If you had a trading power of 1,000 lots and you were to choose, would you prefer BUND (10-year bonds) or BOBL (5-year bonds) futures on EUREX? BUND has more range but BOBL "holds" certain price levels better therefore you can lean on the price. On the other hand, it is so hard to get a fill in BOBL that it might impact the performance significantly. Interested to hear your opinions and experiences with BOBL.
Bund is more like ES, Bobl more like ZN. Bund just moves faster than Bobl, has a greater range. If I had to choose, I would pick the Bund for sure, much higher volume, more activity, much easier to accumulate your ticks there, and still thick enough to not have to worry about size restrictions for most of us here for quite a while.
Let me give a more complete list : Buxl ( 30 year bond). lowest volume about 50k per day. Volume is still very decent. Bund (10 year bond) highest volume about 600k per day. Like ES as mentioned by Callumbus bobl ( 5 year bond). volume about 350k per day. behave like ZN Schatz ( 2 year bond) day range - buxl the highest. schatz the lowest. I do day trading. I focus on buxl only due to its excellent day range. Trading power of 1K lots ?!?!? That is very hugh!! Bund initial margin requirement is 2.4 million eur !!! (2.4k eur / lot) buxl liquidity might not be good enough for you. There are also other bonds like Italy bonds, France bonds, Spain bonds .... from Eurex which you can consider. However UK bonds which I believe is rather tradable is not available in Eurex.
Does Bund trade 23 hours per day? I took a look at Eurex, seems like most are 21 hours or even much less trading per day?
All Eurex products opening time was around eur stock market opening time. this was changed few weeks ago. some of the eurex products opening time is during Asian time. But I can see that the volume traded during Asian time is very very low.
Is the official trading hour started at 9AM CET? About BOBL: is it easier to get filled by using market order? Do people use limit order?
That is the whole problem. Working around bid and ask to get a fill. Certainly it makes more sense to use mostly limit orders but that depends on the context. If you expect the market to run like a freight train then you pay up 1 tick just to jump in. On the other hand, if you play a pullback trade then you wait for the market to come back to your resting limit orders. In either case you place your exit limit orders even before you enter a trade to get a better place in the queue. It is like playing chess, more or less
You guys can find all the official contract info including the trading hours here: http://www.eurexchange.com/exchange-en/products/int/fix/government-bonds/Euro-Bund-Futures/14770 Pre-Trading starts at 01:00 am, Trading starts at 01:10 am, all Frankfurt time.