Use E-mini instead of SPY?

S

short&naked

Can the e-mini be used to swing trade the SP500? I would like to take advantage of the 60/40 tax rule.

How do you make a futures contract (which of course expires) into something that behaves more like a fund (SPY)?
 
Not sure what you mean by 'swing trade' -- but why not? It's just another trading vehicle to give you broad market exposure or hedging.
 
Quote from rickf:

Not sure what you mean by 'swing trade' -- but why not? It's just another trading vehicle to give you broad market exposure or hedging.
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rickf,

I was talking about trades that you'd hold overnight for a few days to a week or so.

My question was, how do you keep a contract from expiring. SPY doesn't expire.
 
Quote from short&naked:

rickf,

I was talking about trades that you'd hold overnight for a few days to a week or so.

My question was, how do you keep a contract from expiring. SPY doesn't expire.
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Just roll the ES futures contract the week before it expires. :)
 
Quote from short&naked:


My question was, how do you keep a contract from expiring. SPY doesn't expire.
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Yeah. Just roll it over to the new expiration date. e.g. if you long: sell Mar 09, buy Jun 09 immediately.

As long as you have enough margin in your account, you can keep rolling indefinitely. The day-trade margin and overnight margin are a bit different for futures (day-trade: lower, overnight: higher). So... check with your broker.
 
Thank you very much!

Btw, IB has contracts for ES, YM and SPX. I thought there were only 2 (YM and ES) futures contracts that track the SP500. What is the SPX?
 
I thought the symbol was SP, and SPX was the actual index, but regardless, there's a big contract and a mini one. The big one is 5x the value of the mini one (mini is $12.50 per tick, big one is $50, tick is $.25 on the value of the S&P 500).

The YM is the Dow, NQ is the Nasdaq 100, there's also TF (different exchange, though), it's the Russell 2000.
 
Quote from Susannah:

I thought the symbol was SP, and SPX was the actual index, but regardless, there's a big contract and a mini one. The big one is 5x the value of the mini one (mini is $12.50 per tick, big one is $50, tick is $.25 on the value of the S&P 500).
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To clarify:

The value of the S&P 500 futures contract can be calculated by multiplying the futures price by $500. For example, if the S&P's are trading at 1089.50, the value would then be $500 X 1089.50, or $544,750. The minimum price fluctuation (tick) for the S&P's are .10, so a tick up or down is worth $25 per contract. A full point has 10 ticks in it, which is worth $250 per contract (.10 X $25 = $250). The E-Mini S&P 500 is on the same price scale as the regular (full) S&P 500, the difference lies in the tick and point values. The E-Mini S&P trades in .25 ticks and is worth $12.50 per tick; and a point is worth $50
($12.50 X 4 = $50). As you can see the E-Mini's are one fifth the size of the full S&P 500 contract.
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http://www.tradingconceptsinc.com/eminitrading/what_are_emini_futures.shtml


SP is the full S&P 500 futures.
ES is the e-mini S&P 500 futures.
 
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