Pabst Capone, If you are in any way related to those crooks, I come over and face to face, we have a little chat about those crooked exchan- ge people. Such a competitive country as the States, should have no pro- blem with a newcomer. The English Undergroundtrader.
i currently lease a cbot seat for cheaper rates. will clearing houses lower their fees next? competition is a good thing.
anyone around here have any experience with the LIFFE/Eurex pit-screen arb they made a killing on in London a few years back? any predictions as to whether similar fortunes will be made on a CBOT/Eurex pit-screen arb? Eurex gave it's kick-off presentation today. $0.30 a side, moving lower with volume and other incentives.
There will be no pit arb from the CBOT, as only 15-20% of the financial futures volume at CBOT is done in the pit. The CBOT has been gouging the screen traders for the last four years to subsidize the pits... and that, my friends, is about to change.
The CBOT is licensing LIFFE platform, which is actually better than the Eurex's technology. e.g. LIFFE's API can have up to 32 legs in order submit. Eurex's technology is pretty old but I have to say it's very robust. What CBOT needs to do is to lower its fees. That's good for their customers.
The Liffe platform is a trainwreck... and I've been trading it for five years. It's the most unstable electronic trading network I've ever been associated with. I personally know three guys who quit trading Euribor because it kept crashing when they had positions on. I think this is more applicable to the U.S. traders, as the Europeans don't seem to have the same dismal experiences. But still... doesn't bode well for the CBOT. Oh, and another thing about the spreading functionality. All the prices you see on the TT MarketDepth are implied. I would be working to get a 200-lot in the Euribor. I'll get maybe 20 or so and the spread orders jump in front of you. I would see two or three hundred more trade and maybe I would get another 10 or 20 on my order. Liffe only allows a small quantity of flat price orders to trade before the spread orders get priority - unless you want to improve the price. There is absolutely no incentive to trade flat price on Liffe. They could triple their volume if they would let a few hundred trade at a price before the spread functionality kicked in. I've quit trading it. Called them two weeks ago in London and told them to bugger off. I mean... how could someone possibly basis trade or spread with other products??? That's crap.
*cackle* *cackle* Now, what kind of US equity index futures could Eurex list? Too bad S&P, Nasdaq, Russell, & Dow are all trademarked names. How about Wilshire 5000 futures?!