CBOT is in the drivers seat right now. They have the liquidity. All Eurex has is low fees. Worst case, CBOT has to reduce it fees and starve Eurex. All the heavy hitters already pay the lowest fees on CBOT. Liquidity is more valuable to them than the cost savings of 5 cents a contract. Reducing them won't cost CBOT all that much. Look at Brokertec. Brokertec had the support of every bank on Wall Street. It still wasn't enough.CBOT will survive this.
You petty, pathetic wimps who couldn't make it at the exchanges would just love to get your revenge. No such luck, I'm afraid. Liquidity is what its all about, you geniuses, and market makers fill the floors in Chicago. I suppose you will all step forward and do the same for Eurex. Good luck
As far as the electronic products go you might say that Eurex is the incumbent and CBOT will be the interloper. Eurex advantages: - incumbent system & clearing firm - source of electronic liquidity (the system is the liquidity?) - lower costs - proven technology CBOT advantages: - Christmas cards from the Chicago boys - Non-US traders will gladly switch to a new, unproven CBOT electronic system out of loyalty for all the years of fair service they received from the Chicago pits. Hmmmmmm, this one might be too close to call.
While institutional traders may feel "ripped off" by S&P locals, few fail to recognize that interest rate futures had unheard of liquidity provided by locals. As a floor trader I used to take out resting 100-200 lot bids in the bonds on just the hint that the pit may go sellers. And more often then not, I was left holding the bag. The average bond/note local used to make by the end of the year about $1.00 per contract traded. In other words guys trading a 1000 contracts a day made about a quarter million a year. I still trade bonds a few times a week although 95% of my trading is in ES/NQ. There is no doubt in my mind that the market was much more liquid as an open outcry venue than now! If you wanted to stand top step in bonds you were expected to make tick wide markets for size and help the brokers look good. If not, good luck getting a quality edge.
If your trading lots of 10 and your doing 15 R/Ts a day saving about $2 bucks per round turn, it adds up to about $300
Pabst and Jaming: Go find a screen trader with a Eurex Bund order book and take a look at it. If you can't find one, go to the Eurex office on LaSalle Street and ask to look at their market screen. You owe it to yourself to see where the industry is going (many say already has). Go to the Eurex website and look at the volume figures for the Bund, Bobl, Shaz, DJ EuroStoxx. Amazing. When you look at the Bund order book at about 8:00 am CST today you will be shocked. Compare it to the ZN order book. When the bonds sold off yesterday it was the Bund that led the way. They were ripping through 2,000 lots twenty tics deep. Jaming: you wanna see some liquidity? Think it's all in Chicago? I'm afraid you're mistaken. The reason it is not valid to compare Eurex to Brokertec or Cantor is because Eurex has over 10,000 screens strewn across the globe and a huge user population. A modest size dealer has to trade at least 15K interest rate contracts per day. Hells bells, I can trade 10K per day. I get member rates at both the Board and Eurex, and Eurex costs me 1/3 the price. At today's rates it costs me $1.50 per round turn more to trade Board than Eurex. If a guy does 500 R/Ts per day, that's $180,000 per year. And that, ladies and germs, is alot of money.
Crazy_Trader, Egg and butter Exchange...LOL... Bone, 180000 $ must be peanuts for a size trader like you, come on man.....let's be serious....if you trade 200000 cars a month you should at least make 1 million dollars a month....