Good overview in FT today.
CME Group Announces Launch of Bitcoin Futures
- Thread starter SumZero
- Start date
Add to that the weekends are prime moving time for BTC so the CME is ratbass crazy to think they can just close up shop for 48 hours while BTC moves $1200 with no way for futures traders to cover positions. Obviously no one at CME has actually traded BTC so they do not have a clue that their standard business model will not work with this instrument.
Are you new to futures trading? Lots of markets have had one-off 10- 20% one-day moves, especially near-expiry physical commods.
Presumably you can always hedge your exposure using physicals during the weekend, right? Not sure what the issue is.
Obviously less than ideal. I'm just pointing out that entities aren't unable to lay off risk during the weekend, as was implied. Here's where someone always points out that if you're undercapitalized enough that you can't lay off the risk in the actual BTC over the weekend you have no business playing, but I never liked that line so I won't say it.
Bottom line is that you'll just have to close up positions on Fri if you aren't in a position to deal with the weekend swings. The futures are still better than what we have, so not a reason not to launch them. We just push for 7 day trading once they become established. Obviously that's a big change for CME and CFTC since they don't have any products that do that now, so they're not going to do it out of the gate before they even figure out if this thing has legs.
There is no trader on the planet willing to take a Bitcoin Futures contract and ride through the weekend with it unless he/she is hedging a physical position in the coin itself. MY goodness, did you see what Bitcoin did this past weekend? Open interest will go to zero on Friday afternoon. CME may not be expecting that but it will happen so we will see how quickly they adapt to 24/7 hour trading. There are foreign exchanges not open to US citizens that you can trade 24/7 on Bitcoin futures at 100/1 and do not have the 5 coin contract limit. But you have to use actual Bitcoins for your margin so you can not trade them unless you actually own the coin.
Europe is full of CFD brokers where you don't need to own BTC and it is actually very cheap to open an account. I think keep going long on large pullbacks sounds like a no brainer strategy.
Not going to happen that easily. You need to deposit funds at an unregulated exchange... that will take time... unless you keep it there for weeks/months/ever.... which I doubt professionals want to do.
And if trading in the futures will really kick-off, the volume on there will be more than the underlying... so you would need to deposit a very decent amount of funds... also not likely.