Favored futures contracts for trading, acquiring hist. data

Hi,

I'm new to futures, coming from strategy development based on Forex historical data. A few questions for anyone with experience with futures:

1) What is the cheapest way to acquire historical data for futures? With a TS Forex account, I've been able to simply save Forex minute data into .csv files for free. Do I need to buy a bunch of data from CQG or another provider to analyze and develop strategies on?


2) Do you prefer to use tick data or minute data?


3) What are your favorite futures to trade and why?


Thanks for any input...

Hi,
::
1) What is the cheapest way to acquire historical data for futures?
::
Thanks for any input...

It depends on the length of back data you want...
The cheapest way is the find a data source, either broker or dataprovider subscription, that has your needed data.

Some dataprovider gives you a short demo period, you can download all the data you want within that period.

Thank you. I have my historical data situation covered for futures.

Let me simplify my original post by asking:

Does anyone find it more appropriate to develop using bars based on tick data rather than minute-based OHLC data for any strategy type other than hardcore scalping, and can the rationale be clearly explained?