http://www.cme.com/news/shownews.cfm?NewsItem=000A1C06-643B-1CF6-98A880EDBEFB0000 Still think they should have gone with half contracts, not 40%.
WTF is up with that? Except for ES and NQ, emini products have so little liquidity that they are not tradeable except for very long term positions. One of the avenues to improve their volume is arbitrage with the big contracts. With a 40% size, an arb has to trade 5 minis against 2 bigs. I guess that's ok, but I dont see the logic. Of course smarter minds than mine put the deal together. Time will tell...
I really think this could be huge, despite the stupid contract size. It's not like the regular contract is all that big, 1000 barrels of crude. Both crude and nat gas are great daytrading markets but you can get a real hosing in the pit if it is moving, although crude executions are pretty good most of the time. This is a good time to begin these contracts too, as a lot of former daytraders are looking at e-mini's.
Tell me how you can trade this emiNY crude oil contract when you have a limit to 50 contracts and the price limit per day is 15$...Doesn't look like a good daytrading instrument for me
e-miNY Crude $15 limit X ($4 x 100 cents in a dollar = $400) = $15 limit X $400 = $6,000 per contract limit You will almost never (I hesitate to say never) see this kind of move in Crude.
They won't post the margins till a few days before the launch. Currently the pit contracts margin is $2700 so 40% of that is $1080. Not sure about the ATR, look at the regular contract as a guide.
A $1.00 move in crude is enormous. If it moves $15 in one day, you will have bigger problems than a futures trade. still, I was not aware there was a daily limit or a contract limit. 50 cars=20 cars regular contract, which is not what I would call size in this market. Still, for most daytraders you cna make or lose a hideous amount of money on half that. For someone not used to this market, I would say start at no more than 10 contracts on the mini. The key to this market is the weekly inventory data, reported tuesday afternoon by the API and Wednesday morning by the Government. Nat gas data used to come out wed at 2 butI think that changed in the last coupel of weeks, now theyare reported on thursday mornings, I believe. Stand aside ahead of the gas data, as it can be volatile. I reiterate that crdue is a great daytrade market, much better than currencies and easily equal to bonds or index futures.