4 contracts trade for any given stock. i 4get the actual terms but the 2 of the active quarterly contracts i.e. march, june, sept, dec trade and then 2 contracts from whatever are the near months. For example right now contracts for ssf's that are trading are feb, march, april and june. with feb expiring this week i think. I do not know the actual math the mm's use for the premiums and discounts, so my advice is to pull up all 4 contracts and decide from there.
Just thought I'd mention my one experience with SSF. I traded some C. Now this particular SSF trades by appointment only! But if memory serves the size was 20 up.....meaning there were 20 contracts on either side of a fairly tight quote. This is the equivalent of 2000 shares. Don't take my word for it though, take a look. My point is that if your size is not too big, there shouldn't be any particular problem actively trading the SSF as long as the size is there on the big/ask. I had no difficulty trading C, eventhough I was the only volume that day a few months back. I'd take the time to check the size on the bid/ask, rather than simply concluding there isn't enough volume. OldTrader
20 up. that's not bad for an ssf. (not enough size for me though ) shaman, are you paying the spread on your trades? if so, do the MMs generally refresh after filling you?
yea i buy the ask and sell the bid. you are wasting your time if you try anything else. It seems to me that the MM's are usually just programs and that they refill their size on the next tick (the next tick on the ssf not the underlying).
The MMs just run some stubborn quote machine. They will not sell even one cent below the current ask price. They will not buy even one cent above the current bid price.
Has anyone used the MSFT SSF to trade the stock on an intra-day basis ? If so, what were the spreads like? Thanks again.