This also could have happened to you if you were trading outrights in May '20 Crude Oil or June '11 Cotton. The fact that you were in a spread probably had very little to do with your circumstance - it was more about your choice of market and expiry. I provide my clients with rules regarding minimum liquidity required and to be quite honest, we don't trade the prompt months for intra market spreads - especially if it's a physically settled contract. I've been doing this for a very long time - futures, OTC Swaps, Bilateral Physical, you name it.
Agree, I shouldn't have generalized, but lack of liquidity in futures spreads is the norm rather than the exception. It's true that the likes of Corn and Crude Oil spreads are very liquid, but a lot others still are not, e.g. Palladium, Platinum, Gold, Silver, SoyMeal, etc..
Not true. The underlying commodity itself was not liquid as well, so goes without saying that the spreads were lacking liquidity, especially in 2008 and the massive liquidations/deleveraging which was happening back then. But anyway, it was my choice of market & expiry, true.
Not at the CME or ICE or Eurex. The best bid and best offer in the exchange supported spread will almost always be more liquid than the outright flat price contract.
You are tempting me . SoyMeal, Platinum, Palladium, SoyOil, Live Cattle, Hogs, etc... But you are right, there are more liquid native spreads than I initially thought. I thought that it's Corn, Crude and NatGas are the ones with very liquid spreads. Turns out I am wrong, there are more.
Any name with decent liquidity will have very good exchange supported spread volume. TBH, I tell my clients not to trade names like Platinum and Paladium or Oats. I keep them away from the thin markets as a rule. I give them minimum volume thresholds. I do have a few clients who just freaking print money over at the LME - but that's another matter all together.
Trading style is different for everyone, maybe someone has found the holy grail of spread trading. So it is different for everyone; one cannot just straight away say that spread trading is bad because you never know maybe they haven’t figured it out yet while trading
Well, spread trading is really misunderstood and downright dismissed on this website - and yet it’s the bread and butter for the big proprietary trading groups like DRW and TransMarket and Peak6 and a shit ton of hedge fund and bank desks.