I just read the first post and couldn't figure out what "long belly of jfm fly" means. I figure the long belly refers to being long the butterfly body for a short fly, but what's jfm?
You really can't compare to first half of the year in any way. It truly sucks when all your leverage is taken away which makes me very surprised to see people still trading these with IB. If you were doing 50% on capital you would be down to 5% on the same risk after the nearly 10x margin hike.
ib tacks on a bit more than cfe but it still costs you nearly as much with your alternatives. the real issue is if you continue trading these can you trade these differently enough to still make it worthwhile?
You call 30%+ a little? Let's do some math. Exchange maintenance - 5000 Exchange initial -5500 IB initial - 6600 If we enter a bear market the margins will likely hit 10-20k unless the methodology changes. Guess where ib will be? Lol You better milk it while you still can. And to answer your q - the game is over. The only way to make any serious money now is to have a few mil in trading capital. We should feel lucky we were able to use crazy leverage since 2007.
I agree with rally. The new cfe margin is ridiculous. It is not even internally consistent. Spread is too expensive and outright too cheap relatively. Time to move on and expand to other products.
Yes, what has happened here is a disaster , much more for me than you. As you know this is all I have done for years and cannot walk away so easily. I am still waiting for you to fix this.
lol To be honest this whole thing has been a blessing in disguise for me. I used to do 5% of the volume in durations over 60 days before the increase. I cut my size atleast 80% and now my stress level is non existent. Not to mention the free time. Sure I am down to about half the earnings but I am not sure I have much interest in it being fixed.