Korean regulations are very conservative nowadays. I checked korean sites, it seems the futures exchange commands a very high margin for kospi2000 futures contracts, you need about USD13,000 to trade just one contract of kospi 2000 index futures. Too high for me
Given the current margin requirements for the KOSPI future, one can quickly lose interest in trading it, despite the superb volatility...however, I look to this market not because of the futures, but because of the options. Have you ever taken a close look at them ? Spreads are just one tick (!) and they are so liquid that you just freak out at the sight of the order book. Therefore, they can be and in fact are traded like futures intraday. The combination of insane leverage on top of the high volatility in the underlying index and limited risk makes this market one of the most interesting in this world to me.
yeah, these days I'm monitoring the kospi market through a demo account of real-time charts&trading platform from a korean broker. It seems daytrading the kospi option just as a futures contract may be a possible thing. i will ask some questions regarding the trading of kospi options under the "index trading category"
Have been doing the same thing for a month now, papertrading the options on a demo version provided by "Cheil Futures". People there have been very helpful. Maybe I should wire a few bucks to Korea and just give it a shot. Before, I'll have to find a data vendor though...
...or maybe i shouldn't. The options and futures charts for the last trading session , i.e. 10/18/05, are totally out of sync with the underlying index I check on Yahoo every day...so either my software is showing me wrong data or I really underestimated the influence of volatility on intraday prices... futures prices are totally different, too...I cannot believe that divergences between the cash and the future can be that high... I better wait for IB
it's actually TIMS which is somewhat similar. The cash will diverge from the future price quite drastically. Stock loan can be expensive and there is a 30bps transaction cost on stock sales.