A few thoughts here. ES and YM confirmed negative a few days ago. My vol indicator also triggered. It's not vix based btw. But we do have the vix breaking out as well. The whole market is basically preparing for the end of the world. Markets usually don't crash on marked dates on the calendar (don't we wish). So this is going to be perfectly fitting like our election, it's going to be messy as shit. The problem we have here is, regardless of the election outcome, the damage to the markets has already be done. It's not like a Clinton win will suddenly rip the market back to the highs. Yet at the same time we do have bullish seasonality effects coming usually after Thanksgiving. Gold is too obvious as well. Too me the yield curve is bar none the best trade out there. I expect it too get messy too though although I'm pleasantly pleased that NOBODY on ET is talking about it and even CNBC doesn't seem to understand what's going on. So it has that going for it. Next best trade? Long financials and short ES as a spread trade. Don't forget to put something in Mav's stocking at the end of the year as a thank you.
When you say messy, how bad? I haven't traded NOB before, but I did take a look yesterday. The total contract value was about 240K and the margin was about 2.4K, that's 100:1 leverage. Heck, I don't use that in FX even though I could, because when it gets messy, it gets messy real fast, and it's not like options where I have capped my risk. Unfortunately no options on NOB. Agree about the gold, I went in to silver instead as the ratio is still on the high side and I got buy signals anyway. http://www.macrotrends.net/1441/gold-to-silver-ratio
No, no, no. It's hedged so the actual risk exposure is tiny. The reason the margin is low is because the risk is low. To give you some color on the ATR, it's avg daily range is anywhere from 6 to 12 ticks a day. The tick value varies since there is a combination of moves that can generate a tick. But if you were long 3 ten years and short one bond and the ten year moved a tick ($15.62) up and bonds moved a tick down ($31.25) then your profit on that tick would be $15.62. So put another way, the avg dollar range per day is about $200 a day. THAT is why the margin is so low. Compared to the margin and range on ZB alone that moves 1 to 2 full handles a day, that is 1k to 2k a day per contract on a ZB outright. The NOB has about 5% of the dollar risk of a single ES mini. It's the epitome of a de-leveraged trade. No comparison to spot FX leverage. LOL.
Also, I don't know who is asking for 2400 margin on that, it's an exchange traded spread and the margin should be $300 to $400 overnight fyi.
Sorry, you're right. Was looking at a lot of stuff and memory failed me. I just did a check with IB, the Maintenance Margin is $1,050 on a 3:1 ratio, which is the current. As for the daily $ value I took the change for ZN*1000/point*3 less change for ZB*1000/point and these are the dollar values I got for the last 15 days from Nov 2nd. Is that the correct way to calculate it? 250.00 765.63 78.17 171.83 - 31.25 - 390.63 31.30 - 15.63 - 375.00 46.88 234.38 343.75 - 296.92 171.92 515.63 Total +$1,500, average +$100/day. If this is correct then messy could mean that 14th October, the +$765 day could be a -$765 day.
I would use tick values vs pts but the numbers are probably close. Just remember that 10yrs trade in half ticks and 30 yrs trade in full ticks but both are $1000 per full handle. When I say messy I don't mean bigger range just lots of back and forth chop.
Wow, crude is getting pummeled. Looks like it is going to test that $43 bottom from September...if that doesn't hold, next stop is a retest of the July $39 low? Edit: ...and as soon as I post this crude has a massive rally