Not only did they not know it could not go negative. They also had very low margin requirements on CL at the time. While Jacking ES to stupid levels.
It's much too soon, I rarely notice much volatility in the months leading to election. Election week and date, sure. I assume they've run the models and it's not just based on "common sense".
Cant blame CME, IB are the ones who claim they extra conservative when it comes to risk and will go well over CME requirements at the drop of a hat. We, myself and other posters, pointed out weeks before the oil price crash that CL margin were so low while ES was so high. We posted this on ET many times. If we could see it why couldnt the risk managers at IB?
What would be smart - to set expectation for everyone that initial margin requirements will be raised once volatility actually spikes certain % and relax as it goes gown certain %. That would warn people and makes perfect sense to do to prevent excessive gambling when things move unusually fast. Election or not election no body know where volatility will be. The best predictor of future volatility is current one and it it has stayed relatively low. Val
Yeah, we can blame the CME. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...urn-negative-again.344721/page-3#post-5150116 https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...hange-and-contract.343551/page-5#post-5075943 https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...trading-wti-crude.343661/page-17#post-5094578 The CME didn't allow enough time for the internal programmers at FCMs to adapt all of their systems to negative pricing before the skullduggery went on. It had nothing to do with margins in my view.