Todays Bonds

tens

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hey guys, just wanted to know what you thought of the bond trade lately. IMO, just garbage..scalping for ticks and frequently taking trades with R:R of like 1:1..also have the london arcades started to trade eurex us?? the volume has just lifted off..
 
Considering the figures out today, the volume has been diabolical and the volatility...pants.
It has been fairly slow since April but this last week has been very slow. Lets cross fingers for CPI tomorrow.
 
Spot on walker

On monday and tuesday i was crossing my fingers for retail sales and ppi. now its the cpi. im also dealing with some 1000 lot flippers who have just decided to start to play in the last coupl of weeks. this month has been brutal..
 
Well this mornign has been about as quiet as it gets, COME ON CPI...make our weekend.
 
Ah yes, the flipper, isnt there a big investigation into who is doing this?
Bid for 4000, trade 54 lots, flip, offered for 3400.......time and time again......... basically I've stopped trading bonds this month and am focusing on other things: equities and commodities. Results so far are encouraging so can almost thank the flipper guy for making me to stop scalping and move to longer term trading just like I've always wanted to do but never pushed myself into doing :D
 
The flipper is Paul Rotter, he is based in Ireland. Smart bloke it seems, at least he has taken plenty of money of a lot of locals in the schatz. Not a popular bloke now I think.
I have found myself doing more FX and Index work too but not been moved back to commodities yet. Ever hopeful that the volumes will return although I fear this may not be until the US election. I read in the standard this week that ICAP may cut back their FI team due to low volumes..
Worst thing is that I find myself sitting on large hedged up positions for ages wondering when the hell I will get out.
 
I'm not sure what your risk-profile is like but I've pushed out my time horizon from 1-2 mins per trade to about a week, I do 4-8 hours work a day researching and then 30 mins placing my trades, I find it much more interesting and I feel that I'm actually learning something worthwhile, which I never felt whilst scalping. Also my stress levels are a mere fraction of what they were :!:
But 'horses for courses' I think the phrase goes ;)
 
I used to trade all long term stuff in Energy Markets and before that for a retail fund across all exchange derivative products. In those days had analysts and loads of support and I knew a lot about fundamentals of everything.
Scalping arrived after a chance meeting with an x-collegue, when I started trading for my own account. I have to say I am glad I found it because I am in no doubt that when the markets are moving there is no better way to make a healthy consistent return. I still trade other things to and do a lot of systems work, bit like research that, mostly fruitless but now and again something good. I now run systems on FX and Indices but still make more money scalping, probably a confidence thing more than anything else.
A few years ago I built an automated portfolio model for 23 commodity futures and tried to start a fund. Commodities were not in vogue then and I struggled to get more than a few mil together to trade it, considering I was just on profit share and had business costs it never did get off the ground. Still have the software however so one day I may do it again. Certainly was an interesting lesson in understanding technical market dynamics. Actually think that developing automated systems is the best way to learn about how price moves, by analysing signals a system produces and where it is going wrong you learn far more than by just looking at an historical chart.

OK...market must be quiet, I am quite obviously rambling on.
Good luck with CPI this afternoon, I do not hold out too much hope but hoping I can reduce my exposure a bit before the weekend, right now, that would be enough.
 
Rotter

Yeah, I heard this guy was training like 6guys so his intentions become obvious..you dont train people to compete in the Eurex with you, you train the to infiltrate other markets..so Im guessing these guys are starting to get their feet wet on the ECOT inthese quiet markets..then gradually build themselves up to fulltime..but its exactly like minx said, bid for 4000 fill 250 offer 3500..makes trying to read the order flow damn near impossible..so you just gotta focus on the charts and forget about whats offered or bid..but doing this reduces your "feel" for the action unfortunately..i hope kenyon and some others get together and spank these cocksmokers soon..
hey walker, good luck in the cpi in an hour..word on the floor is everybody is looking at this #..and the word is paper is short and they need to be squeezed..so we will see...
cheers from usa
 
Cheers tens,
I have recently started looking at Eurodollar on CME, it seems to be working out OK although the spreads trade very differently to the Liffe contracts, You can be leaning on 50000lots against 2000 one moment and the nextthe 50k is 1k and you gotta scratch. Just hang out for the lucky fills but seem to get those now and again. I was thinking that there would be lots of American traders who were not used to executing on screen making lots of fat fingers but doesn't seem as easy as that. Also any hope of arbing Liffe vs CME Eurodollar for a tick has gone, not possible IMO too tight and sewn up by the autospreaders.
 
twalker said:
Also any hope of arbing Liffe vs CME Eurodollar for a tick has gone, not possible IMO too tight and sewn up by the autospreaders.

Interesting! Is there a lot of volume in the LIFFE Eurodollar now? Is it also traded london hours, as part of my commodity/equity research I'm also looking at the ED and Euribor spreads as a more longterm trade, about 2-4 week. They seem to trend really nicely over time just like the outrights. Thing is I much prefer to look at things on a screen infront of me rather than waiting for a quote from a broker and then waiting for fills/confirmations etc....
Are they still doing that 'do 1 eurodollar and get 3 euribors free' offer?
 
Yeah, Liffe are still doing some deal like that but thing is I haven't traded a single lot of liffe ED as globex volumes are much better. I think screen volume on globex now exceed floor volume so the change is coming.
I have often thought of position trading Euribor spreads too but always end up taking my tick or two and getting on with the next trade. Problem I have is that while I wait to take a big move out on a trend I could probably have done many scalps made more money and also get my volume up for some rebate.
 
haha...
Yeah, I am ignoring it totally, working on other things. I have 450 spreads on since last week and no hope yet of getting out.
My last hope in life right now is that Greenspan can stir things up tomorrow afternoon.
 
still scalping

Im still trying to scalp ticks..an exercise in futility...the CPI on friday was awesome though...
you didn't get enough volume to get out of your spreads on friday??
 
No, just did some other stuff, the spreads are too well hedged up so I need a few to move to get out. Friday afternoon was not brilliant for me but got a few things done.
 
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