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Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,052 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,394
Thanks Received: 10,209
Sorry tlopez51 I misunderstood you. When you said earlier that you wanted to roll positions, but not using a spread, and thinkorswin allowed you to do this simultaneously with no slippage I had this picture in my head of a software right click menu where one of the options was "Roll to next expiry" where the system would execute the spread for you without telling you what it was actually doing.
In TTs XTrader executing a roll is just like trading any other instrument
That is what makes the thinkorswim platform so unique. The guys who envisioned this platform where floor traders themselves and wanted to created something simple to use yet allow the retail investor to have similar tools at their disposal like the professionals do. The downside to the platform today is that it has grown so much and has so many built-in features from inception that it has become very laggy during high volume trading periods which makes it difficult to trade the futures with. Otherwise, it is in my opinion one of the best platforms out there today.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,052 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,394
Thanks Received: 10,209
Question, not addressed specifically to tlopez51, but to everybody.
Calculating slippage on stops, automated trading system, large orders etc is easy but how do you calculate slippage for futures rolls?
If the market is 101/102 and you buy 102s is your slippage
a) 0 because you sent an order to buy 102s and you got filled at 102
b) 0.5 because the value is 101.5 and you paid 102
Now consider that the spread drops slightly and closes tonight at 100.
c) 2 because you bought 102s and settlement was 100?
When your rolling one lot this may not seem important, but if your USO/UNG and your rolling tens of thousands of lots of crude or natgas every month it can become significant - especially when everybody in the market knows your trying to do it.
For what it's worth I personally would evaluate myself based upon b) but I'm normally rolling more than 1 lot.
I believe the biggest rollers in the energy markets (like USO/UNG) evaluate themselves based upon c).
In fact both CL and NG have Trade at Settlement products for the front spreads as well as the individual months.