Commodity Trading Advice

M

msk_at

Hi everybody!

I have been trading US-Stocks for 2 years now, now I want to ad commodities to my trading portfolio.

I'm a professional market maker for stocks in my home country, so it was easy for me to enter the US-Stocks market. But commodities are a different battlefield.

It's hard to find free historical data on future contracts, and it seems to be impossible to find spread adjusted data (I hope this is the right expression). hopefully I get a Bloomberg machine soon, because this seems to be the only source were you can construct data series. Reuters, which I use at the moment, is not able to.

Is there a commodity broker which you can recommend, I looked at the IB-Page, but it seems that they are offering only the a/c/e market for corn and wheat. Is this an disadvantage?.

I hope a can start a thread here where senior trades in the commodity markets can help newbies like me.

Have a nice weekend

msk_at
 
msk_at,
IB only offers futures which are automated. Thus as A/C/E adds more products to their electronic platform, more markets will become available via IB (and the other electronic brokers as well).
 
Def

Does automatic mean an electronic market like nasdaq? And if so how is the volume, spread, fills, etc. compared to "normal" market, or to both markets use the same order book? Is it correct, that a/c/e has longer opening hours?

msk_at
 
automated = electronic. The futures are not like nasdaq in that there is one exchange for one product. volumes on A/C/E depend on the product, some are doing quite well while others are not. i'd refer to their web site for a full list and you can then research the volumes. on globex (which is CME vs CBOT for A/C/E) the main contracts are NQ and ES which are very liquid).

as for the open outcry vs electronic markets - they are different books. Often the contracts that trade in the electronic market are minis but they trade in line with the bigger contracts that trade open outcry.

globex and A/C/E do trade almost 24 hours with some products (like SPX and NDX) moving to the electronic markets once open outcry closes.

hope that answers your questions.
 
Def thank you for your answere.

Is there another broker beside IB you can recommend to trade futures, i'm especially interested in trading grains. This broker has to accept costumers from overseas, in my cause Europe. Can you or somebody else recommend a book concerncing grain-trading, or a website.

I just read on the cbot page, that a mini-corn will start trading, is there a fixed date when it is launched.

msk_at
 
i don't have any experience with physical commodities and thus don't have any personal experience with any brokers. As you are based in Europe, perhaps you can talk to Man UK.

as for the mini corns, no idea on the date. I'd keep checking the CBOT press releases or try sending them an e-mail.
 
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