Anyone know when the mini-Coffee contracts will start trading electronically? What are the best sources of fundamental information on the coffee futures market? Thanks.
I have a strong feeling that the mini coffee contract if and when it does start trading will have almost no volume or liquidity. The mini corn, wheat and soybeans have almost no volume or liquidity and those are bigger markets than coffee. I recommend you just buy or sell 1 regular coffee contract. As for futures websites, try: http://www.insidefutures.com http://futures.tradingcharts.com
I agree, generally. But I have a sixth sense that coffee may get a lot of retail interest, more so than the other ags, especially on the IB platform. The mini Gold contract there has done fairly well, I think.
i foolishly tried to trade the mini soybean and wheat contracts and quickly got educated as to why you need liquidity in the markets you trade! as i caught a nice few days of the uppward trend I started loading up on contracts. i was feeling good about myself and even annointed myself the mini-grain king. then wheat traded down 20+ ¢'s overnight and i decided it was time to take my profits and run, so i placed sell stop orders and nothing happened. wheat went limit down and still i was long. the next day i tried market orders and it took almost 1 hour to get filled (with the price still dropping). needless to say, i did not make any money on the trade. in hindsight, if i would have made the exact same trades with full contracts i would have done quite well. moral to the story - dont trade mini's just because they are mini's -- make sure they have volume or you will not get out when you want (or need) to. my advice would be to stay away from the mini contract until it has sufficient volume.
Hear you loud and clear on liquidity. Wish more futures and currencies markets were electronic on IB, too.
dont get me wrong, i like the idea of trading mini's cuz it allows you to scale in and out of trades with lower risk - I do this with mini-gold with no problem. the grains simply do not have the volume.
also - the spreads between bid and ask for mini silver is sometimes downright shameful. right now its 20 ticks!!!
I know; that's what I mean. I know you have to start somewhere and build volume, and that has worked a bit, like on the ES contract. But for some of the other minis, it's like why bother, the liquidity is so poor. I guess the brokers feels there a undercapitalized chumps or newbies out there who will bite.
Since Brazil is the largest exporter, keep an eye on it: map of Coffee in Brazil: http://vanburen.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/coffeeregion.gif Weather in Coffee Growing areas in Brazil: http://weather.msn.com/region.aspx?wealocations=Minas Gerais Coffee Commentary: http://vanburen.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/coffee-harvest/ Coffee Export Stats: http://www.ico.org/prices/m1.htm hope this helps. B