World's highest volume markets that you don't trade

General discussions about futures.
Post Reply
Mark Johnson
Roundtable Knight
Roundtable Knight
Posts: 122
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2003 9:49 am

World's highest volume markets that you don't trade

Post by Mark Johnson »

I just received the March/April 2008 issue of "Futures Industry" magazine and enjoyed an
article by Galen Burghardt, "Global Futures and Options Trading Rises 28% in 2007" (link to article).
It included a table of the Top 50 Exchange-Tradede Derivatives Contracts Worldwide
which I found quite helpful. It made me realize there are a lot of very liquid contracts around
the world that I still don't trade. Since I enjoy trying to smooth out my Suites' equity curves by
means of diversification, these new (to me) markets represent new opportunities to reduce
variance via noncorrelation. And since reduced variance means increased Sharpe Ratio,
(and since I generally prefer systems whose equity curves produce higher Sharpe Ratios),
diversification begets noncorrelation begets lower variance begets higher Sharpe Ratio begets
greater pleasure for me :P

I'll bet a large number of Roundtable members trade #46 on this list. But how many trade
#6 or #14 or #33 or #47? They might be "foreign" to you but they are a lot more liquid than
some of the old familiar markets like Cotton, Soybean Oil, COMEX Gold, Canadian Dollar,
and so forth.
Attachments
FI mag table for 2007
FI mag table for 2007
lowres.jpg (392.94 KiB) Viewed 7475 times
BARLI
Roundtable Knight
Roundtable Knight
Posts: 650
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2004 6:01 pm
Location: USA

Post by BARLI »

thanks for the info, I was surprised to see our Tel Aviv 25 (israeli blue chips) options at 24-th place!
Chuck B
Roundtable Knight
Roundtable Knight
Posts: 481
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2003 6:34 am

Re: World's highest volume markets that you don't trade

Post by Chuck B »

Mark Johnson wrote: I'll bet a large number of Roundtable members trade #46 on this list. But how many trade
#6 or #14 or #33 or #47? They might be "foreign" to you but they are a lot more liquid than
some of the old familiar markets like Cotton, Soybean Oil, COMEX Gold, Canadian Dollar,
and so forth.
#6 -- EuroStoxx 50 futures. I've been trading the Stoxx since 2002. This contract has had enormous growth and is very liquid...most all the time. Check out what happened last week in the "extremely liquid" Bund on Eurex. Something everyone trading electronic markets are going to have to come to terms with since these outlier events are so rapid and go so far that stops will be triggered, and the market will be back to where it just was within a minute or less.

BTW, can you shrink down your image? I'm viewing this at 1600x1200, and it is still too big.
Post Reply