|
PureBytes Links
Trading Reference Links
|
> From:
> "kevin shin" <kalalex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To:
> "RealTraders Discussion Group" <realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>
> I use Tradestaion RT for charting to trade only futures and futures options
> and confronting this problem.
> When I put a symbol in the symbol portfolio and download all the historical
> data I can get from Dialdata,,,(or whatever the data vendor) there isn't
> much historical data going back,,,,example for SP8H,,,,,only goes a few
> months back to,,,,,for daily bars.
> With this much information on any contract,,,,how can any one analyze long
> term trend,,such as monthly,,or weekly??
> I know for a futures contract, there isn't much activity if you go back
> far,,,,,then how do you guys base your long term analysis??
> I'm not sure if I made myself clear,,,but any one understood the problem,,,
>
> please post the answer on the group,,,,,(I'm sure there's someone else with
> same problem here,,,who just started using any charting software) or If you
> want to know more about the problem,,,,you could email me privately...
>
>
Hi. People analyze long term charts using continous contracts, or
nearest futures contracts. Nearest futures contracts use data from the
nearest futures month, using the next one as soon as the current one
expires. On the nearest futures chart, since different month's prices
are different, sometimes by a wide margin, there will be a big rally up
everytime the data from the next new nearest month was used. Of course,
that's just the result of plotting the prices of a new month. On
continous contracts, the data will not be the actual prices of the new
months, but that's still better than having a rally, or what seems to be
one, every few months. Continous contracts show the price movement a
trader would have experienced if he were in the market, rolling over
each time the current month expired. There are different purposes in
each kind of long-term contract, but the most widely used are continuous
contracts. Hope I've been somewhat helpful.
Sincerely,
Anthony
P.S. I don't use Tradestation, so I cannot help you with that. Sorry!
|