Anybody know the difference? Know there is somthing about settlements (futures traded are more like forwards etc) - so t + expiry I think Have traded COMEX copper, but the LME stuff looks interesting - steel futures are on the way as well...
The one thing that I can comment on about LME trading is that the electronic trade has been around for sometime but it is not widely available here in the US for retail trading the base metals contracts such as copper, aluminum, zinc, nickel, etc. My understanding is that the contract sizes for the LME metals complex are about 2x the value of a COMEX copper contract. So this means that the overnight margins are quite high i would imagine. I still prefer to trade the precious metals on NYMEX/CBOT which has much better liquidity, tighter spreads, low exchange / execution fees and they are in a well established bull market still whereas the base metals have begun to come off already...
You have reasonably liquid futures for the five most important base metals: ticker metal OI as of 09-Jul-2009 LA Prim Aluminum 522k LP Copper 138k LX Zinc 137k LN Nickel 53k LL Lead 40k Margins are "relatively high", for copper it's USD 13750 for example.