Bond Futures

Is the ZF easier for beginners to trade than the ZB and ZN? It seems the ZF movement is quite smooth but the volume is lower than ZN and sometime, it has no transaction for a few minutes!

BTW, who are the market makers of the bonds futures?
 
Quote from Sarasota:




Full sized, and the ZB did over 90,000 today...... but what I was wondering is this normal volume, or is it a decrease because of the holidays and end of year.
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US loses around 20% of its average volume in August and at the end of December. I can imagine it is going to be about the same for ZB,
Walter
 
i plan to begin trading soon and am looking at the bonds/notes as a possible stating place. Any other advice aside from avoiding the news days?

p.s. is there a bond futures specific web site where i can gather more info?

thanks
 
Stock traders use the premium/discount of the SP cash (SPX) vs. Spoo future to gauge the short term direction of market. I've read that in interest rate futures such as the 10 yr note, 5 year note the cash is based on a "virtual" 6% instrument. Is there a single symbol for that intrument where a trader can base whether the future is under/over valued relative to it? Thanks
 
Quote from GATrader:

Is there a single symbol for that intrument where a trader can base whether the future is under/over valued relative to it? Thanks
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I would think it is probably the Cheapest to Deliver Note (CTD). However, I do not know the symbol, or if there even is one. Seems to me, the CTD would change as traders bought/sold the Notes in the cash market.
 
I called the CBOT and they told me there are a lot of bonds deliverable against the futures and I can get it at a bloomberg terminal. Any other cheaper alternatives? Do any Bond futures traders even take the cash into consideration when scalping the futures or do you guys just keyoff of the charts? Thanks
 
Quote from GATrader:

I called the CBOT and they told me there are a lot of bonds deliverable against the futures and I can get it at a bloomberg terminal. Any other cheaper alternatives? Do any Bond futures traders even take the cash into consideration when scalping the futures or do you guys just keyoff of the charts? Thanks
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The cash is a very big factor in entries. The cash/futures basis or spread is arbed all day long by cash dealers and arbitrageurs on the floor. Some other factors include the swapping of yields of other maturities and the arbs of the screen prices as well as the
floor prices. Believe it or not option strike concentrations and option flows also contribute a bunch, remember there are massive hedges going down there......Today in fact,
a massive short convexity hedge was rolled in the ten year options.
 
Quote from GATrader:

I called the CBOT and they told me there are a lot of bonds deliverable against the futures and I can get it at a bloomberg terminal. Any other cheaper alternatives? Do any Bond futures traders even take the cash into consideration when scalping the futures or do you guys just keyoff of the charts? Thanks
More...


Some other good sources are:

http://www.cantordata.com/

http://www.govpx.com
 
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