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Looking for all Asian session traders, I know there are a few around here from comments. Hoping to start a thread for general discussion and ideas on products primarily active during the Asian session.
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To start it off, I have been a casual mini-nikkei trader for 3 years but recently have started looking at the HHI on HKFE for some added volatility. I work full time, my own business, so have my trading screens available all day.
All trading styles welcome to discuss, personally I have been a more structured day trader, often only one trade of the day, but this has more to do with the low volatility of the nikkei in recent times. Largest influences for me are general auction theory concepts, volume profile & market profile, basic price action. I do a lot of stats homework and look to apply my ideas in the direction of the historical probabilities.
Each day I develop a few higher timeframe hypothesis from daily bars & multi-day composite VP's, are we in balance, breaking away, etc.. then as the day opens I look for stats in favour of one of the hypothesis, initial balance stats, avg daily range, vpoc shifts, strong impulses. Then for entry I look for signs that allow for a structured risk placement.
Charts look like this most of the time:
Hope some more people can share their trading, I have lots of things I would love to discuss/learn regarding the HSI/HHI if some traders are active in that.
Hi -- yes, I trade Nikkei and HSI most evenings -- just finished for the day in fact. My approach and setup is not so different from yours actually.
HSI is quite volatile but I tend to shoot for trades that yield 30-70 points at a time. In particular, the inevitable relentless pushes to new highs that occur so often and that almost always result in a flurry of liquidity taken 10-25 ticks above the high. The key with the HSI is, when I'm wrong, I get out, no questions asked. As you know, it can run 30-50 ticks in a few seconds sometimes. With other instruments sometimes I will be able to work out a scratch but with HSI I take my small loss and will get back in if necessary. It is relentless and keeps going and going, and when you think it's done, it goes some more. When it pulls back, it can pull back 70-80% just to finish off everyone, before turning around for new highs/lows. Understanding this, it can be successfully traded IMO. I use the ladder in my trading and with HSI, though it is thin, I can really feel the pushes and when it stalls, more so than I can with, say the Nikkei.
Nikkei is more like chess and though it's similar to ES, it tends to sweep multiple levels of the book rather quickly at times, more so than ES in my view. I am sometimes not as comfortable trading the Nikkei based on its rhythm, so I will sometimes trade ES as I can manage the risk better there usually.
I would also point out, in addition to your chart, that the Mini HSI is available to trade at 1/5 the tick value of HSI (about $1.25). I would recommend anyone to start with this. In Sierra, you can set the ladder/chart to use HSI quote/trade data, and to actually place the trades on the Mini HSI, and often the fills are consistent with the HSI, so you get a seamless experience with much less risk to start with.
Yes, great call on the mini contracts, I should have included them.
Very interesting points about the behavior of the HSI. I have been looking more closely at the HHI as it is also well traded and much less volatile than the HSI, but I am so used to the mini-nikkei I am finding it challenging.
Those sweeps you mention in the mini-nikkei are very true, It "appears" to correspond to order flow on the big contract, but who knows really which way it is being influenced at any point in time.
If you are happy to share some of your experience, I have some questions about how you handle different aspects of the HSI;
Pre equity market open (9:15-9:30), because the HKFE does not trade around the clock there is the awkward 15 minutes before the equity markets open that has crazy volatility and consumes much of the daily range %. It seems to completely disrespect any structural level. It has high volume so I feel it needs to be respected, but man it looks ugly..
Thanks for mentioning the HHI -- I have not traded it but am looking at it now and it looks to follow the HSI pretty well but maybe a bit more tame, I will keep this one up and check it out. It has 3x less volume than the HSI so not sure about this..
I just do not trade the pre-open in HKFE .. sometimes I will put something on the Nikkei in its pre-open but yes, the HSI in pre-open is completely crazy and often does 70% of the day's range or something like that, in 15 minutes. I just don't trade it, and often don't trade the HSI itself until at least a few minutes in when it's settled on a direction more clearly.
I would recommend you do a google search for "AMP futures all in cost calculator" and that will give you RT commission cost. Search for "AMP futures margin" to get the margin required. I could link it but that may change, so best to just search IMO.
@amoeba - I just took a nice little short on the HHI to test it out -- it's not as liquid as I'd like and sort of prefer the HSI, at least, when it's muted as it is in early China afternoon time. Seems that although the book is thicker than HSI, the bids/offers will hold a while and then break sharply, so it's not too smooth. But all around, I will try it again for sure!
For sure, if you are located in Chiang Mai it would be usual day trading hours for you too.
The two primary brokers I know of are IB & AMP Futures, possibly any other broker who clears through AMP too.
For data feeds, nikkei is pretty limited to CQG based feeds (or IB's awful feed), but HKFE is available on a few others, also if Sierra Charts is your platform they offer HKFE in their dedicated data feed solutions.
Edit - For HHI/HSI commissions IB is by far the best, but you have to use the tiered commissions to get the best rate, it is almost 50% better!
Good points, I think I was mostly looking at the HHI for my total risk per trade with at least two contracts for scaling in/out. But I will take a look at the MSI and see if I can find a comfortable risk per trade threshold. Like you mentioned, in the HSI, even using the MSI and two contracts still reasonable risk per a trade given the rotational volatility.
