HSI - Mini Hang Seng, and the big brother MHI

I live near Toronto, eastern time zone, I work during the day (not in the finance or trading field). I have free time after dinner and do some short term trading. Forex doesn't do much from 7pm to midnight unless you want to play ranges and scalp. Scalping doesn't work for me. I was looking to trade something that moves a little less choppy, has some liquidity, shows the volume, and can be traded technically. From my research which includes reading forums and blogs I have found the Asian markets are a good place for that. I'm taking trades at night on the mini Hang Seng futures (HSI).

Other contracts I have looked at include the following;

SPI - S&P/ASX 200 Index (Australia) APZ9-SNFE-FUT-AUD

mini Hang Seng Stock Index (MHI) MHIV9-HKFE-FUT-HKD

MSCI Taiwan Index @ SGX TWV09-SGX-FUT-USD

Be sure to adjust the symbol for the correct contract expiry before trading.

Of the above, I have chosen to concentrate on MHI. Here is the chart so far tonight, 1 minute time frame over several days. As you can see it trends nicely and has the odd gap fill. Trading shuts down for lunch time in Asia and when the come back there can be huge swings in the opening price, so trade small. I typically trade 1 or 2 contracts, depending on the set up. Right now the P/L is up and down, I'm learning the instrument and as long as I stay afloat and break even over the week I'm generally happy for now.

Intraday - HSI


Daily Chart - HSI


UPDATE:

Mr. Addict blogs about his experience with trading this instrument, both discretionary and Auto trading. Very interesting read and to me, his blog shows that he checks his results, indicating a high level of interest in success. This is something I lack (the checking results part) but I'm working on keeping the trade journal up to date. I'm going to use another approach and use AFL to import my IB TWS generated trade log and plot the trades. Then my notes will make sense. Keeping a spreadsheet doesn't appeal to me, it to slow, I prefer scratching notes.

Mr. Addict contributed a very valuable comment for those that trade MHI or HSI and use IB as their broker. Here is his comment, I've inserted the approximate USD equivalent values beside the HKD value so you can easily relate.

Addict said...

Why don't you try the full size contract, i.e., HSI instead of MHI? The bundled commish on MHI is 34 HKD (4.38 USD) per round trip and it's worth 10 HKD (1.29 USD) per tick. So price has to move four ticks in your favor to break even.

With HSI, the commish is 60 HKD (7.74 USD) per round trip, but each tick is worth 50 HKD (6.45 USD). So price only has to move two ticks in your favor to at least break even.

Better yet, go unbundled and you pay only 20.30 HKD (2.61 USD) per round trip for trading HSI, and 13.16 HKD (1.69 USD) for MHI. With unbundled, you need only one tick movement in your favor to break even with HSI, and three ticks with MHI.