The Ultra is not a 50 year bond, It is for 30 year bonds with no less than 25 years to maturity. Whereas the ZB is for a bond with no less than 15.
This is a very embarrassing oversight, and a clear indication that I have not done sufficient homework. Simply put, I am too engrossed in reading the charts and interpreting news for (often contrarian) signals, and have not spent nearly enough time understanding the products themselves, even on a basic level. Here is some helpful basic info for the Ultra T-Bond Futures from the CME website: http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/us-treasury/ultra-t-bond_contract_specifications.html
now if you want to get long now i can't fault ya, i'll be trading with a long bias unless we can get back to 15ish in the zn
Sounds good, but asking respectfully: Given that I am looking for longer term swing-trades, what strategy would you employ here for identifying an entry? Again, asking seriously as my strategy has always been to try to get in at the fringes.. obviously there are pros and cons to such a strategy and I am open to alternate viewpoints. The reason I am asking is this: Because we already had a nice breakout from a falling wedge on /ZB hourly, I would not know where to confidently get long, besides perhaps at a retest of the 130'24 area (for /ZB).. or to 'guess' where to buy on the 'dip'. Furthermore, I simply do not have enough knowledge to know whether we even will revisit ~130'24, and waiting for lower levels to get long might backfire entirely. Question is open to all for discussion.
as a swing trade i would be long ZN right now as if you do a 50,000 contract continuous volume graph we just blew through the downtrend we've been in for a while this morning. it's likely going to be good for at least a couple of points. if that's the case the UB is going to be good for a lot more than a couple of points. i think you could use the lows from today as a stop out on zn/zb/ub prolly don't even have to use the lows could prolly do 5-10 tics off the low in each. i don't swing trade though i just intraday trade (and only spread butterflies as well) but i know my bias will be long treasuries looking for a nice rally to start here. they did everything the way i would have expected them to to start a huge rally right now, we got down to the lows and then they hammered the zf while buying zb putting a short curve hedge on. they got the zn/zb/ub to sell off because they were selling so many zf's, but those were all sucker sells and now i expect them to get squeezed up in a nice rally. these are just my hunches and i actually usually trade worse when i have directional biases than when i just trade the trade, but this is a situation where it just looks like a perfect setup.