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Who Day Trades Micro Gold?


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Who Day Trades Micro Gold?

  #1 (permalink)
Couponator
Seattle
 
Posts: 9 since Oct 2020
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Hi guys,

I'm new to this site and I come from the spot forex world where liquidity isn't an issue and position size is easy to determine. I decided to switch to futures trading because I wanted to learn order flow trading and trade on a regulated exchange.

I'm trying to find instruments that I can trade given the time period that I like to trade - 7:30am EST to 10am EST. The reason for these hours are complicated but I have made it work in forex (actually a very good time for forex).

One of the things I have some experience with is XAU/USD, so I thought maybe GC would be an option. However, MGC would offer more flexible position sizing. The question is, however, what is the liquidity like? It seems fine when I look at the charts, but again, I'm quite new to futures so I don't have the best baseline from which to judge.

Is it something that you can scalp a few ticks from or no, don't even try it? I searched for older threads and there was one from several years ago so I didn't feel it was relevant. Also, if you guys have suggestions for other instruments that I should consider instead I am all ears.

Again, I am super new so sorry for any naivety!!

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  #2 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: MultiCharts
Broker: Barchart.com
Trading: Everything, it all tastes like chicken
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Couponator View Post
Hi guys,

I'm new to this site and I come from the spot forex world where liquidity isn't an issue and position size is easy to determine. I decided to switch to futures trading because I wanted to learn order flow trading and trade on a regulated exchange.

I'm trying to find instruments that I can trade given the time period that I like to trade - 7:30am EST to 10am EST. The reason for these hours are complicated but I have made it work in forex (actually a very good time for forex).

One of the things I have some experience with is XAU/USD, so I thought maybe GC would be an option. However, MGC would offer more flexible position sizing. The question is, however, what is the liquidity like? It seems fine when I look at the charts, but again, I'm quite new to futures so I don't have the best baseline from which to judge.

Is it something that you can scalp a few ticks from or no, don't even try it? I searched for older threads and there was one from several years ago so I didn't feel it was relevant. Also, if you guys have suggestions for other instruments that I should consider instead I am all ears.

Again, I am super new so sorry for any naivety!!

No apologies necessary, everyone here is at a different level of their trading.

I don't scalp and my trading is 98% automated, so I can't guide you there. But if you want to see volume, either bring up a chart or go directly to https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/metals.html, and go to the Metals page and you should be able to find volume for MGC. I use the volume charts almost every day from here, mainly to make decisions on which contract month I am trading (nearest month is not always the best month for what I do).

Personally, I have successfully and unsuccessfully traded MGC, and it has sufficient liquidity for what I was doing.

Good luck!

~vmodus

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  #3 (permalink)
 
FastNCurious's Avatar
 FastNCurious 
saint louis MO
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: TradeStation
Trading: NQ, ES, YM, CL, GC
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vmodus View Post
No apologies necessary, everyone here is at a different level of their trading.

I don't scalp and my trading is 98% automated, so I can't guide you there. But if you want to see volume, either bring up a chart or go directly to https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/metals.html, and go to the Metals page and you should be able to find volume for MGC. I use the volume charts almost every day from here, mainly to make decisions on which contract month I am trading (nearest month is not always the best month for what I do).

Personally, I have successfully and unsuccessfully traded MGC, and it has sufficient liquidity for what I was doing.

Good luck!

Speaking of trading MGC I have algos that I am working with that require a continuous contract to see historical data. This seems to be a problem for MGC. When I type in @mgc I get a data error. Is there a work around for this?

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  #4 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
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jburke75 View Post
Speaking of trading MGC I have algos that I am working with that require a continuous contract to see historical data. This seems to be a problem for MGC. When I type in @mgc I get a data error. Is there a work around for this?

I ran into the same thing a couple months ago while developing a strategy for MGC. TradeStation, to my knowledge, does not provide a continuous contract for MGC, yet. I am sure they will eventually. For now, you will have to go contract by contract using the expired contracts. At least you have the flexibility to do your testing date-based, volume-based, or whatever rule you have for rolling into a new contract.

Even when they have continuous contracts, MGC is so new that they will probably use synthetic data (derived from GC, I'm guessing) to fill in the years before MGC, which is what they did for MES and other micro instruments. So it will not be spot-on. For my strategies, there are differences between the micro and e-mini data that strategies developed for ES do not necessarily work on MES, and vice-versa.

~vmodus

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  #5 (permalink)
 kevinkdog   is a Vendor
 
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vmodus View Post
I ran into the same thing a couple months ago while developing a strategy for MGC. TradeStation, to my knowledge, does not provide a continuous contract for MGC, yet. I am sure they will eventually. For now, you will have to go contract by contract using the expired contracts. At least you have the flexibility to do your testing date-based, volume-based, or whatever rule you have for rolling into a new contract.

Even when they have continuous contracts, MGC is so new that they will probably use synthetic data (derived from GC, I'm guessing) to fill in the years before MGC, which is what they did for MES and other micro instruments. So it will not be spot-on. For my strategies, there are differences between the micro and e-mini data that strategies developed for ES do not necessarily work on MES, and vice-versa.

@vmodus and @jburke75

I recommend using the @GC contract to test. Once you have a good strategy, you can create a version with MCG current month as data1 and @GC as data2, and have all calculations reference data2. I have a document describing that, which you both know how to access.

You can also create a custom futures contract for MCG with Tradestation. You just have to mimic the @GC as much as possible (rollover rule, and which months to trade). Send me an e-mail if you need help with that.

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  #6 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
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kevinkdog View Post
@vmodus and @jburke75

I recommend using the @GC contract to test. Once you have a good strategy, you can create a version with MCG current month as data1 and @GC as data2, and have all calculations reference data2. I have a document describing that, which you both know how to access.

You can also create a custom futures contract for MCG with Tradestation. You just have to mimic the @GC as much as possible (rollover rule, and which months to trade). Send me an e-mail if you need help with that.

Great advice, @kevinkdog . One of our custom filters uses volume in it's calculation, so for us the backtesting gets wonky using the method you suggest. For anything using price only, assuming a time-based charts, the process you describe should work fine as a proxy. Thanks for the assist, but I'm good with data2, custom contracts, ADE, etc. for passing data around.

~vmodus

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  #7 (permalink)
 kevinkdog   is a Vendor
 
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vmodus View Post
Great advice, @kevinkdog . One of our custom filters uses volume in it's calculation, so for us the backtesting gets wonky using the method you suggest. For anything using price only, assuming a time-based charts, the process you describe should work fine as a proxy. Thanks for the assist, but I'm good with data2, custom contracts, ADE, etc. for passing data around.

So then I'd try to create a custom futures contract with MCG, which Tradestation can do. You just have to mimic rolloever and contract months that Gold uses. I would not use volume from MCG though.

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  #8 (permalink)
TheTradingDojoMX
Cuernavaca, Mexico
 
Posts: 10 since Feb 2021
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It all depends on the size of your account, but I'd go with the micros.

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  #9 (permalink)
 
SBtrader82's Avatar
 SBtrader82   is a Vendor
 
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Hi, I have been trading both gold and micro gold for a while. After many months I decided to stop trading micro gold almost completely.
Micro gold is not liquid enough and slippage and commissions can kill you.
From time to time you can take some longer time trade6a on MCG, but if you plan to scalp or make several trades per day it's not a good instrument.

If you want to trade micros go with micro NQ and micro ES.

If you traded forex also micro euro dollar is quite ok. However it's more for longer timeframes. If you want to scalp, take MNQ.



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  #10 (permalink)
 
FastNCurious's Avatar
 FastNCurious 
saint louis MO
 
Experience: Intermediate
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I’ve been trading micro gold for 8 months now. Profitably. I have started to position size one breakout strategy and I am getting ready to go for the major contract but due to margin requirements I have held off. I figure once I got 30-40 k I can start to trade the major contract. Currently trading 5 micros with a 25k account size. The main reason for the larger account size is because I have many other strategies trading at the same time and I have to have enough capital to trade those as well.

I haven’t noticed too much slippage really. But I could see how multiple in and outs in a day could add up. Most of the time my strategy is in and out the same day but occasionally it holds for more of a swing trade time frame.

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