Seasonal spreads

I've closed out the NG spread at -0.704, even though my profit target was set at -0.650. My reason is that it looks like the move has ended for the time being - the momentum has stopped for now.

Sold 1 Nov 07, Bought 1 Dec 07 NG Natural Gas @ -0.704 - CLOSED - PROFIT 0.200 which is 2.000 usd.
 
Quote from kahai:

Out of curiosity, in your own spread trading are you using fundamental, technical or seasonal analysis?
More...
All of the above. Technical analysis brings a trade to my attention, fundamental analysis gives me the confidence to stay in longer, and seasonal analysis helps keep me out of buying into a sucking downdraft. :-)

Really, when I come up with an interesting trade (and it could be interesting for any of technical, fundamental, or seasonal reasons), I'm really trying to find as complete a list as possible of reasons NOT to do the trade. I like fundamentals a lot because they allow me to reason (either pro or con) beyond the subjective, "I like this bull flag" (or whatever the chart pattern is).

What about you?
 
FullyArticulate,
I owe my involvement with commodity spreads to hrokling when I stumbled on this thread. His idea and experiment to simply follow a statistical seasonal pattern which worked in the past and more or less ignoring fundamentals appealed to me and I made it even easier on me by subscribing to MRCI. I think he has been extremely successful so far with his relative small account and the recommendation of MRCI for the last several months also have worked out very well. As I have pointed out previously, I don't expect that to continue without some serious drawdowns.

On the recent interest spreads I saw some fundamentals which supported MRCI recommendation and I jumped in big time which paid off handsomely. But otherwise I am just starting to learn about fundamentals - can you recommend some materials, books, websites, newsletters etc.?

I just thumbed through the book of Courtney Smith and am not sure if it will help me much. I enter and exit trades by simply looking a the charts and use my gut feeling. I am dubious about some technical indicators like the one advocated by Joe Ross. Has anyone experience with his paid subscription service or has anyone seen a performance report? I get his free, once a week recommendation but have not actually traded them.

Any comments are always welcomed. BTW, are you also doing any cash forex (not futures) trading?
 
Yesterday saw the spreads in financials break and give up quite a bit of profits, and the uptrend looks to be broken.

Today I've made the following trades:

Sold 1 Dec ZN 10-Y Treasury Note, Bought 1 Dec ZF 5-Y Treasury Note @ 2 20/32 - CLOSED - PROFIT of 27/32 which is 844 usd.

Sold 1 Jun 08, Bought 1 Dec 07 GE Eurodollar @ 0.475 - CLOSED - PROFIT of 0.265 which is 663 usd.

Not at all happy with the Eurodollar exit.

I also opened a new spread:

Bought 1 Dec 07, Sold 1 Jul 08 ZM Soybean Meal @ -7.00

I'm in early, and intend to add to this position.
 
Today I added another contract in the Soybean Meal spread, this one at -4.50. With my first contract entered at -7 this makes the current position of 2 contracts at -5.75 avg. For the record this reads:

Long 2 Dec 07, Short 2 Jul 08 ZM Soybean Meal @ -5.75
 
Today I added yet another contract in the ZM-spread - this time at -3.60. The new average for 3 contracts is -5.0333. For the record this reads:

Long 3 Dec 07, Short 3 Jul 08 ZM Soybean Meal @ -5.0333
 
I've been trying to do intermarket trades using IB's Combo Trader for the spreads GBP/JYP and LE/HE. I couldn't get it to work, so I got on the Chat. They said Combo Trader only supported Calendar Spreads. Is that everyones' experience here? Doesn't sound right.

Thanks guys.
 
Medowz,
If you look a couple of posts back you will see that I confirmed to Joryan that it is possible to do intermarket spreads with Globex contracts by using the order window. You can also do it with the combo window by dragging the two contracts into the window.
 
Kahai,

Read it, then I must be having some sort of tech problem with the TWS. I couldn't get the combo tool to work on either a intra or intermarket spread. The combo generic window doesn't show the legs at the bottom either. Something isn't right. It would sort of do one leg via Globex then stop. The SMART routing thing just kicked it out all together. I'm not getting much help out of IB. Been playing with it for two days. Thought maybe others might have experienced similar problems.

Cheers.
 
hi hrokling,

Saw your thread looks very interesting. Wha does your P&L look
like to date. How many wins, losses, biggest win/loss, smallest win/loss.

Thanks,

J-law
 
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