PS........if anyone insists on blaming not knowing how to trade on the specialist, bots, the pit guys gunning the stops, or whatever and not concentrate on learning how to TRADE, they might as well go drive a truck. ..
I'm a little confused by this comment: a smaller sized, electronically traded SP500 future is the e-mini. I believe the SP500 contract is fungible with the e-mini in a 5:1 ratio. If anything I think institutions trading SP futures would prefer to keep the larger size; a smaller contract would be less useful. When I started trading index futures, the SP500 daily range was about 2 points, it traded in nickels, and its value was $500 x the index. So the average number of ticks in a daily range was about 40, which is about what we have now in the e-mini. My sense is that the SP doesn't move a lot differently now than it did 20 years ago. The big difference for me is the vast amount of deep liquidity on both sides of the market. There are a far fewer price vacuums in the futures than I remember (perhaps due to the bots). For me the e-mini is a joy to trade due in part to the deep markets.
its fascinating you mention this, because present contract size of many futures is reflective of past much smaller price and avg daily volatility. ie same goes with crude and natural gas contracts. NG is a giant now at 10k multiplier, but in the days of 2.50 ng that was a significantly 'safer' size to trade per contract. Same on HSI futures, SPI (aussie), etc etc.