List of ~300 Futures contracts retail customers can trade

General discussions about futures.
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sluggo
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List of ~300 Futures contracts retail customers can trade

Post by sluggo »

While exploring the "MTRADE" web-based trading platform at the futures broker MF Global, I stumbled onto a page that seems pretty useful. It lists all 378 markets (futures contracts and futures options contracts) that retail customers can trade at MF Global using MTRADE. I assume it's a pretty fair representation of the list of markets you can trade at many other brokers. I dumped the webpage into an Excel spreadsheet and have included it here as an attachment.

Beware, different brokers will use different symbols for these markets. Don't assume that MF Global's symbols are the same ones that YOUR broker uses. (This is why Trading Blox software gives you the option of providing a different symbol for your data vendor, than for your broker. So for example your data vendor might call Brent Crude "LCO" while your broker calls it "B-ENC" and MF Global calls it "IQO".)
Attachments
Futures_Markets_at_MFG.xls
Markets for retail customers
(57 KiB) Downloaded 919 times
LeapFrog
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Post by LeapFrog »

Definitely a few there that my brokers do not offer like Japanese Raw Slik (sic) Futures, Spanish 10 Year Bonds, Non Fat Dry Milk, etc.

What would be critical to me is, what sort of quotes does your broker offer? Is it a "live" feed (as are ALL my broker's offerings) or are they delayed? Delayed would be fine for a MOO type long term trading approach, but not for shorter term trading styles.

That would be the point of course - different brokers will fit different trading styles and having multiple brokers is a good idea.
AFJ Garner
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Post by AFJ Garner »

A live feed with market depth becomes increasingly important (even for systems which trade rarely) as account equity grows, especially when dealing in less liquid markets.

At some stage the choice has to be made as to whether to pay for this information and execute the trades oneself (which may be difficult in some time zones) or whether to pay more to a broker broker to get an execution at careful discretion or an attempt at the average of the day. Or whatever.
wx
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Post by wx »

Hi sluggo

I tried to find the MF Global web page referred to in your post but only managed to locate this.
http://www.mfglobalfutures.com/resources/margins.cfm

I'd appreciate it if you'd post the link to the page from which you created your helpful spreadsheet.

How do you find MTrade? As far as I know Asian market futures aren't tradable on this platform.

Thanks for your help!
AFJ Garner
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Post by AFJ Garner »

Asian Markets ARE tradeable on this platform. If a particular market is not listed, you can request that it be listed. MF Global will not however list some markets which they deem to require special care in handling. Thus they will not put LME metals on the platform and would not list ICE Carbon Emission futures - in the latter case because of illiquidity in any other than the December contract.
wx
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Post by wx »

AFJ Garner wrote:Asian Markets ARE tradeable on this platform. If a particular market is not listed, you can request that it be listed. MF Global will not however list some markets which they deem to require special care in handling. Thus they will not put LME metals on the platform and would not list ICE Carbon Emission futures - in the latter case because of illiquidity in any other than the December contract.
Thanks for your explanations, AFJ Garner.

All the best with your new book!
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