and financing.
There are plenty of very deep pocket basis traders in the world already.
Regarding the "non-random drift" ( ? ), we actually model for convergence and divergence - it's the cornerstone for our strategy.
And you will not find a technically pure arbitrage opportunity in a retail setting - at least, not for long.
And in a bank or HF desk scenario, the returns will almost certainly be too modest to justify the sunk capital costs and financing.
There are plenty of very deep pocket basis traders in the world already.
Regarding the "non-random drift" ( ? ), we actually model for convergence and divergence - it's the cornerstone for our strategy.
Yes & no.
There are a number of pairs out there where one leg has a much wider bid/ask than the other, and yet the pair tracks reasonably well, with some involving multiple legs. The tricky part, for this convergence only strategy, is establishing which pairs are stationary, and trading off the random events / unusual data points -- the outliers in the series. Random data points need to not be an accumulation of trades leading to a non-stationary relationship. If the drift is non-random there is no relationship there.
Not sure this is overly restrictive, but yes, it is conservative & low risk, and may not suit a reatil trader with small capital and no leverage. Yes, in a retail setting, transaction costs are an issue, but there are a lot of DMA providers for small insto customers now, where the costs are acceptable.
In a bank or HF desk scenario, this kind of thing is two pronged. It's both prop, and customer facilitation. Liquidity for clients is created by the bank being willing to take a side of certain flow, giving the customer price improvement. In addition the strategy can, and is applied to various asset classes as well as derivatives. At it's lowest risk, on a derivs market making desk, making near pure hedges [different pricing]. At it's simplest, for rolling over positions toward expiry. At it's riskiest perhaps, to punt on mergers getting through, target vs acquirer.
As for justifying sunk capital costs, most if not all of the global brokers already have reasonably fast DMA platforms now, so the infrastructure is already there. By comparison, this kind of strategy is pretty low cost to setup, and then low risk to run.
...
I'd be interested to know more about modelling for divergence rather than convergence.
What's the significance of that black line? I'm sorry but I can't see how that is better behaved then the flat price. The flat price is just consistently grinding up with little volatility..
The black line is all over the place looks to me... It isn't making new highs as much, is that what you are referring too?
OKAY I got it. The black line is the raw price... I agree the spread appears better behaved.
The black line is all over the place looks to me... It isn't making new highs as much, is that what you are referring too?
OKAY I got it. The black line is the raw price... I agree the spread appears better behaved.
Quote from bone:
Many traders that have done both well might profer the opinion that it is easier to be more consistent trading spreads. And of course, once you are truly consistent then you lever the piss out of your strategy and away you go.
Most traders who are truly proficient in both strategies believe that spreads certainly "behave" and model better than singular flat price instruments. Below, the bar chart is the ES vs. NQ intramarket spread differential, and the line chart is the ES future by itself: