Sharing some good news. Last year I had strongly encouraged CME to create a Micro Natural Gas future, the Widow maker can be tough to trade and such a smaller contract would be quite useful. Well indeed they are not only introducing Micro Natural Gas futures on November 6, but they will also have European style, financially settled monthly and weekly options! Great timing with the increasing geopolitical importance of this key resource: https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/energy/natural-gas/micro-henry-hub-natural-gas.html
Strange OP. Strange CME. NG daily volume - about 150K mini Natural gas daily volume - only 5K micro Natural gas daily volume ??? Even the small boys are not interested in trading the small-size contract. Will the CME product manager be sacked if the micro NG contract is not well received?
I predict these will take off, peanut-gallery comments notwithstanding. Mini physicals never do well, but their micro version always do much better volume-wise. Look at miniCL and MiNY gold for example.
I quite disagree with your post and the "small boys" rhetoric, there are various uses of micro contracts including hedging, especially when they have options! Some said the same when MCL was introduced. Compare if you will the current volume on the QM to the MCL. It is one of the most successful ever of CME products, while QM continues as it was, a niche item. MCL now some days approaches 100 K volume. MCL options have done quite well also, and I predict that the micro NG will in fairly short of a time vastly exceed the volume of QG.
It sounds interesting to me. It can be beneficial to smaller traders and beginners. Let's see how it develops......
MNQ pretty much rivals ES in terms of volume. Would be nice if they consolidate the contracts into the micro. I mean, volume would spike, but I don't understand why we need multiple contracts of the same asset, once the micro of that asset is active.
That's a lot of commission to pay for only 3k notional and not being a long term investment. I don't get how there would be much demand.
ES is basically the old big S&P and the micros are becoming the new e-mini. Big S&P though was 500X the S&P so even institutions don't need a contract with a 2 million dollar value per car. I think we will always have a big and small contract because of such widely different sized participants. I am sure it will always be cheaper to execute in size vs smaller fragments.
Today's volume (as of now) NG - 10K mini NG - 0.7K micro NG - 10K So CME product manager's job is secured for the next few years.