TradeStation Data/Symbols

[Trader Question]

I have a question regarding symbols in TS.

what should i use in trading LH for example, continuation contract @LH or actual contract LHM08 because charts look quite different.

[pldot]

Using the @us, @lh etc is a quick and easy way to overcome the limitations of the individual contracts not having enough data for the longer-term charts, and there is no big downside for most situations. If you dig deeply into the question of continuous contracts you will find a lot of discussion and opinions, as some have preferred ways of stitching together the contracts since there are price differentials at roll-over time and these price differentials can be accommodated in a number of different ways. TS lets you construct a Custom Continuous Contract and specify many different parameters, and other data vendors such as CSI offer even more flexibility. But unless you are deep into system back-testing there is little point in moving away from the @lh symbol and the like, since price on the recent past is close to the front contract almost always. If you are worred about rollover isues then you can always do analysis on the @ contracts and place trades on the front month contract.