Just curious if anyone has any experience trading Micro and Mini-gold futures, MGC and YG, respectively. Micro is 1/10 of GC and Mini is 1/3 of GC. I believe MGC trades $1 per tick and YG trades $3.33 per tick.
I came across these 2 instruments looking for a less-capital intensive instrument. Not ready to trade GC, but was considering mini or micro version.
My question: what is the volume like there? What about slippage? fills? spreads? There is very little info on the net so any comments will be appreciated.
The following user says Thank You to anituchka for this post:
I traded a little bit of YG a few years ago, but I've only traded GC since. Based on my experience with GC, I'd be hesitant to hold these low volume contracts overnight. YG has shorter trading hours and sometimes GC moves quite a bit in the time YG is closed. Also even GC slips quite a bit at times. I slipped $3.30 on a stop over last Thurs night, so I imagine it can get pretty bad with these smaller contracts.
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The bid/ask spread is a little tighter on YG than MGC, but MGC is 1/3 the size of YG, and therefore more sensitive for position-sizing. So it just depends on what you're trying to accomplish, really. MGC will track GC, but YG will track ZG - so even though the percentage movement will be virtually identical from YG to GC, the actual entry/exit prices will not.
QO mystifies me - I have no idea why anyone would bother to trade it. CME/COMEX really designed a bummer of a contract on that one, & it shows in the near-complete absence of volume. The wide spread & large tick size of QO & QI make the risk of trading one of them equally as large or larger than the full-size contracts they are supposed to be downsizing. So the only thing they end up downsizing is the reward if you win.
Hence the popularity of YI & YG by comparison . .
I think the CME realized this, and created MGC about a year ago to try to win back business from the YG crowd. IMO, it's a good, viable alternative - and flexible. It can be used as a component to create very precise spreads, and is fully fungible with GC (meaning that it can offset an open position in GC at a 10:1 ratio & vice versa).
I wish CME would do the same thing in the case of SI/QI - and maybe they are contemplating it (let's hope).
Anyways, that's my $.02 worth . . YG & MGC are both viable contracts - just depending on what you need, & what you are trying to do. As with all downsized-contracts, though, liquidity is lower, so don't expect precise executions if you depend on stop orders. Manually entered limit orders will get you in & out cleanly, though.
Hope that helps . .
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Won't touch it again. I'd rather take the risk with a more liquid product.
Micro gold does not track the full gold contract in the same way as the micro currencies track the full currency futures contracts.
The brokerage fees are also not one tenth of the full size contract so it's lose lose in my view.
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that micro is pretty nuts, but its so small, you have to be looking for 10$ not 10 ticks. the YG tracks very well (as long as its not during an fomc event). i frequently will trade it or lay off big boys. I do not ever experience more than a couple ticks of slip/spread on it during the day. take a look. also remember you can trade GLD etf as smaller sizes too, which also tracks quite well and has good liquidity.
I use micro as a "buy and hold" type of trade instead of trading an ETF, it offers more leverage. Still waiting for that swing though, I placed my position last week but no great breakout yet.
Gold's been doing great. With crude prices staying at 30's until 2017 and the high volatility environment, Gold may still be a good bet at the current level.
Agreed -- It seems like every time I like the pull back and do a little research in the evening, in the morning the move has already happened. I know I should just buy the futures and don't hesitate. Jessie Livermoore said: " The price is never to high", but I'm not always in agreement with this man from almost 100yrs ago (-;
The following user says Thank You to windguy for this post:
Its long term investment strategy. Futures by design are not. The advice is good, just not in our context.
Also, it used to be, that if a market failed, gold could save you. I dont believe this is true any longer, at least in the long term.
Invest in food. You cant eat gold. It doesnt take the world to end for food to become the most valueable resource, all it takes is a big earthquake, flood or other disaster in your area.
Maybe a discussion for another thread, but worth talking about.
Food spoils and has a temporary life. Gold is a real asset and will never die, expire, waste away. Real assets have staying power and markets in turmoil run to real assets.
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Both good points and relative to what type of turmoil one is talking about; also how apocalyptic the context. I agree with both and therefore think having both makes sense <grin>.
Considering we are talking about futures contracts, it is likely this is moot because all I care about is short term P&L so I can buy the latter. Fun to discuss nevertheless....
Now that ICE have raised their data feed prices to rather high levels I wonder if MiNY gold and micro gold will be the better small trade but we'll see.
I have played MGC for a little while and it is small, really too small but it is liquid enough and the spreads are tight enough to not be a worry. I really prefer to scale in and out and I think its fine, though you need 4-6 of them to catch a move and make any money, unless we have those huge swings like today on the NFP release
I will occasionally trade YG in my TOS account. IB gives you free ICE metals quotes through December 2016 so you could use YG over there as well. I traded ZG & YG on ECBOT back in the days before GC was put on GLOBEX. In those days, there was no real deep market making on ECBOT Gold & Silver so if you had stops hit, you could really get whacked but could rake in some quick cash with filled low-ball limit buy orders.
I stopped trading ICE products when they kept raising their data fees, its too much for the one or two tickers I might want to trade. Apparently mini Russell is going back to the CME next year, then for me there will be no reason to pay ICE a single dollar
I have traded MGC micro Gold.....no sign of slippage. Trading was quite okay. Compared on two platforms....like the CTS T4 which is quite stable platform with no gimmicks like the Ninja has.
The following user says Thank You to beamer for this post:
I have traded all 3 and can tell you the GC can be scary fast moving the micro at $1 a tick is attractive but the volume is so thin that you blink and $10 can go by. its all in your comfort level remind me of tradin Mid-Am contract in the old days at the CBOT
I've traded gold for quite a few months but have moved to other products as its thinness has a twofold effect.
First the volume patterns are less reliable than thicker markets and secondly it is very common and usually happens a few times a day that there are huge stop runs in gold. The extreme of these can be as much as 80 ticks as I witnessed about a week and a half ago. At that point it gets a bit silly .....
The following 2 users say Thank You to hoolio for this post:
Hi all,
old discussion, but I have question regarding micro gold futures. Since last May volume in micro gold futures jumped from average 500 contracts daily to 3000-5000. I understand that it's still very low volume compared to standard gold, but does this make it more appealing for retail crowd?
Currently I'm trading spot gold with LMAX, but would like to try futures without committing too much capital trading standard contracts. I tend to hold positions overnight, over weekend if necessary and I would scale-in into profitable position, so high leverage isn't for me.
so any comments will be appreciated.
