Would any of the experienced traders on ET care to comment on what it was like trading something like the ES or SP back in 2000? Was it like taking candy from a baby or did the high volatility mean you made heaps of dough one day and lost it the next? Just looking for general comments - I know this will all be dependent on all sorts of trading styles etc. Just seems on the face of it that if a trader can make money trickle into their equity account in this market, it should pour in during something like the year 2000 market. - rcm
But a little earlier than you mentioned, option markets in say IBM used to be 2 bid at 3, now they're probably more like 2.40-2.60, so needless to say the option MMs used to really clean house. Or think about when stocks like AMAT, INTC, MSFT were .50 wide and moving 3-6 bucks a day !! Vega
Back in the day of Oct 1999 - Mar 2000 there was ENORMOUS volatility in the ES & NQ. The NQ had an average 200 point daily range & the ES had about 30 points. When The Fed lowered interest rates (the 1st-3rd) 2 it was done unannounced and even when It was announced you would see HUGE spikes. The Dow & NQ would move about 500-600 pts withen about 2 seconds. The ES would move about 110 pts. WOW! WOW! WOW! Now you are lucky to get 10pt day ranges. I could go on about the late 1990's and how I watched Yahoo go from 23 - 300 per share! The game is alot harder now but well worth it. Its funny how when in the begining of a thing you are still working out all the rough edges and then you get a nice well oiled machine. You have to remember that the E-mini's were still new back then and many were trying to make the transition from stocks to E-mini's.
I only traded the SP and ND contracts back then. Today it's the ES, and starting Monday (early AM)...the DAX. Charts were the same...entry and exit difficulty were the same. Trading was more dangerous in 2000 with the rising volatility. The risk was having too many contracts on as the size of moves increased. Today if you size wrong you're more likely to have too few contracts on with the shrinking volatility. Volume is higher today and it's much easier to do size than it was in 2000. I wasn't doing online trading back then but I imagine the technology has improved since then. If you're a one-lot trader the volatilty in 2000 would've had more opportunity and more risk. I miss the large moves. Here's a chart from 10/26/2000 with a 35 pt range.
But because these mini-contracts were so new, did you have the liquidity to sell them for a 600 or 110 point gain? P
I wish! NO. there were some GLOBEX inadequacies and inefficiencies at the CME that prevented such events regardless of liquidity. 2nd of all the REAL problem was already being on the right side of the market.
Back in the day, I used to work for a MM in the NDX pit at the CBOE, which used the NQ and ND contracts as a hedge. The ND future used to be 30 dollars wide !!!!!!!!!!! So as you can guess, liquidity was brutal. Vega
in the good old days one tick on 1000 shares used to be worth $250 now its worth $10 and sometimes less.