buying a seat on the phlx or pcos

Discussion in 'Options' started by mrmoose, Jun 10, 2003.

  1. mrmoose

    mrmoose

    I am considering buying a philly or pcos seat as an investment does anyone own either and what do they think?
     
  2. Trying to go into retirement ...
     
  3. moffitt

    moffitt

    The price of a seat reflects the ability to use it to make money.
    A PHLX seat is around $15,000 down from $200,000. So how well do you think biz is on that floor?? But I guess you could throw away 15g's and lease it out. Then pray for an uptick in option biz on that floor to get the seat price up.
    Good Luck !!!
    :cool:
     
  4. Talking about option biz at PHLX, I wonder why their foreign exchange options, like XEU, have extremely narrow bid/ask spreads, but for some reason (that I am still try to figure out), their volume and O.I. are very low. Should it be either low volume/wide spread or high volume/narrow spread? Interactive Brokers does not even offer them to trade. Anyone knows what's the story of these options at PHLX?
     
  5. Trajan

    Trajan

    I would advise against it as an investment. If you were going to trade using it that's one thing, but they have some serious competition coming on line shortly, namely the Box and possibly Eurex. Also, if you look at the balance sheet, it looks like they are currently losing about 2.5 mil a quarter from operations. Their volumes aren't neccessarily bad, but it's the way the market is structured right now. Their remote MM does seem interesting and it may give thema short run boost. However, unless they move more of the operation to electronic, they will be at a disadvantage to the all electronic exchanges. One potential upside is that the Eurex may just buy one these guys out. Most of the above is refering to the Pcoast.
     
  6. moffitt

    moffitt

    Tao Trader,
    The PHLX used to rock with foreign currency options trading.
    But that was years ago. Then the biz went bye bye. In fact they used to have 2 trading shifts on that floor. Now that seat is I think about $500 bucks or something. That floor is virtually dead to my knowledge.
    :cool:
     
  7. atnewhighs

    atnewhighs Guest

    Does anyone have an idea on the capital and clearing requirements for buying a seat and using it trade.
     
  8. Trajan

    Trajan

    We covered this a little while ago. The minimum looks to be about 150k with the possibility of O'Conner at 100k.