Spreading FTSE PNF Style

Not so good today

Hi folks,

Todays action via the D4F daily cash wasn't so good. In fact a bit of a rarity.

JonnyT
 

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D4F Versus Futures 4/3/3

Hi folks,

I've added the FTSE futures price action today so it can be compared with D4F cash.

The futures trades were around BE today.

JonnyT
 

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Hi, JonnyT

Just looking at today's results you would have done better stopping out, rather than reversing, on the break of resistance at 3657 on the SBs, only reopening a trade when you had a new reverse from DT signal at 3645. I imagine you have looked at this in your backtesting? Are you better off in general reversing when you break resistance rather than waiting for another clear entry point?
 
Hi Peter,

There are loads of permatations. I just haven't tested many!

My preffered one is to look for 50 points in the morning and 30 in the afternoon and to hold through some reversals etc.

It should be remembered that today was a very low range day so is not really typical.

JonnyT
 
Hi Jonny,

My reading of P&F for today's Ftse Future is different.
Last's night close was 3663. The opg trade was 3623. The previous down line low of O's was 3657. Therefore the break point was 3654 which was not tradeable. The Chart has been in a downtrend all day. In fact there was a buy signal at 3609 at 16.59. Too late to act on anyway, unless you want to run overnight.

Happy trading,
 
Last edited:
Hi Jonny

I didn't do much better with a total -3 before spreads although this included a -3 on a mistaken trade.

Interesting that a neat Bearish resistance line could have been drawn above most of todays action. I noticed it about 3.30pm -Ain't hindsight wonderful.

Thanks for adding the actual futures data to your SS.
 
I had a look at this today and noticed twice in the morning D4free quoted a bid price of 3,657 but on their chart it only reached 3,656. I am using MM5.

So to replicate your p&f chart I had to ignore the quote window and plot from the chart.

The problem is, when using stop orders, will the order be filled at the quote price or the price on the chart?
 
Bigbus, This is called slippage. It's one of the "hidden" costs!

Good luck,
 
Hi BigBusiness,

Deal4Free do not always fill at the quoted price. I have had the quoted price go 5 points past a stop loss without being filled.

JonnyT
 
Hi Big business

Thanks for your observation about D4F prices vs the chart. I thought I was seeing things (or rather not seeing things) when I went back to check my chart against D4Fs at half time.

I do remember reference to one company only graphing prices at which deals had taken place but can't remember if it was D4F or not.

So far I've had all my index stops met at the set price although the on -screen price does seem to move beyond the stop price before it the system activates the stop.

Not necessarily the case with my share bets though particularly if the price has gapped.
 
It's Not Too Late...!

Repent ye spread bettors before the biased phantom spirits away your carefully hoarded sheckels - repent I say.

And seek thy salvation in the Futures.

:)
 
I think the moral of all this is that you get what you pay for.
The most important things for daytrading are reliable accurate price feed, and accurate charts. If you're working off bad data/charts, your entries and exits could well be wrongly placed. You can't afford to be wrong on 1min data.
There seems to be a lot of people out there looking for free or cheap data and software. Pay up, how much is £1500pa. on a daily basis. It's the tools of your trade. From the numbers some people are throwing around, it's a p*ss in the ocean.
It's the best investment you'll make. There's nothing worse than worrying about corrupt data slow feeds and computer crashes.
It's too distracting. You want to be trading, not worrying whether your setup is running OK.

Happy trading,
 
Evening All

I appreciate what you're saying chaps and couldn't agree more. However I've no intention of getting a futures account untill I've proved to my own satisfaction that I can make a moderate profit on the indices using SBs. (and apart from that all spare cash is tied up in the RBSA 10% return ISA scam until the end of the year)

And in that case we're stuck with the question - what data to use for the D4F FTSE cash indices, which aren't actually the cash indices but which have a spread of 3 compared with the spread of 5 on the futures.

When I trained as an accountant (back in the days when "professional integrity" was part of the training and PC Dixon was still on the beat) we were taught that "comparability" was a major requirement. To me in seems that if you're speculating on a "bastardised" instrument and there is only one data source for it, then that is the one you use.

Rant over..

*comparability - this years accounts must be prepared using the same basii as last years so that one can truly judge the company's performance. - seems like another world!
 
Dr Mike said:
To me in seems that if you're speculating on a "bastardised" instrument and there is only one data source for it, then that is the one you use.
I've been reading this board for a couple of months now, and am planning to try a little spreadbetting in the near future. One recurring theme on this board (apart from bias, large spreads etc), is that you should trade off a different chart to the one provided by the SB company.

This struck me as being slightly odd. I am glad I am not the only one. It seems that trading off a different instrument believed to be the 'underlying' instrument is risky unless you know exactly how the SB instrument is derived. If you do know, then great - you can try to second guess a) what the market is doing, and b) how the SB company will adjust it's instrument in response, and c) how you should trade to take advantage of this extra information.

Failing that, trading off the SB chart is surely less risky than trying to second guess the SB's responses to the underlying instrument.

As long as the derived instrument broadly follows the underlying instrument, then it can be traded with the same basic rules. If this is true (and I suspect it is) then TA on the SB instrument should work quite nicely.

Spread and bias are basically irrelevant to this argument, since you are still trading with the SB company regardless of what you happen to be reading at the time. Your only 'free variable' is the time at which you enter/exit a trade. Now if anyone wants to claim that an SB company has delayed figures, I'm all ears!

-svengali
 
Morning all,

Here's an example of dodgy software.
I'm running Tenfore Satellite RT feed Ftse Future into Tenfore's charts,Indexia2 and Updata's TA.
At approx. 09.30 March traded 3579. Tenfore printed it, Indexia printed it. Updata only printed up to 3578. Therefore the buy signal at 3579 was not given in Updata's 3x3 P&F.
In this case it would've done you a favour :D (at the moment) but that's not the point.

Good luck
 
Dr Mike,

I can't pretend to be an expert on P&F but just from reading these posts the problem seems to be that P&F produces different charts depending on the actual prices, not on the volatility. So if instrument one goes from 100 to 110 to 80, you will get a different chart from instrument two which goes from 110 to 120 to 90 (so prices are different, even though they are both moving by the same amounts). The solution, it seems to me is to just alter your P&F configuation so that instead of having a base at 100 (for instrument one) you would have your base at 110 (for instrument two). Does that make sense, or am I missing something? The difference between a futures price and a 'cash' price varies from day to day (because of time value) but should be the same intra-day.

svengali - you don't need to 'second guess' the SB company. the difference between the SB futures price and the 'cash' price is a standard formula and is totally transparent.

cheers
 
Just opened D4free MM5 and there was a software upgrade. One of the fixed problems is:-

-----------------------------------------------
Chart time slippage issue resolved.
-----------------------------------------------

Don't know if this was the reason why my P&F chart looked different.
 
mmillar said:
So if instrument one goes from 100 to 110 to 80, you will get a different chart from instrument two which goes from 110 to 120 to 90 (so prices are different, even though they are both moving by the same amounts).

There will be some small effects. For example, in this case if the box size is 3 then, since the offset is 10, the starting prices will be at different positions within the box. However, I think you will find that this is small factor. The biggest issue here is that the FTSE cash SB, from D4F, at least, is not simply the near future offset by some constant.

Take a look at the D4F cash bet at 14:15 today. There is a 7 point step in the price which is not related to any equivalent move in either the FT future or the D4F future bet.

In the end the asnwer must be, as Mike suggests, you have to trade the same instrument that your chart is for. That is for me the overwhelming reason for not using SBs wherever possible. Without excessive manual effort (which I tried for a while) it's just not possible to chart the SBs properly.
 
mmillar said:
you don't need to 'second guess' the SB company. the difference between the SB futures price and the 'cash' price is a standard formula and is totally transparent.

Exactly my point. If the difference is transparent, then you don't gain anything by watching a different data source. You might as well simply watch the data from the SB company.

If the difference is not transparent (which some on this board believe), then you have just made your life harder by trying to use a different data source.

Either way, I believe you are better off (or at least not worse off) by simply using the data from the SB company.

However, the view often expressed here is contrary to that - namely you should ignore the SB company's data and trade off a different data source. I cannot see the advantage in doing this, so either I am a) missing something or b) someone else is missing something. Being a beginner, I suspect a. So, please enlighten me! Why do people prefer to use different data to that provided by the SB company?

-svengali
 
It doesn't matter whether you're using cash, futures or SB. Everything will average out over time.
It is all about price. The underlying will dictate the move.
The method of P&F is breakout. It's about how you use it, not what you use it on.

Happy trading,
 
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