Paul/Grey,
Even though pair trading is market neutral (i.e. meaning that it doesn't matter if the market goes up or down), are you looking to employ pair trades when the market is neutral? What I mean is that would you be looking for the Nas futures and COMPQ to be meandering around, TRINQ around 1 etc.? If the market was trending significantly one way or another then that would rather invalidate one of the pairs, wouldn't it? The logic being that shorting a stock even though it was at an extreme (VWAP + 1/2 today range) is riskier in an uptrending market and vice versa for a long. Or, do you consider that because a stock is at a VWAP extreme and statistically likely to reverse more relevant than the underlying market direction? Just trying to get a feel for how and when you are appling pair trades....
Thanks,
Proxy