SUNDAY UPDATE: “STOCK BELLIES” MADNESS

 

“If “Stock Bellies” were a woman driving … yes, definitely!”

I’m gonna start today’s update blog with the IVIX INDEX levels for last week

… I’ve replaced GBPJPY with GBPUSD cuz the Yen creates problems for traders

with not only its manipulation by the BOJ, but it’s in the denominator of the

cross making its movements highly erratic … directly below the IVIX INDEX

levels for last week in DAX30, NDX100, & GBPUSD.

click on ANY of the tables to enlarge

As you can clearly see, while Cable exhibits very decent volatility, it’s not in the

same league as either the DAX30 or the highly nutso NDX100 … and while I’m not

as concerned with high levels in the IVIX INDEX level per se, what concerns me

when readings get above 150, and especially above 200+, is that there is the very

real possibility that algorithm trade signals get run through like a Stihl chainsaw

going through a soft stick of butter … and on Friday that happened 3 times … it is

what it is, and there’s nothing you can do about it, but it’s somewhat frustrating.

I thought it would be helpful to track as a group, the major world “Stock Bellies”

markets [a/k/a world indices], and how their country’s respective futures markets

trade them … directly below, volume & open interest for selected world stock

indices.

It’s interesting to note, that in the U.S. the CME is feeling the heat of offshore

brokerage houses offering CFD’s to their clients in U.S. indices … the introduction

of the “micro” emini contracts in the SP500, NDX100, & DOW30 are seemingly big

hits … but, and this is very BIG, 2 criteria of supreme importance [not my opinion

but FACT] weigh against trading anything in the U.S. … 1) margins are

significantly higher than in the CFD’s, at LEAST 10 TIMES HIGHER, & QUITE

POSSIBLY MORE, and 2) any activity with a U.S. broker triggers a 1099 for tax

purposes … and don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating anything, simply stating

FACT … it’s also worth noting from the tables, the highest open interest doesn’t

belong to the emini SP500 contract, but to the EURO STOXX 50. I’ll be posting

this table every blog update [weekly], so over time it can give a snapshot of every

Friday and how that changes over time.

There is a very wide variety to suit every account type, no matter how conservative

or aggressive a trader might be in his/her risk profile … and while some are much

more volatile than others, they CAN ALL hurt you if you do “stupid shit” … there

are a lot of positives to indices such as the CAC40 [France], FTSE 100 [Britain], &

Euro Stoxx 50 [Eurozone] … currently both Turnkey & COINEXX have excellent

bid/offer spreads AND the VERY LOWEST ROUND TURN [RT] commissions,

making all of their indices CFD’s only very slightly more costly than futures … but

for that, you get total privacy, differing ways to hold account balances, much

lower margins, and superior risk control cuz you can name your own trade size

… and at Turnkey ALL of their indices trade at 1 * the index, and can be traded in

fractional lots of 0.01 volume lots … this is particularly important if you have a

very small account.

Which brings me to Turnkey … over these last weeks, something very positive

has happened with this broker, where I host the PAMM / MAM … latency has

improved greatly [fill times], the bid/offer spreads have become even tighter, and

SLIPPAGE has been greatly reduced … IMHO, it’s an evolutionary process that

involves getting rid of the scumbag LP banks and replacing these thieves with

HFT’s [High Frequency Trading firms] … just the other day it was announced on

ZH, that Citigroup was abandoning the retail options trading space … why?

… they admit they can’t compete with the HFT’s who eat their lunch with pricing

and are aggressively taking business from them … when you factor in crypto

deposit / withdrawals and the ability to SKIP THE BANKS with practically no cost,

and the transfer is done within minutes, not days or weeks, coupled with HAVING

NO TIES TO ANYTHING IN THE U.S. VIA THE FED, and it’s a no brainer for an

offshore brokerage house to go this route … and the idiot morons in the U.S.

regulatory system are left with NADA leverage … IMHO, it’s a beautiful thing to

behold!

Quite frankly, I don’t expect anybody to give me anything for free, and I welcome

HFT’s into the offshore brokerage space … what upsets me is when scumbag LP

banks, or the even scummier bullion banks in gold, basically stick a gun to your

head and commit robbery, and then sit there and act like nothing happened … as

far as these scumbags go, “do stupid shit, win stupid prizes”, and I hope all of

the TBTF & TBTJ banks go bankrupt … they got nobody to blame but themselves.

So far so good with the DAX30 trades … it’s not even close to what it was in the

past … keep up the good work Turnkey & COINEXX.

Onto the week at hand … until tomorrow … Onward & Upward!!

-vegas