I am noticing some slippage and/or lack of liquidity doing 20 contracts. In the middle of the day, when there is maybe 10 up on the bid ask, if I lift the bid, I can just sit there with my new bid for 10 unfilled for maybe 15-20 seconds before I either get filled or it runs up past me. I am getting more into schort term trading right now, so, slippage is obviously a concern. The r2k is great as far as trending, reversals, follow-through, basically great technicals. I wish it could handle a bit more size cause I dont' like the es nearly as much.
I have heard this same opinion from other traders. Out of curiosity, how long have you been trading? And on what do you base your opinion? Rising volume hurts the product? Is this your opinion? I have found that rising volume always helps IN BULL MARKETS. In bear stock markets I have concluded that it can lead to chop, excessive fakeouts etc ---especially if it is being done by machines. Although, the ER2 is a slightly different animal than the spoo. The YM could potentially get hit harder. Just curious on how you came to this opinion. In my view the ES problems you are alluding to ---the fakeouts and turning patterns in low volatility are a function of a bear market or a stock market going nowhere. Not so much volume. For instance, there was a year in the mid 90's when the spoo was miserable to daytrade. It just started going nowhere. Very similar to what anyone has seen over the past couple years in the spoo (except everything was on the floor). Same feel ---same chart patterns IMO.
what's the best commission ou there for somebody doing 1000 plus contracts a month on the er2? i've read you can get $3 roundtrip with no platform charges. give some examples what people are paying to trade the es,ym and er2. personally i trade the ym's the most and the er2's next. they both move with deadly speed in volatile situation s. like last friday when the market tanked the er2's were down % wise twice the other indexes . it was a tought bottom to catch but the suckers ran 7 pts in 1 hr
I Have thought about making use of the correlation between the ES and ER2 to circumvent the liquidity problem . For example, the ER2 gives me a signal which I would then trade in the ES...I don't know if that is smart... but as I know how fast the ER2 can move, I am somewhat scared about the idea of having to sit there with my 20-30 contracts without getting filled...
i've been trading the minis since the end of 2001. i am absolutely not an expert - i'm just telling my conclusions based on what i've been able to watch so far. i don't think that rising volume alone is necessarily bad - but the more volume a product has - the more interesting it gets for all kind of market participants. right now the russell is of course the best contract for smaller traders. just compare the movements of ES and ER2 on a short time frame these days - almost every time the ER2 has the much higher volatility. for example - while the ES is moving barely 1 point ($50) - the ER2 might be gone for 3 points ($150) - or at least 2. what is the reason for this? the ES seems like a fat and lazy animal most of the time - while the ER2 is dynamic and moves further with less pullbacks. if ER2's volume keeps rising this fast (at the moment we see more than 100K contracts almost every day) there will be more and more big traders and robot trading in it (and hence more efficiency i'd say) - which i don't see as an advantage - but i hope i'm wrong. just read this file: http://www.cme.com/files/emini.pdf search for "volume" - you will find 3 diagrams that show the development of the avg. daily volume of ES, NQ and ER2 since they've been created - pretty impressive.
anyone notice the drop in er2 volume when es crashed yesterday? it was like 2004 levels (the good ol days!)! gives us a fair idea of the amount of arbing going on between the two by the bigger money.