Futures Magazine October 01, 2006
Breaking News
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CBOT/CBOE at it again
As the New York Stock Exchange and Arca Ex demonstrated, a merger can be a relatively quick and painless shortcut to becoming a publicly traded company. Perhaps that is what the Chicago Board Options
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Refco FX clients near settlement?
A bankruptcy judge has approved an agreement under which Refco Inc. would repay secured creditors 100% of the $650 million they loaned to the company and a reduced amount to unsecured creditors.
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Philly futures to launch
PBOT, which toyed with the concept of listing futures on event markets and U.S. Treasuries in the run-up to the relaunch, will begin by listing products on the British Bankers’ Association Libor
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The new-old Eurex
Eurex’s new London-based management team broke into full public view in early September after months of flying below the radar of competitors and customers. Both Andreas Preuss, who replaced Rudi
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There goes the neighborhood
The two largest energy exchanges in the world will be competing from the same building as the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the New York Board of
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Comex to go on Globex?
In August, Nymex, Comex’s parent, announced it had reached an agreement in principal with Comex on the issue of electronic trading rights. Comex members would each receive 8,400 shares of Nymex
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International news
Bund and Euribor traders will have a new benchmark product come November: futures on a range of EuroMTS government bond indexes, which will trade on Euronext.Liffe in London.The first set of products
Trading Techniques
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The liquidity mirage
Every organization, from government regulatory bodies to the exchanges and brokers, promotes electronic markets as more liquid, transparent and tighter in terms of spreads.
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Managing equity market volatility
One day after a recent market close, a professional market maker who trades options on the S&P 500 index (SPX) was asked how his day went. His response was something like this: “The day was really
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Cycles and technicals: A profitable pair
A good timing mechanism can provide an extra edge for a trader’s technical analysis toolkit. One solid approach is cycle analysis. This can be useful for timing short-term counter trends from one to
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The big bad house
A host of technical indicators suggest that the stock market reached a major top in May 2006. Both momentum and volume broke rising bottom patterns, indicating the bull market of the last year and a
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Trading Implications
A market decline is an opportunity for futures traders. Unlike buy-and-hold equities strategists, futures traders have the dexterity to capitalize on major market moves in either direction. With the
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Adjusting for volatility
Options are among the most unique financial trading instruments available to everyday traders around the world. Options have been used for centuries in all walks of life. Aristotle wrote about buying
Technology & Trading
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Searching for the right data vendor
While you can get a wide variety of data for free on the Internet, that data is delayed and basic. Any serious trader will need to get their data from a reliable data vendor. Each trader has his own
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Garbage in, garbage out
Before you can think about building a trading system, you need to determine what data to use for developing and testing the system. This is a fundamental consideration that can make or break your
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New age for analysis
Traders need open minds. Many of us believe trading systems are the only way to enjoy long-term success in the markets. Discretionary traders like to take a more active hand in trading. System
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Forex: not for dummies
Trading forex is completely different than trading futures or equities. Unlike the futures markets with its exchanges and their official record of past prices, forex can be considered the Wild West
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Overnight surprise: Understanding the overnight interest calculation in forex
When you trade the cash forex markets, you incur an interest profit or loss when your trades are held overnight. To develop a forex trading system that carries such trades, you need to make
Forex Trader
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Seasons of extremes coming to an end?
The year 2006 is turning out to be a year of extremes in weather, geopolitics and forex markets. The challenge for the forex trader is to filter out the noise of a current day’s events and seize
Futures 101
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Questions anyone?
You have questions, there are answers. Futures recently asked a number of brokers for a list of the most common questions they get from new traders, and then we got the answers, insights and
Markets
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Where are energy markets headed?
Ten years ago we stopped thinking about this kind of stuff. The market really didn’t care a whole lot about this subject because one major safeguard existed in the energy world — surplus crude oil
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Is the worst over?
As summer comes to a close, technicals in the crude oil market show relief may be at hand. Can this news, coupled with some bearish supply fundamentals, trump geopolitical concerns and deliver a
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Fed at a crossroads
Some might differ and maintain that having suspended interest rate hikes on Aug. 8, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) can now just stay on hold until an opportune time presents itself to cut
Editor's Note
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Too much energy?
The news that the New York Board of Trade (Nybot) was going into a good faith purchase agreement with the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) was yet another chapter in the strange and twisting
Market Analysis
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10-year: may cause drowsiness
“I’m afraid we are going to continue in a rut unless something cataclysmic happens,” says 10-year note trader Harold Lavender. He adds that the divergence of opinion, even among members of the
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Soybeans everywhere
Big crops tend to get bigger, and with the United States’ second largest soybean harvest out of danger weather-wise, there is a great deal of downward pressure on soybean futures. “It’s a supply
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How sweet it was....
Strong demand from importing nations and huge long positions from hedge funds propelled sugar to more than 18¢ per pound earlier this year, says James S. Cordier, chief trader at Liberty Trading
Managed Money
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Bayou blues
The problem is that the fund was losing large amounts of money while reporting profits, so the money withdrawn may not have been the original investment plus profits, but other investors’ money, as
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Hot new traders: Niche programs bring profits
This is the 17th year Futures has profiled emerging commodity trading advisors (CTAs). A recent trend towards niche managers continues, especially in terms of premium-collection option programs. New
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Last year's HNC scorecard
Although every year we profile emerging CTAs, we preface the story with a qualification that the feature is not an endorsement but a review of new talent, we certainly like it when our Hot New CTAs
People
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LME gets new boss
Molly H. McGregor is now director of corporate affairs for the International Securities Exchange. Previously she was with the Institute of International Finance, where she was Policy Advisor in the
Trader Profiles
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DeCook: a man four (all) seasons
Fundamental Futures Inc. (FFI) was one of the more successful commodity trading advisors (CTA) throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The fundamental discretionary ag program averaged more than 15% in a
Industry Trends
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The long arm of the (international) law
David MacGregor and Karen Roth won’t say exactly what it was about the track record posted on the www.teamforex.com Web site that tipped them off, other than that the numbers seemed a bit
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The DeWet investigation
The CFTC recently won a judgment in a U.S. court against South African currency trader James DeWet and his company, Team Forex, and the case provides as clear an example as any of how regulators and
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Global monetary systems: then and now
World War I — the war to end all wars — changed the map of humankind forever. Battle and famine claimed 15 million lives. Empires and dynasties imploded into multiple states throughout eastern and
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Origin of petro dollars
In 1973 while the United States struggled to tame inflation with wage and price controls, the Arab oil embargo sent the price of crude petroleum from $3.00 per barrel to $11.00 almost overnight,
