Can anyone please explain to me why do two major trading front-end providers, i.e. CQG and Trading Technologies, not have a feature in their platforms that shows the theoretical PnL on the price ladder if the position was liquidated at a particular price? It is such a simple but so useful feature. It is such a shame they do not have that in their software. Any other platform that has this is much worse in other respects compared to CQG or TT. What is worse, they have no plans to introduce this feature any time soon.
If they don't have what you want, you may be thinking wrong. I noticed a lot of the pros measure their progress in ticks/points/percentages. PnL is just an end of day statement. How would you converse maturely with a fellow trader about your performance? By the absolute measure of money you made or by relative performance? The former method described above makes it easier.
It could be ticks. Just some measure of how much I stand to lose if the position was liquidated. Now I have to do these calculations mentally which is not most efficient and quickest way of doing this.
Gotcha. Sadly, I only know of filling up recommendation forms that never got me anywhere. Excel RTD might allow you to build your own risk dashboard. CQG has a ton of sample spreadsheets.
Because P/L is not what "serious" people watch, it is ticks. P/L is a distraction. The market does not recognize where you entered or exit when it comes to moving the price. The faster you get over "trading the P/L", the better, imo.
"ticks" and PnL are the same damned thing. If you know you are down X ticks, you know you are down X in Loss. It's just math in the head.
Been thinking about this topic. I can only speak about CQG as it's my current frontend for futures spreading. For some inter commodity spreads I have them formatted with the "CUR" function. It spreads the total dollar value for each side and formats the DOM ladder in $ terms. Charting and trading in net dollar difference. For P/L spreadsheet and how it feels
I looked around I don't think the cur function works on a single leg. To get an idea of the spread basic Q Formula: SPREAD(EDAH23-EDAZ22, CUR, 25.0, 1:1) DOM ladder is 300 bid 350 offer futures spread is 13 ticks @ $25.00 per tick so 325 mid market = $325.00 dollar spread I use this function when the underlying or ticks are not related or equal just trade the $$$ difference as long as the weighting of each leg is equal.