The German DAX index is traded at an institutional stage by way of the Frankfurt Inventory Change (XETRA) and consists of 40 main blue chip corporations in Germany. Vital! Your entire article will refer solely to the DAX chart (image DE40 on Buying and selling View) and all time references are solely CE(S)T occasions. So wherever you reside, be sure to have your chart time set to Central European Time or equal UTC time. Or, even higher, simply use Berlin time in Buying and selling View.
DAX may be traded as futures contracts by way of FDAX (€25/p), FDXM (mini-DAX, €5/p) or FDXS (micro-DAX, €1/p), or as a CFD on most brokers (image DE30, DE40 or GER40).
THE INSTITUTIONAL DAILY ROUTINE
What only a few individuals speak about in buying and selling is TIME from an institutional standpoint. We hear every kind of fancy phrases about time and associated main worth ranges, however nearly nobody tells you in regards to the ‘why’ behind correctly timing the market as a day dealer. In the beginning, you’ll want to be taught WHEN to hunt for trades and WHEN NOT to. A while intervals are far more doubtless to supply commerce setups and actual strikes than others. In fact, time isn’t the one issue to contemplate but it surely comes first. Furthermore, there are particular days of the month when the possibilities of clear setups and clean worth motion are often means decrease. However that is exterior the scope of this primary course. Based mostly on the buying and selling schedule of establishments within the DAX index, in addition to based mostly on expertise you develop through the years specializing in this instrument alone, you may derive a roadmap of when to search for trades and when to anticipate decrease chance of motion. Let’s dissect the day-to-day routine of the establishments buying and selling the DAX index. And that is public information from XETRA’s web site btw, not out of my head. However few individuals know the place to look and what to search for.
WHAT ARE AUCTIONS?
Formally, the buying and selling methodology that takes place on XETRA every day is named “Steady buying and selling with auctions”. Auctions are small, well-defined home windows of time throughout which institutional merchants and buyers place/match their orders for getting or promoting DAX within the T7 buying and selling platform. These orders could be of kind market, restrict, cease, in addition to different extra superior sorts that aren’t too related to our temporary dialogue right here.
These auctions are carried out electronically/algorithmically, and their primary function is to pay attention liquidity and permit for the submission of high-volume institutional orders. That is when funding funds, pension funds, banks or different massive merchants are targeted on inserting their orders. And that is essential for us, too.
The remainder of the day, exterior these small home windows of time, it’s referred to as steady buying and selling or common buying and selling hours. Now let’s speak briefly in regards to the 3 each day auctions.
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WHAT ARE THE AUCTION TIMES?
8:50 – 9:00 CE(S)T – Opening public sale – This public sale determines the opening worth of the day by way of an algorithmic process. London open is 9:00 CE(S)T.
13:00 – 13:02 CE(S)T – Intra-Day Public sale (IDA for brief) – Noon public sale launched in recent times to permit a brand new time window for establishments to inject liquidity into the market. This public sale additionally ends with an algorithmic process that lasts between 13:02:00 and 13:02:30 CE(S)T.
17:30 – 17:35 CE(S)T – Closing public sale – This public sale determines the closing/settlement worth of the day by way of an algorithmic process. The each day Settlement Worth is derived from the VWAP of the costs of all trades executed over the past minute earlier than 17:30 CET and it’s a reference worth for establishments to calculate their short-to-medium-term portfolio returns / unrealized earnings / losses.
17:35 – 17:45 CE(S)T – Commerce-at-Shut part – Instantly follows the Closing public sale and permits institutional merchants to put their final orders of the day based mostly on the closing worth.
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Earlier than 9:00, the Pre-trading part can be traded, however I desire to not. After 17:45, DAX remains to be traded within the Put up-trading part till 22:00 CE(S)T, however that’s irrelevant for me.
Vital! In my very own evaluation, I deal with the Closing public sale and Commerce-at-Shut phases as a singular part between 17:30 – 17:45 CE(S)T.
Vital! You will get the each day Settlement Worth for the day prior to this from right here (choose the proper date and see D. Decide on the first row):
So, that is how one can appropriately mark really related ranges/zones in your chart based mostly on INSTITUTIONAL TIME and INSTITUTIONAL PRICE values.

Backside line is your have to include each PRICE and TIME into your buying and selling technique. One is irrelevant with out the opposite.
Additionally, please belief me once I say that day buying and selling is NOT on a regular basis buying and selling. Be very selective together with your setups. You don’t want greater than 4-6 trades monthly to be persistently worthwhile.
Now…
In fact, I didn’t handle to cowl all the main points about DAX’s auctions, public sale sorts, institutional order sorts, explicit situations or corner-cases and so forth. It’s arduous to cowl such a variety of knowledge in a single publish.
Nonetheless, should you loved this mini-course and would love me to dive deeper into the DAX buying and selling world and create extra academic threads 100% free, publish some DAX evaluation or a few of my trades, please LIKE and remark this publish so I’ll know I’ve your assist going ahead.
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