Someone please help a newbie

[vish4al]

Hey,

I was hoping someone could help me out with a couple of questions. I am looking into developing a trend following system. I am not looking for help on the system yet but more on the execution side of it. I want to eventually get to a spreadsheet VBA based mechanical trading system as my VBA is pretty good.

I live in the UK. Having looked at the options available to me I think spreadbetting is THE best way to execute my orders for two simple reasons. One it is tax free and also I am completely currency hedged. I have read a lot about spreadbetting companies 'fudging' the price in their way but surely a FSA regulated company can't do this. So my question is, why don't all speculators use it? What are the downsides of spreadbetting as opposed to directly trading mini futures?

The major road block I have is that most markets seem to have daily contracts which are no good to me as I want to take longer term positions and don't want to deal with rolling costs. The issue is I'll be using technical analysis - therefore all my entry/exit levels will be based on historical prices. I can get daily historical prices (through a feed) but the daily price I get, won't be the same as the quarterly futures contracts I'll be trading. The problem with using the quarterly futures pricing is a lot of the time the prices don't go back far enough, for obvious reasons. What is the solution to this?

Any help/input would be GREATLY appreciated.

Cheers

 

[nash02]

Hey,

I was hoping someone could help me out with a couple of questions. I am looking into developing a trend following system. I am not looking for help on the system yet but more on the execution side of it. I want to eventually get to a spreadsheet VBA based mechanical trading system as my VBA is pretty good.

I live in the UK. Having looked at the options available to me I think spreadbetting is THE best way to execute my orders for two simple reasons. One it is tax free and also I am completely currency hedged. I have read a lot about spreadbetting companies 'fudging' the price in their way but surely a FSA regulated company can't do this. So my question is, why don't all speculators use it? What are the downsides of spreadbetting as opposed to directly trading mini futures?

The major road block I have is that most markets seem to have daily contracts which are no good to me as I want to take longer term positions and don't want to deal with rolling costs. The issue is I'll be using technical analysis - therefore all my entry/exit levels will be based on historical prices. I can get daily historical prices (through a feed) but the daily price I get, won't be the same as the quarterly futures contracts I'll be trading. The problem with using the quarterly futures pricing is a lot of the time the prices don't go back far enough, for obvious reasons. What is the solution to this?

Any help/input would be GREATLY appreciated.

Cheers

Hi Vishal

All Spreadbetters manipulate, some far more than others and I've personally experienced / recorded it a number of times.

I'll leave a personal message for you

 

[meanreversion]

Pinnacle Data (based in Webster, NY) are a good source of futures data (is this what you wanted?)

There are 3 methods for linking futures contracts, this can be found on the web.

 

[vish4al]

Pinnacle Data (based in Webster, NY) are a good source of futures data (is this what you wanted?)

There are 3 methods for linking futures contracts, this can be found on the web.

okay I realise I might have been a bit vague, so let's take an example. I want to take a long term futures position in gold. Now currently there are three contacts available, daily rolling, Dec 10 and March 11. I am getting daily OHLC prices for spot gold and I need a fair chunk of history to implement my system. Now based off the daily spot prices I am getting I now have an entry level and stop loss level. The issue is how do I implement this? I can't use the dec 10 or march 11 contract as the prices are obviously not the same and I can't use the OHLC for the dec 10 or march 11 contract as prices don't go back far enough. So how would I go about implementing my futures strategy if the contracts roll quarterly?

Cheers for any help.