Thank you for the very detailed answer.
Unfortunately I use Zenfire (which has other advantages), so I have to continue entering the settlement prices manually, as I do every morning.
Since you had all the close and settlement prices for ES last week, would you tell me your source?
In my experience, it is not only a question of a tick or two. In the FDAX today for example there is a difference of 5.4 points (settlement 5722 vs. 5706), FGBL has a difference of 3 Ticks, FESX 3 ticks.
Now of course one can argue, that this is not so important. Well, it depends on the actual values. I quite often have really big differences, depending on the evening action (evening in Central Europe, afternoon session in the states), after the settlement price was set . If there's a lot of action in the american markets, the pivots based on settlement or actual close prices will of course differ. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
And I like to trade the FX Futures. In my opinion they generally run quite well to their pivot levels. So I need to have reliable pivots. And since this is an almost 24 hour market (the cash market is), you have to find a generally accepted close price. As I see it, this is the settlement price, calculated at 14:00 CT for FX Futures. If one would use the close at 16:00 CT, one would get data from a very low volume period, where small volume can lead to bigger changes and therefore lead to more or less "wrong" pivots.
But all of this is more a theoretical discussion and other traders can and may have another opinion of course. What counts in the end is what the majority does, since it is not very helpful to have ones own "little secret" values that nobody else has. In the end nobody will trade them.
Unfortunately I use Zenfire (which has other advantages), so I have to continue entering the settlement prices manually, as I do every morning.
Since you had all the close and settlement prices for ES last week, would you tell me your source?
In my experience, it is not only a question of a tick or two. In the FDAX today for example there is a difference of 5.4 points (settlement 5722 vs. 5706), FGBL has a difference of 3 Ticks, FESX 3 ticks.
Now of course one can argue, that this is not so important. Well, it depends on the actual values. I quite often have really big differences, depending on the evening action (evening in Central Europe, afternoon session in the states), after the settlement price was set . If there's a lot of action in the american markets, the pivots based on settlement or actual close prices will of course differ. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
And I like to trade the FX Futures. In my opinion they generally run quite well to their pivot levels. So I need to have reliable pivots. And since this is an almost 24 hour market (the cash market is), you have to find a generally accepted close price. As I see it, this is the settlement price, calculated at 14:00 CT for FX Futures. If one would use the close at 16:00 CT, one would get data from a very low volume period, where small volume can lead to bigger changes and therefore lead to more or less "wrong" pivots.
But all of this is more a theoretical discussion and other traders can and may have another opinion of course. What counts in the end is what the majority does, since it is not very helpful to have ones own "little secret" values that nobody else has. In the end nobody will trade them.
Comment