I dont really care to fight city hall, as far as im concerned the futures markets can continue just the way they have....i dont really care. What I do care about is that I currently need a means of understanding the proper format to enter my orders online. As of yet I have not been able to find that information anywhere. If you have a link to that information please post it. Trav P.S. Unless your are a regulator of the futures industry your reactive attitude seems a tad unwarranted. It was not my intent when I posted to start some silly banter.
If broker offers online trading then he must supply a manual for his order entry system. If broker is unable or unwilling to do so then leave. www.interactivebrokers.com/html/webhelp/webhelp.htm
travisdu, am i getting it wrong or are you having difficulties with the contract specifications ? no matter what a particular data provider shows on my screen, i simply have to know - in the case of eSignal - that JY M2 7700 means that i pay $0.7700 for 100.00 June Japanese Yen . since the contract size is 1.25 million yen i simply have to know that every single tick - i. e.up to 7701 or down to 7699 - is worth $12.50. an option strike price of 770 or 7750 refers to the same basic calculation ... keeping in mind that you may eventually have to make/take delivery of a futures contract worth 1.25 million Japanese Yen if you decide to execute your option. in the case of the EuroFX the eSignal price looks like EC M2 87750 - meaning you pay $0.8775 for 1 June Euro - with a contract size of Euro 125.000 (the same goes for SF = Swiss Franc). it took me some time to realize that the zero in fifth place is only a "placeholder" ... just in case the Euro moves above parity to the US dollar. this is the case with the british pound already: BP M2 14200 means that you pay $1.4200 for 1 June British Pound. due to the contract size of BP 62.500 a single tick is worth $6.25 - with a minimum fluctuation of 2 ticks, making it slightly confusing & $12.50 like in the case of the other currency contracts. simply look up the contract specifications of the respective futures exchanges & your data provider´s quoting method and you´ll live happily & peacefully with all the different ways of showing the price of the same futures contract or option. regards wild
If you trade both markets then you would use 2 different order entry systems. electronic: streaming quotes, point&click (IB TWS, J-Trader, ...) pit: no streaming quotes, fiddling around (RefcoLive, LeoWeb, ...) For this pit trading stuff I try to find myself some reasonable order entry system. I guess that I will end up with this one www.dtfutures.com/online_demo_farr.html
Travisdu, Perhaps you could ask your broker to walk you through it. After all, you are paying him to teach you how to place orders. The idea that he's teaching himself out of the high commissions should come under the category of "tough cookies". Another choice is to befriend other traders who can tell you what the trade format should be when you have questions. You could also look into a discount brokerage service which offers better service than the cheapest of the deep discounters. Most brokers will help you with your formatting even on a discount basis. It's unfortunate that some vendors use a different format than what we're used to on the trading floors. It causes us headaches regularly when a customer misquotes a market. As someone commented toward previously in the thread, it's always a good idea to know exactly what you're trading and how it's actually quoted other than relying on numbers from a screen. Matthew Shelley (broker) Futures and options trading involves substantial risk. Information is obtained from sources believed to be reliable and is in no way guaranteed.
Travisdu, You mentionned that you traded the options on future, I can't help you there, but if ever you decided to trade the future contracts, here is what I did when I first started to get use to all those .00000's I went to Futuresource.com, get their contract spec, and look at the contract size, and the denominator it is trading , e.g. HO, heating oil, size = 42k gallons, trading in $/gal, therefore, when you look at the charts, the price you see is in $, you multiply the price change by the size of the contract, and you'll get the real value of profit/loss. It took me a while to get use to it. Notice that the grains are trading in 8th fraction, e.g. Wheat, contract size = 5K busshell, cents/contract, trading at 281'6 means 281 cents and 6/8 cents. And to make matter worst, the interest rates and bonds are trading in 1/32... (if I am not mistaken) it must come from the English system in the old age.
Thanks for all the great responses. I think an example would be in order. For instance say that I want to buy 4.50 puts on May Silver. Now each exchange it seems has their own way of entering strike information such as only 3 digit are necessary or some it is 4, Yen would bee 770 not 7700. So is Silver strike entered 450 or 4500 or 0450, who knows! Then their is the entering of the premium price, if it is quoted at 0.80 then do I enter 8 or 80 or 080, once agian I have no idea and the exchanges themselves are no help, at least I havent been able to find the info. I may end up emailing the exchanges individually and hoping I get a reply. As far as talking with my broker I can see that helping for a few contracts maybe but I cant really see him wanting to go over 10 different contracts that I may be interested in trading options on. Once again thanks for the replies. Trav