They are probably having difficulties finding market makers due to lack of "prick factor" regarding exchange rules.
Actually they have quite a few market makers. They only use the market makers to open up a contract and to provide initial liquidity. After that it's mostly customer orders. Like I said some markets are better then others. The futures on Saddam don't move that much. But when you watch the NCAA games trade its a very very liquid market with very tight spreads. But the mkt moves very fast and a lot of people pull their bids and offers just like in the real mkt. It's very common to see 100 to 300 contracts on both sides of the mkt most of the time. That's a lot of money guys. The long term contracts you just have to put in bids and offers and let them rest and see if you get hit.
I don't watch anything but the Saddams....the mm left the March contract but you can see him in the other months. He's always 300 bid and offer with a seven point spread. He's obvious in the morning, then later in the days people will take little pieces of him or add to him......
Why did the March Sadam contract drop so much? Everything we are hearing on the news says he is either dead or badly injured and some claim they saw him on a stretcher after the first bombings. It would seem that somebody knows something that is not being reported in the news.
They don't really trade the way we're used to seeing things trade. They are frequently over or under valued. The lack of volume means that a few people simple can move them up or down as they please. That's why I said they're good if you just want to bet on an end result. Even if I wanted to get out when the offer was at 88 cents (I holding because I'm confident in the outcome) I could have put a 500 share offer to sell at ten cents and I GUARANTEE you I would clear every level out to 10 cents and would still have a hundred shares left to make the new offer ten cents. These things are just simply illiquid. There's so little interest that even when definitive news of Sadam's death or the equivalent comes out, there will be five or ten minutes where you can just take out any offer you want. People just don't watch these things like people watch stocks because obviously they're more of a gimmick than anything.
I guess I was wrong about the Saddam March contract. Looks like we have a Saddam bubble developing now that there are signs of slight Iraqi resistance.