Worlds Deepest Instrument?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by achilles28, Jun 18, 2008.

  1. achilles28

    achilles28

    Does a more liquid instrument exist than the EURUSD?

    For manual traders that focus only on one instrument, the EURO is not nearly as deep as the 3 Trillion daily turnover billed to the entire FX market:

    - 800 Billion EURUSD done per day
    - ~60% of that done during Europe&US.


    Break that into two regular trading sessions, at 6.5 hours each:

    240 Billion turnover, per session.

    OR 2.4 Million standard "contracts" (aka Lots) traded, per session.


    What other deep markets are there?
     
  2. ES and ZN futures are pretty damn deep. You'd never get too big to day trade em. Massive size in both gets sucked up immediately during RTH.
     
  3. QQQQ and SPY during market hours

    Not quite forex territory
     
  4. credit derivatives?
     
  5. achilles28

    achilles28

    Yea, all those are deep.

    I guess the point is moot (to a degree) since position limits exist on future contracts.

    Just out of curiosity, how do Commercials and Institutions get around those limits?
    :p
     
  6. achilles28

    achilles28

    Thats a good point.

    Credit Default Swaps have 45 *Trillion* outstanding. First is something called "full index trade". No idea what that is.

    How are credit derivatives traded? Through a regular brokerage?
     
  7. If i'm not mistaken, their traded OTC - ie. mostly unregulated, and financial institutions opt to keep it that way :D
     
  8. I believe the most voluminous of exchange traded products are options on the Kospi 200 (Korean Stock Index). Apparently the ~ 2 billion traded each year accounts for over a third of all options traded worldwide.

    That's something like 10 million traded each day.
     
  9. I guess you have to define "deepest" first : volume, turnover, market impact given $X to trade, etc; Thus, the KOSPI 200 futures are heavy in volume because the Korean Won is 1/1000th of a USD or so. It's multiplier is 500,000 <-- I may be wrong about this since I get confused by the number of zeroes involved!

    Of interest to this thread : I once found this document by the Sydney Futures Exchange (now part of ASX):

    http://www.sfe.com.au/content/sfe/trading/qmm_200406.pdf

    Excerpt:

    Top futures contracts by liquidity (in USD notional value):
    1. E-mini S&P 500 - CME
    2. S&P 500 - CME
    3. CAC 40 - Euronext
    4. KOSPI 200
    5. Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 - Eurex
    6. DAX - Eurex
    7. E-mini Nasdaq-100 - CME
    8. FTSE 100 Index - Euronext
    9. Nikkei 225 - OSE
    10. Topix
    11. SPI 200
    12. OMX
    13. JSE All Share Index
    14. S&P CNX Nify
    15. Sensex


    But if you notice the ordering by volume, not notional value,

    1. E-mini S&P 500
    2. Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50
    3. E-mini Nasdaq-100
    4. KOSPI 200
    5. CAC 40
     
  10. Yeah, that is a good point - having a huge depth is no real use if it can't cope with big money.

    I also note that your list refers to the volume of futures contracts traded - the high volume related to the Kospi is actually in options on the future contracts.
     
    #10     Jun 19, 2008