Hi everyone,

My name is John, and I'm learning the basics of trading Futures.

My first question is about gaps (and it's a really beginner one I guess!):

I have seen a good video (in french) about a "fading the gaps" strategy (on the mini dow for instance), and it sound interresting.
But on my mini dow charts (YM) there are no gaps because the contract is traded virtually 24/24 (except for the week-ends) so there is only one gap every week!
In the video, on the guy chart, the timeline starts in the morning (at 8H30 a.m or something) and stops at about 3:30 p.m, then the next day starts directly (and there is the gap).

The video is 3 years old. Do things have changed during this time period? I have read things about globex session and cash session, but I don't quite understand... Can someone explain me ? If there are no gaps anymore for the mini dow, on which asset can we trade the gaps?

Thanks for your help!

IMO , best practice to use settlement price https://ftp://ftp.cmegroup.com/pub/settle/stleqt

Futures Daily Settlement Prices - CME Group

If you want to see the gap, change your session times from 24hr eth to rth

Regular Trading Hours RTH

OK, great, thanks for the ETH RTH, I've found the settings on Sierra chart and now it looks fine.

About the settlement price, if I understand correctly (from investopedia, I still can't post links), it's an average of the the last day prices calculated twice per day , both the open and close of each trading day. So why there is just one settlement price per day for the YM on the CME website?

Thanks again!

Each type of contract may be calculated differently and using different times so check with the exchange for the contract of interest, I think it's worded funny on Investopedia , perhaps meaning a calculation to determine the open price as well... there is one final settlement price (I believe) , some people just use closing price

The closing Prices for indexes etc are more and more being called into question as a higher percentage of orders are not going through the exchanges themselves but dark pools etc.... So keep an eye on Ca$h final prices as well.... *

https://www.cmegroup.com/market-data/files/cme-group-settlement-procedures.pdf

https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/e-mini-dow_quotes_settlements_futures.html