Trading The SPI - NON-Gann Techniques

[professor_frink]

Hey Prof
Why, just out of interest, do you trade the HK markets?

Afternoon trembling Hand,

They trend so much better intraday compared with almost any other index, and the trends are huge

The Hang Seng is at lunch now, and in the morning session alone there has been a range of 245 points, or $1850+ AUD per contract.

The H-shares index has had an intraday range so far of 356 points, or nearly $2700 per contract.

Granted this morning was a really good morning, but the great thing about these contracts is that these kinds of great days happen quite regularly.

 

[Edwood]

just logged on to see the sell-off - disappointed to not be in it, very busy with other stuff at the moment - hope some of you are riding it!

 

[Broadway]

just logged on to see the sell-off - disappointed to not be in it, very busy with other stuff at the moment - hope some of you are riding it!

It's fun to watch things trend, every strategy and indicator works!!

Gotta feel sorry for the stockmarket and my super..

 

[ISPIZ]

Hey Guys,
Trust all is well for everybody.
My first post, I was wondering how many of you trade the SPI all day as in not far from computer for most of the day and even the night for that matter coz SPI does some great things at night as well.

 

[professor_frink]

Hey Guys,
Trust all is well for everybody.
My first post, I was wondering how many of you trade the SPI all day as in not far from computer for most of the day and even the night for that matter coz SPI does some great things at night as well.

G'day ISPIZ,
welcome to ASF

Generally I'm not too far from the computer most of the day. The few times I've held the SPI o/n, generally I've just got the computer running with stops in place, and let them do the work.

 

[Edwood]

Hi ISPIZ, welcome to SPI! I tend to focus on the last hour of all sessions (early morning) and the first hour or so around the open. Depends on the action & longer term pattern really as to whether or not I'll watch it all day. If you have other things on tho its not a bad place to be, its not a maniac like some of the Asian indices

 

[Edwood]

well the consolidation continues - sold off quickly from the all time highs but also bought up pretty quickly off channel support... just keep trading the range I guess

 

[CanOz]

You think this GAP will get filled or is that a big ask? Not too many get missed....i'm having some fun paper trading this lately....was looking for a reason that it bounced this morning, then put fib on it, it was out only .3 of a point.

Cheers,

 

[Edwood]

You think this GAP will get filled or is that a big ask? Not too many get missed....i'm having some fun paper trading this lately....was looking for a reason that it bounced this morning, then put fib on it, it was out only .3 of a point.

Cheers,

hi Can - have been following your trading system & 'diary' threads - good stuff!

0.3?! must be a failure then

to be honest I've only ever looked at gaps between close of previous day session and sycom close. would be interesting to look at intra-session ASX gaps. personally I'd quite like to see Aus get up to new highs after all this fluffing around in the consolidation - if it can't I guess we'll have a decent bit of resistance up here to stop future advances

 

[CanOz]

hi Can - have been following your trading system & 'diary' threads - good stuff!

0.3?! must be a failure then

to be honest I've only ever looked at gaps between close of previous day session and sycom close. would be interesting to look at intra-session ASX gaps. personally I'd quite like to see Aus get up to new highs after all this fluffing around in the consolidation - if it can't I guess we'll have a decent bit of resistance up here to stop future advances

Can't find a trade i like for my portfolio lately. Too much volitility at the moment too, better for indexers like you lot!

I've been mucking about lately with weekly, monthly and daily pivots on indexs and how trade setups presents themselves. I'm not really interested in trading index futures atthe moment, but i'm interested in learning how to spot the entries like you guys do, fascinating.

Fibb never ceases to amaze me...just as pivots do.

Cheers,

 

[kerosam]

hi fellows,

found this thread not too long ago. Considering SPI after going to one seminar.

Few questions:

1. what is 'spread'?
2. if the index is volatile, stop-losses will not be tight then? or is there a stop loss strategy in trading SPI?
3. is it suitable for non- day traders?
4. how to buy a SPI contract?

as you can see, i am quite green in this topic. any further info will be much appreciated. i'm just trying to pick up things and learn. for all its worth, it might not suit me.

thanks in advance.

 

[professor_frink]

hi fellows,

found this thread not too long ago. Considering SPI after going to one seminar.

Few questions:

1. what is 'spread'?
2. if the index is volatile, stop-losses will not be tight then? or is there a stop loss strategy in trading SPI?
3. is it suitable for non- day traders?
4. how to buy a SPI contract?

as you can see, i am quite green in this topic. any further info will be much appreciated. i'm just trying to pick up things and learn. for all its worth, it might not suit me.

thanks in advance.

G'day kerosam

1. Difference between the bid/ask.
2. Can be volatile at times. Whatever stops you use will be dependent on what kind of time frame you are trading in.
3. It most certainly is suitable for EOD trading. All types of traders are welcome
4. You'll need to have an account with a futures broker.

If you after some reading material to help get you started, Brett Penfold's book "Trading the SPI" is meant to be pretty good. Available in the ASF bookshop

 

[Trembling Hand]

hi fellows,

found this thread not too long ago. Considering SPI after going to one seminar.

Few questions:

1. what is 'spread'?
2. if the index is volatile, stop-losses will not be tight then? or is there a stop loss strategy in trading SPI?
3. is it suitable for non- day traders?
4. how to buy a SPI contract?

as you can see, i am quite green in this topic. any further info will be much appreciated. i'm just trying to pick up things and learn. for all its worth, it might not suit me.

thanks in advance.

Compared to other equity index futures the Spi is not that volatile. So you can have tightish stops intraday. If you are thinking of trading EOD/overnight style you need a reasonable account size because if you set your max stop loss at 2% of the account and you say its not that uncommon for the SPI to gap up/down 50 or more ticks thats $1250 ($25 per tick) so you would need $60,000 in your account without a draw down to trade 1 contract.

To buy a spi you need a futures account. Futures Codes are generally made up of six characters. The first two characters identify the underlying security or commodity and are known as the commodity code in the case of the spi its AP. The third character identifies the trading month, current contract being U and the fourth and fifth characters identify the trading year. If there is a sixth character, then D refers to Day contracts and N refers to Night contracts.

If you are new to the game and don't have $100,000 to throw away try a CFD account that gives you a contract like the spi but @ 1/25 the size. Good to learn. If you can break even on these step up to the real thing. I have an article on my blog why they are harder to make money with the CFDs but still they are a good learner.

 

[wiseguy]

hi fellows,

found this thread not too long ago. Considering SPI after going to one seminar.

Few questions:

1. what is 'spread'?
2. if the index is volatile, stop-losses will not be tight then? or is there a stop loss strategy in trading SPI?
3. is it suitable for non- day traders?
4. how to buy a SPI contract?

as you can see, i am quite green in this topic. any further info will be much appreciated. i'm just trying to pick up things and learn. for all its worth, it might not suit me.

thanks in advance.

Hey Kero,

Here's a SPI trading sim you could try out. Not sure where you can get free live SPI charts. but you could always use futuresource if you wanna trade EOD stuff.

http://sfetradinggame.if5.com/home.aspx
http://futuresource.quote.com/chart...FE&o=&a=V:15&z=1200x750&d=MEDIUM&b=CANDLE&st=

 

[CanOz]

Hey Kero,

Here's a SPI trading sim you could try out. Not sure where you can get free live SPI charts. but you could always use futuresource if you wanna trade EOD stuff.

http://sfetradinggame.if5.com/home.aspx
http://futuresource.quote.com/chart...FE&o=&a=V:15&z=1200x750&d=MEDIUM&b=CANDLE&st=

The above three posters offered excellent advice. Even better is the particular idea to use a simulator or at least paper trade. You could easily wipe out a trading account here.

Read Read Read, plan plan plan, manage risk, and then trade paper for a while.

Cheers,

 

[macca]

You can set up a demo account at CMC.

That is live data, if you play it each day it will stay active for a month or so.

 

[Trembling Hand]

No intraday bull in the SPI. Here is a chart I posted yesterday on another thread. All the gains in the Spi have come from the overnight gaps. The data I used is on my blog if you want to down load it yourself. Also will have a couple of theoretical trades based on the data in the coming days/weeks.

 

[Edwood]

(From XAO) Just posted a worked example on my blog but bottom line no. A gap down is still 50/50 each way for the rest of the day.

Here’s the meat of the post;
If the market gaps down you would expect that it would work in your favor to trade short that day but the SPI has gaped down on the open more than 0.3% 133 times since January 05. It has closed that day higher than the open 67 times (50%), if you got bearish on an overnight gap down and were intraday position trading by the end of the day you would be at a loss 50% of the time. If you take a gap of 0.5% down on the open which has occurred 78 times it has again closed higher than the open 40 times being again about 50%.

Hi there - copied this over from XAO, probably more relevant here, hope thats cool.

If your data allows maybe take a look at how the SPI usually reacts in the first 90 mins after it gaps down, but don't worry about the rest of the day - i.e., if you're trading intra-day don't necessarily worry about the end

 

[>Apocalypto<]

Put a long over the Ig xjo (SPI) last night while it was -2 and the us futures were +15 i have been doing this on a couple of times at 10.30pm latley its a good way to make some extra coin over night as long as the dow holds its line but our xjo session can make havoc for your lead if we weaken during the day like happened a couple times to me last week.

Frink cheers for the comment u made that the spi is the xjo during our trading day call me silly but i had no idea that was the case.

So Ig xjo is pretty much the spi really just priced at the xjo.

Looking like a good day right now but over records maybe

If your data allows maybe take a look at how the SPI usually reacts in the first 90 mins after it gaps down, but don't worry about the rest of the day - i.e., if you're trading intra-day don't necessarily worry about the end

Yep it sure dose Edwood has to correct the lead to market level. I have not tried to trade it though, I notice at 9.50 it makes a run then corrects around 10.10-10.20.

 

[Edwood]

I have an outstanding gap around 8 pts lower than the LOD, would like to see that hit really, but reasonable chance of some retrace now