If the system that you trade has been properly designed and you do not display the price at the side then you will not notice any difference in setup and behaviour, except that the range itself is a lot different. This means to me that the bots have the upper hand and are aggravating the situation. Maria
This brings up a question I have been wondering - Not to long ago one would easily see 2000 to 5000 deep at each level on the 10yr now on a good day we see a few hundred. Where did all the players go? Did they move to other interest rates elsewhere? i.e. the bund? Did they quit trading the bonds and notes? As I have watched the ES take over as volume leader and the 10yr not have many million contract days, even lately, I just wonder what happened to the traders? Any know??
Many are on the sidelines waiting for the storm to blow over and many are displaced with the failures and takeovers.
Most of the locals have gone/been wiped out and replaced by the algo traders over the last few years. Now they've switched off most of the algos too due to them either blowing up or losing funding. That leads me to my question -are the treasury futures, and the bonds in particular, in terminal decline? Is there any reason to think that some liquidity may return to these markets because I don't see it...
with 3 primary dealers blowing out (Lehman, Bear and Merrill) a lot of players are not there (black boxes) it may never go back to where it was a couple of years ago when ZN was 4000 by 5000 and ZB was 2000 by 3000 but that means there are a lot of opportunities with all of this vol if you position yourself correctly. One big reason for all of the drops at the end of last week was 400 billion had to be raised to cover the LEH bonds at 9 cents on the dollar. That is why the long end sold off (with stocks, oil, gold, grains, etc...) and the short end did not and the curve steepened. All money is in very short paper (i.e. bills) and not in longer paper. Bought March 09 125 spy calls on friday cha-ching! During bear markets there are rallies also spooz got cut in half that is a buy! 1999- ES 1527 then 2002- ES 800 and 2007- ES 1586 then 2008- ES 837 is a buy! P.S. No one is my office is trading today we do a lot of treasury volume. I am sure it is the same for many other offices in Chicago, damn I needed a break from the market for one day.
sorry wanted to say that even though the short and long end (2/30) has steepened the piece of the curve I trade- long end has flattened which is why the Ten Year basis has exploded about 40 ticks to the upside over the last 3 days and the cash nob has sold off. Intra-day very volatile with cheapest to deliver moving on a daily basis total chaos! If you want to trade any product right now are many questions to ask: Risk tolerance, size and time frame so there are many answers to your question. Everything is moving so much right now that I would advise new traders to not trade anything with size as experienced traders I know with millions in the bank have cut size drastically and are riding winners a lot longer.
monday volume shows just how much the banks contribute. Tuesdays volume was also pathetic. I used to be a pure scalper, now I postion trade intra day. Maybe someday the size will come back but deffinatley not any time soon. nice spy trade inverted curve, I did the exact same thing. Iam making more money with crazy stock rips then trading the ten year.