what SSF trades closest to the S&P 500?

One idea would be to begin trading DIA or QQQ to get used to how they move. When you buy, don't use margin. Use cash and hedge the position with SSF.

 

MSFT

 

Well I suggest where to begin would be go to www.nqlx.com and www.onechicago.com and look through their lists of which stocks have SSF's. See which of them you may already be trading.

Start adding SSF stocks to your trading pages, watch them move. I do like to have the underlying stock on my page, with the SSF listed beneath it.

If you wanted to just trade them just for the heck of getting a feel for trading, you could do it even better than the "hedge with SSF" idea: you can simultaneously buy one contract while selling one contract of the same underlying but with a different expiration month. When you do that, your margin allowance is increased to 40:1! That means, if you did that with a DIA at $80 a share, the amount of margin it would require to be long and short the same underlying DIA would be $400 total.

If you do that with AMD, trading around $7.50 a share, total cost for the long&short position would be $37.50.

 

There is no advantage in that strategy yet, because of the lack of liquidity in SSF's.

 

Just wanted to say thanks for the info. I enabled a futures account yesterday, and futures are

 

Does anybody know what currently are the top 5 most liquid SSF's ? Seems like this might be a good place to start?

 

Maybe MSFT is among the most liquid ?

 

Russell 1000®
CME will begin trading Russell 1000® futures on GLOBEX® on Monday, April 28, 2003 at 8:30 a.m. CT. For more information, join us in a pre-launch online chat on April 24 from 3:30 to 4:15 p.m. CT.

Want to learn more about the new Russell 1000® futures contracts? Join us in a pre-launch online chat on April 24, 2003 from 3:30 - 4:15 p.m. (Chicago Time). You can log on to this event from this page beginning 15 minutes before the event starts. You may want to bookmark this page now! If you will not have access to the Internet at that time, you can listen in by calling 1-877-803-2255 during the posted chat time and by entering this conference ID 1893018. In the meantime, if you would like additional information on the product, you can review the contract specs listed below or download the product brochure .

Ticker Symbol RS1
Contract Size $100 times Russell 1000 futures price
Price Limits 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%
For more details see Price Limits
Minimum Price Fluctuation (Tick) 0.10 index points = $10.00 per contract (Calendar spreads: .05 index points = $5.00 per contract)
Contract Months Mar, Jun, Sep, Dec
Regular Trading Hours (Central Time) Virtually 24 hours per day (from 5:30 p.m. Sunday to 3:15 p.m. Friday)
Last Trading Day Trading can occur up to 8:30 a.m. (Chicago time) on the third Friday of the contract month
Final Settlement Date The third Friday of the contract month
Position Limits 25,000