advice needed.....

I screwed up today.....I had one ES contract left short that I meant to cover before Globex closed today, but I got distracted by the phone ringing at just the wrong the time and missed the close by a few seconds. So, here I am still short 1 ES contract without the ability to do anything about it until Globex opens on Sunday at 5pm CST.

Are there other markets I can follow this weekend (do Asian markets open earlier?)to get a sense of might happen when Globex opens...or do I need to just try and forget about it until Sunday?

This is a good question. You need an after-market for this sort of thing. I know that the spread betting companies in the UK quote prices outside of market hours for the UK indices but they used to only quote for US indices when Globex was open. This was a few years ago and that might have changed and you might be able to get a quote from them outside of the markets. A few names:
www.igindex.co.uk
www.cityindex.co.uk
www.cmcmarkets.co.uk
www.cantorindex.co.uk

The problems are (1) you probably need a few weeks to set-up an account with them (2) the spreads are wide and expensive outside of normal market hours.

To get a feel of what might happen on Globex you can certainly watch the Asian markets but I am under the impression that they open at the same time as Globex - i.e. on Sunday evening.

What about Sydney Stock Exchange's main index? That should be one of the first to open next week...

There must be ways to offset your position though. I was talking to a Fund Manager the other day and he said that sometimes he needs stock outside of market hours or on weekends and he can call one of his brokers and somehow these guys can sometimes get him the stock. He says that he has no idea how they do it but they often come up with the goods.

thanks for the ideas. i will try to watch the Sydney Stock Exchange main index.

I have held positions right up until the last few seconds of the day and I think that one of my positions closed out at 16:14:59 once and many others I have closed out in the last 10 seconds of trading. It's easy to miss the close, I've done that plenty of times but never on a Friday.

yes, this will be my first time holding a futures contract over a weekend. i think i need to find something fun to do to take my mind off it until Sunday.

I suppose you could look at the daily patterns and see how many short signals you can find in them? i.e. How many reasons/signals would Fridays price action say that it's time to go short at the close on Friday and hold over the weekend. If you find enough of those signals then you might have an easier weekend and also have learned a new pattern or two.

Perhaps take a look at the best and worse case scenarios and assign probabilities to them. The ES opening 10 points above Friday's close and 10 points below. I'm not sure if you have the data to go back through history but you will probably find that this happens fairly rarely.

Actually, this is pathetically easy to calculate. Take a look at this spreadsheet that I just created for you. Change the yellow cell and put in there the number of points using a greater-than-sign in front of it ">10" and it will calculate how many Mondays have opened that many points away from the Friday close.

If I've done my calculations correctly it's only 6 in the last 9 to 10 years that have opened more than 10 points away from Friday's close.

thank you for teh spread sheet.

You're welcome. I hope that it helps you sleep better. I believe that the prognosis is good as there is usually very little change from close to open.

Hi all, Im new to the forum but hope i can learn and grow. Seams like there are some great people here and its good to see everyone working towards a common goal.

To our success!!