At least half of the futures Calendar Spreads are Illiquid??

C

Con1991

I am using a demo with Trading Technologies, which I believe is one of the most realistic demo platforms available. What I notice is, and very frustratingly, most of the calendar spreads I pull up in the instrument search can't be traded, because they do not have a bid or ask. Some just have either the bid or the ask. This applies to both front month, near month and long dated month securities. So it is not exclusively long dated contracts I mean here. You would imagine, that for there to be more variety available for traders, liquidity needs to be added by somebody. TT does seem to allow you to set your own limit prices, but I'm not sure if this is a legit way to trade very Illiquid products. I am interested in both liquid and Illiquid, however right now it seems to me there are actually very few 'liquid' products to be trade in the futures market.

I have attached two screenshot images of my TT account as evidence.
 

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Con1991 said:
What I notice is, and very frustratingly, most of the calendar spreads I pull up in the instrument search can't be traded, because they do not have a bid or ask.
More...
Most futures trade on spot basis and calendar spreads only trade when it's time to roll. Why do you specifically care about calendar spreads?
 
there are thousands of futures around the world
(especially MSCI things ) that are illiquid.

The exchanges like to have a very long list of products to show off.
 
Con1991 said:
Because of the lower margin required to trade them. Also the risk mitigation element too.
More...
Most calendars/rolls will have very little volatility (e.g. equity index futures, precious metals or FX). Unless you have specific trading strategies that target term structure or roll pressures, it's hard to find alpha there.
 
Same Lazy Element said:
Most calendars/rolls will have very little volatility (e.g. equity index futures, precious metals or FX). Unless you have specific trading strategies that target term structure or roll pressures, it's hard to find alpha there.
More...
I get what you're saying. Some calendars do have decent volatility, but many don't. For the very illiquid spreads, I set my own prices, and on the TT platform I actually get filled if nobody else is trading, so that's an advantage. What I do is place a limit order, and then come in on the opposite side and place a market order.
 
Yeah, your choice of products makes zero sense. Nobody really cares about Gold, Silver, and Copper dated futures. It’s a simple yield roll that gets zero attention outside the LME. Same for stock indices.

Before you keep making these silly posts, mind my earlier thread advice about looking at the posted daily settlements on the exchange website for traded daily volume and open interest in the dated forward curve expiries.

Try Energy, grains, softs, interest rates like STIRS, and others.



Con1991 said:
I am using a demo with Trading Technologies, which I believe is one of the most realistic demo platforms available. What I notice is, and very frustratingly, most of the calendar spreads I pull up in the instrument search can't be traded, because they do not have a bid or ask. Some just have either the bid or the ask. This applies to both front month, near month and long dated month securities. So it is not exclusively long dated contracts I mean here. You would imagine, that for there to be more variety available for traders, liquidity needs to be added by somebody. TT does seem to allow you to set your own limit prices, but I'm not sure if this is a legit way to trade very Illiquid products. I am interested in both liquid and Illiquid, however right now it seems to me there are actually very few 'liquid' products to be trade in the futures market.

I have attached two screenshot images of my TT account as evidence.
More...
 
bone said:
Yeah, your choice of products makes zero sense. Nobody really cares about Gold, Silver, and Copper dated futures. It’s a simple yield roll that gets zero attention outside the LME. Same for stock indices.

Before you keep making these silly posts, mind my earlier thread advice about looking at the posted daily settlements on the exchange website for traded daily volume and open interest in the dated forward curve expiries.

Try Energy, grains, softs, interest rates like STIRS, and others.
More...
Yes Bone. I look at each and every available calendar spread, in fact I have just been looking at Soybean Oil, and it is a very liquid product. Same goes for Corn, Heating Oil, Eurodollars etc. I am just trying to keep all my options open. I don't like being limited. I see all these many thousands of spread combinations, I would like to be able to trade more than just 'What everyone else is trading' kind of thing. I have looked at charts for some of the far out contracts, and there is real volatility and opportunity there. I will keep sim trading anyway until I have the understanding of it all.
 
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