08/30/2022 |
Announcement: Real-Time Futures Data Coming Soon!
For some time now, many of our customers have requested real-time Futures data. We’re proud and super excited to announce that we have inked a redistribution agreement with the CME to allow us to bring Real-time Futures data to TrendSpider traders. This means that not only will you now have access to real-time Futures data, but you’ll also be able to scan, backtest, and alert on Futures, as well!
What Are Futures?
Futures are a type of derivative where investors can bet on the price of an asset by a date in the future. There are many different types of futures contracts, some trade with unique tick values, and others trade using unique trading sessions. Some trade 24 hours a day while other Futures contracts have trading pauses mid-day. This is an extremely robust and nuanced asset class and there are many details that Futures traders need to think about that traditional equity or cryptocurrency traders need not. That said, the Futures market is extremely liquid, has inherent leverage, and has the potential to be a very lucrative market to trade in.
Advantages Of Futures
Besides the ability to use this asset class data across the TrendSpider platform, there are several other advantages to using TrendSpider for your Futures trading research and analysis. Specifically, the terms of the licensing agreement are better with TrendSpider. For example, we have received special permission from the CME so that our customers do not have to tie their access to real-time Futures data feeds to having a live Futures brokerage account. Additionally, we are able to offer a full bundle of all major Futures exchanges for one exchange fee.
Data Feed Breakdown
These new data feeds will replace the existing End-of-day (EOD) Futures data feeds we currently support.
The new data includes all continuous Futures contracts traded on the following four exchanges: CME, NYMEX, COMEX and CBOT. TrendSpider customers will be able to access the majority of the contracts on all these exchanges from within their accounts.
This means that a number of things will change:
- End-of-day Futures will no longer be provided in TrendSpider for free.
- Real-time Futures data will be available as a paid data feed (to pay for the Exchange Fees associated with Real-time Futures data.) This exchange fee will be $7.50 per month for non-pro traders.
- In order to access Real-time Futures data, traders will have to proactively subscribe by completing the exchange agreements inside of the TrendSpider application. When you open a Futures contract for the first time, you will be prompted to entitle your account to access it by completing an online form.
- Symbols for various Futures contracts will change. For example, currently under the End-of-day Futures data, “ES*1” is the symbol for the E-mini S&P 500 Futures Contract. This will change once the data is upgraded to match more standard symbology with roots that match CME symbology. The new symbol for this same contract will be “ES1!”.
- The change in symbology will break your watch lists if they contain a Futures symbol using the old format. This means you will have to replace all the symbols in your watch lists. We cannot do this automatically for you as there are some nuanced differences between the contracts.
- This new data is being offered under a Beta umbrella, meaning that there may be some bugs and issues that need to be worked out. There are also a few known issues that we have proactively addressed via temporary limitations. For example, you will not be able to create alerts in TrendSpider on Futures contracts using several time frames (including Daily) as your trigger time frame immediately. This capability will be added shortly after the release of the data feeds on the platform but not before.
- There are some known issues related to drawings transposing across time frames. For example, if you draw a trendline on a Daily chart and then zoom into a 5-minute chart, it is possible for your trendline to land incorrectly. This is a known issue that will be addressed shortly after the data feeds become available.
- There are some other known issues and limitations around this data that are too small to mention here but you may encounter them while using the application. Please be aware that we are working on improving the Futures data implementation here and will follow up with additional releases down the road that add capability and reduce known issues and bugs.
As always, we hope you find this change to the platform to be useful! If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to us in chat via the ‘Contact Us’ button in the bottom right-hand corner of your charts!
