Seems like it is still traded through CME. I read something about it switching over for the March contract, which would be this Thursday (12-13-2007). Any information would be appreciated. There seemed to be a big brewhaha last summer about this, but lately nothing.
Russell Index contracts will be listed at CME Group through the SEP 2008 expiration. http://www.cme.com/trading/prd/equity/russell2000.html
99% of the volume is on the CME. I don't expect that to change too much until the summer. Does anyone trade the SP Midcap that the CME offers? Suppose to be very similar to ER2. R
I trade the sp400 MidCap futures once in a while but they are very thin... If the sp400 is leading the 5 indexes futures up or down i long or short it respectively... buying the greatest strength if long or selling the greatest weakness if short... but sometimes the market makers really play with it when it gets thinner than usual... <img src="http://www.enflow.com/p.gif">
Yeah, it sucks that ER2 is going to ICE. bad decision for them in the long run I think. Its my favorite index to trade, but I doubt the volume will follow it over to ice. Globex is far more stable from what I hear from ICE traders. I need to trust my exchange platform.
Stability is important. Another thing is that ICE does not support native stop limit orders like Globex. So your stops will have to be simulated by your broker = delayed response times and maybe more slippage. When ER2 moves to ICE i will give it a go. See what the liquidity and slippage is like... Maybe the volume in EMD picks up as ER2 day traders think about moving over to EMD. If the EMD can get a critical mass of liquitity it will take off as other traders see this. Alternatively we can consider YM, which is moving to Globex next month. I reckon YM liquidity will start approaching the liquidity of ER2 by August now that it will trade on Globex. YM only trades $5 a tick so it means double commisions if you want the same bang.. so probably not a good alternative for everyone but maybe still an option for some.
This is just one small part to look at. You might want to consider: 1) bid and ask is $10 on er vs $5 on ym. thus each er trade can cost you $5 more than a trade on the ym. 2) what is the dollar value of the ranges that you trade and are looking to trade 3) how much risk do you need to take vs your targets (ie: volatility in dollar terms, so you don't get stopped out). You might find the ym to be a better fit for what you are looking to accomplish. just a thought.
1) The $5 dollar bid ask spread only applies to 1 lots. The Bid ask spread is one tick on both! To get same bang for buck on YM compared to ER2 you have to double your contracts so you end up paying $10 in spread, just like ER2. 2 and 3) Yes i thought about this, i thought YM has slightly wider ranges, then checked a chart for both YM and ER2 for last week and they were both around around 470 ticks between the high and low for last week. And the individual day ranges were about the same too. If your strategy works equally well on both ER2 and YM and you trade more than 1 lot at a time, you will end up paying half the commisions when trading the ER2. Your bid ask spread costs will be same as you are trading half the number of contracts.