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Hi All,
I'm trying to set up a strategy in Tradestation for automated trading. It seems like for futures the ticker with specific month has to be specified (for e.g crude oil @CLV21) to be able to open the chart, turn on the strategy and trade. In this case, how do we deal with rollover?
In Thinkorswim, the user does not need to specify the months. Is there a way to do the same in tradestation?
Any advice is really appreciated!
Thank you,
AP
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Thank you tr8er.
I don't think you can trade with just the ticker in tradestation. Looks like we have to specify the expiration of the contract along with the ticker.
You can only trade a specific contract anywhere, because that is what is traded.. The continuous contracts are artificial constructions, useful for charting and testing, but not real.
In ThinkOrSwim, you can have "/ES" (if I remember it right) or whatever on your chart, and you can trade based on that chart, but what TOS does is enter your trades in the current front month of ES, so that's what you're trading. TOS rolls to the next contract automatically if you don't specify the actual contract you want to trade, and it will enter your orders to that month.
The point is that you can use either the continuous contract (with the "/ES" contract code) or the actual contract (which would something like /ESU21, or however they do it), on your charts or DOM. If you use "/" with no month code, TOS will just use the current front month by default.
I used TradeStation a long time ago to chart with but not for trading, trying the platform out, and I don't recall how they did it. But from a trading standpoint there basically is no other usable way to do it, if they display the continuous contract on a chart that allows you to enter orders.
You can probably get this answered quickly enough in the Help, or someone who is a TradeStation user may jump in. Or, you could just try putting in a sim order with the continuous contract and see what it does.
Bob.
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Edit: sorry it you already knew all this and if it didn't answer your question.
Why not just toss in a test order (sim would probably be best) and see if it rejects it or not. That would tell you, either way, I think.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
. The