not to sound stupid here ... but if you are trading back months outright ( esp. a year out on comex ) ... you will have slippage ... why can't you just trade the lead month which is DEC 2005 ( for gold futures ) at this time ?
I trade out months because I'm trading contango and backwardation... and intend to hold the positions 3-6 months. there's some rich pickings in this area, but sorry cant tell you what is it precisely i'm doing.
Oh man, reading your post, that stinks on dry ice!! I'll never trade at the comex again. In the future, try dropping the Comex and move to the Cbot for gold futures.
Kotika: Sounds like a "winning" strategy, shhhhhhhh don't tell anybody!!! I will pay down a buck for anything that trades on the LME!
The opposite broker was at lunch or half asleep. Your broker comes up to him and sys what you have in Dec, it's one guy handling all the back months, and he has like three limits in his hand so he just says sold so he can go back to doing the crossword or harassing a female clerk or whatever. Runner brings the order back to the desk, the clerk is calling it in and he notices the price looks funny. He walks back to the pit himself, muttering about the wise guy who has to trade the out months when no one is even in the pit, bitches to the broker, the broker has to go find the broker holding the back months, bust the trade, take down the print, and then scare up a local who wants to make a market in a back month. That guy makes 3 or 4 ticks by quoting a wide market to your broker. The poor schlep will probably have that trade in his account until the next roll, maybe this december. He puts on a front month against it or whatever he's already got going that day. That's probably what happened. Nothing too sinister. You should realize that the locals ARE the little guys most of the time
Thats the exact reason why you should only use limit orders. Especially if you're gonna try and trade the switches, sometimes an arb house may have an interest and provide liquidity to you to keep the mkt going. Just a thought.