why the hell futures lower then cash ???

15:13 central time. Feel better now? New futures highs as shorts continue to stop out.

 

actully it's "damn it," but I dumbed it down for the crowd.

 

well, if you're going to use "damit" (sic) it's actually "dammit", damn it.

 

So the question is why are the futs below the cash at any time ever?

 

Fair value should almost never be under 0. It's possible if dividend yields are greater than the discount rate. Also there are arbitrage bounds, so even if it goes negative and fair value is positive, you won't necessarily be able to profit from it due to B/A spreads, funding/lending spreads, etc.

Here's S&P 500 fair value and arbitrage bounds based on this websites estimations of the costs involved:

http://www.indexarb.com/avtceSP500JUN2008.html

 

Question: have you once made any money off the indexarb.com website?

 

I don't do index arb, my costs are low but not that low.

If you're wondering whether you should start doing index arb, the answer is no way

 

Quite brite aren't you?

 

Yes, I haven't been to this site in a while, I actually came to check and see if people still are profitable rebate trading stocks and noticed this thread -- felt that I could clear some things up about basis

 

So the simple question is why on god's green earth would he ever let the the Futs go under the Cash.

Heaven help us all..