I want to at least observe the bund move but have no idea when the best time would be. I live the USA by the way. Should I be observing it 2-4:00AM? What about 5-7? Was thinking maybe I can watch 5-7AM and then trade the US treasuries after but I care more about when its active.
It depends on your trading style. If you are active daytrader (hunt for chunks of intraday trends) you need minimum from London's open to 11 EST. Better from EUREX open to 12 EST. Bund is great for prolonged intraday trends and one of the best IMO futures avialable, but not convenient for US based traders. Firstly on observation stage look at historical charts and also do market replay to be sure that you are comfortable with Bund speed which is slow and boring. Chances are you can develope trading strategy for first X hours only or for US time session. Me personally failed to do it so I need to work from bell to bell Anyway good luck, Bund is perfect instrument to follow.
Great market, not too many US clients know of, good liquidity. I like the market as long as there is volume. Looks like 2 Am EST to about 6 AM EST.
Just backtest your trade strategy on historical intraday data and then see what times your trade signals tend to appear. For example (hypothetically)...70% of your trade signals in the BUND tend to appear between 5:00 - 6:40AM. You will now know when you should be "monitoring" the BUND versus someone else trading differently, using a different trade strategy or not even trading the BUND telling you when you should be monitoring the BUND. There's actually some useful information one can get from backtesting. wrbtrader
forgot to say if you are US based you can view FGBL as good addition to your trading arsenal just using the fact of prolonged intraday trends for example: you can limit the trading field to the context when price go beyond previous day's H/L, previous week's H/L, etc. So trade only extentions. This is just idea and way to research. -------------------- another important note: you do not need extra take from this market to make decent income. For full time 10 ticks average daily take is good, for part-time (like in example above) this can be even less. Remember this is high liquid market. Anyway, if you put serious attention and research time to Bund you are IMO on the right way.
What really kills the Bund, Bobl, and Schatz in the United States is the fact that European regulators would not allow US traders access to the analog cash markets. Even Ken Griffin from Citadel ($32B AUM) asked for it and couldn't get it. I personally used to trade, literally, hundreds of thousands of Eurex RT's per month in the early 2000's as a yield curve spread trader. And, like Citadel, I would have loved to have been able to trade the basis spread.
you are talking about spread trading and for this type of business may be 'kills' but for directional retail trader operating 1-300 contracts this market is not only alive but one of the best around the globe. Liquidity, slow motion, rare unexpectable flash moves, decent range, etc. the only one minus for US traders is trading hours.