Article: Custom Currency Index

If you trade currency with the Interactive Brokers (IB) feed, you might miss a nice Index available from NYBOT.  The Dollar Index futures ($DX) is composed of a basket of six major currencies (Euro, Yen, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Swiss Franc and Swedish Krona) http://www.nybot.com/specs/dx.htm

I use Ensign Windows to recreate a currency index as a custom symbol, with one exception.  The basket currency Swedish Krona is not available from IB.  But the Australian Dollar is available and having seen the nice move the Australian Dollar futures made and seeing the average volume in the futures is comparable to the CAD or CHF, I have replaced the Swedish Krona with the AUD in my new Dollar Index.  Here is my setup:

1. Click menu Set-Up | Customs symbol:

2. Enter the following information (For the June series use M4.  For the March series use H4).

Only difference to the "real" DX index is that the Swedish Krona has been replaced with the Australian Dollar.  This was necessary since IB does not carry the Swedish Krona futures.  Of course this change makes the value you get for this $DX custom symbol different from the real dollar index.  But, you don't want to trade it, you just want a currency index, which might move faster than the currency you are trading.

Click Add/Resave and close the Custom Symbols window.

3. Add the new $DX H4 to a custom quote page in Ensign Windows.

4. Open a chart for your new $DX H4 index symbol.

Article by Christian Czirnich