Is there a service that offers constantly updated as close to real time as possible Pit quotes for futures and futures options in particular? As it is now, I have to call my broker, then they call the floor then call me back in 10 minutes with a bid/ask quote, and by then the price may have changed. There must be a better way than this archaic system of trading right?
yes - any real time data feed from cme or cbot should have this. cost between $30-$35 pcm futuresource etc all have it.
You are trading futures without a quote service? Yikes! Quotecom...esignal...future source...cqg are just a few. cme and cbot for 100-150 a month or so... You could probably use a broker on the floor too since your executions will probably take as long as well.
ok here's the deal for those who want to know. I just got off the phone with a guy from the CME and he told me that their real time quote service for pit options is simply the last trade that occurred. They do not give real time bid/ask or market depth since they would have to have someone standing in the pit writing everything down in order to do that. He said that it is not possible to get a real time bid/ask for pit traded options. So unfortunately I'll still have to call up to get a bid/ask. I need this information to determine the cost basis for my spreads.
Yes, that's correct. Pit traded options don't operate like pit traded futures where someone is (almost) continually shouting a two way price and locals are trading with each other. In the option pit, locals generally respond to queries by brokers as to the bid/offer and size of a particular option or spread. No-one is continually shouting out all the different bids and offers for EVERY single option available! Having said all that, exchanges normally publish their own set of theoretical prices for options in real time (did on LIFFE when I was trading there), not that I paid much attention to them!
http://www.futuresource.com/quotes/index.jsp choose the futures market from the list then click on the red o to the left to get all the option prices.
Ah! I hope so because as it is, to put on a four leg spread is quite a pain in the ars! I've always read that if you are legging into a spread that the market maker should give you a better price if you put in all orders at once as a spread position than if you try to do one leg at a time. But I never had a way to test this out as I trade through tradestation.