Anybody have a link or document the details the increase of margin for emini s&p futures over the past 20 years? I have searched everywhere, even emailed the CME and have received no response.
About the only "help" I can offer is that I seem to remember when the full size (before the emini existed) initial performance bond was around $12K. Early 1990's I believe. It's typically around 7% of the underlying so you could reverse engineer an estimate based on past S&P values.
Emini S&P didn't start until 1997-ish I believe, so going back 20 yrs. isn't really possible. Keep in mind that the big spoo contract used to have a $500 multiplier instead of the $250 multiplier in the big contract now.
Novemer 3, 1997. "#97-24 and 97-25 (Corrected): November 2, 1997: CME S&P 500 Futures and Options to split â change to PC-SPAN Contract Value Multiplier On Monday, November 3, 1997, CME's S&P 500 futures and options will be split. The contract value multiplier will be halved, from $500 to $250. A single long open position will become two long open positions. Accordingly, in PC-SPAN, it is necessary beginning Monday November 3, to change the contract value multiplier for all of the affected commodity master records from 500 to 250. "