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One last note, if you are considering ETFs, be very clear as to how the ETF is exposing your investment to the position. They may do a combination of options and futures which 1) exposes you to roll over costs and 2) does not get you 1:1 exposure to the futures contract.
There's also potential rebalance exposure to keep in mind if it is a leveraged ETF.
1)I have no idea, maybe to keep people trading futures on a regulated market.
2) It's up to the broker but generally speaking you can trade most of the futures with CFD
You have to understand the initial reason why Contract for difference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Total return swap - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia were created. Both of these contracts are essentially the same, but you will note that they were created specifically for hedge funds, thus institutional investors. While they state all the nice reasons in the wiki for the use of these contracts, in practice, they allowed people to bypass normal regulations. For instance, you could buy a CFD in a stock you have insider information on, and it would not be reported to the SEC. Also, in futures markets, there is a certain cap of contracts you can own. CFDs can allow you to bypass this cap. So, it should not be hard to determine why regulators do not like these products.
They were recently banned with the Dodd-Franck act, and I don't think they will be legal in the US anytime soon. With CFDs, you can literally trade anything as long as you have a counterparty willing to take the other side of your trade.
On another note, with your small account size, if you really wish to hold positions overnight, the mini-sized grains should work.
grausch,
I have been looking into all of the various " Mini and even Micro " contracts out there
I was looking over all of the various contracts this weekend on DeepDiscountTrading's website and there are few other mini contracts ( along with the mini grains ) that seem within my " Price range " .......... mini Natural gas QG with $550 overnight margin, mini Copper QC for $1,705 overnight margin, mini Silver YI ( I.C.E. ) for $1,430 , mini Gold YG ( I.C.E. ) $1,210 , mini Oil QM $2,338 and lastly ...,,, Micro Gold MGC for $440 overnight margin
Has anyone traded the forementioned mini / micro contracts
and ..... is there enough Volume and Liquidity to trade the YI , YG via the I.C.E. exchange ...... Micro ( MGC ) Gold too ?
Thank you again,
I appreciate all of the feedback and help
I can't specifically comment on the futures contracts you selected, but a couple of years ago I made some nice gains trading the mini-grains with optionsXpress. There was sufficient liquidity to handle 10-15 contracts with ease. If I recall correctly, the minimum tick size on the minis was larger, and thus sometimes you would have small non-arbitrageable differences in price. The bid-ask spread of the minis always kept up with the bid-ask spread of the normal contracts, but it would not always necessarily trade at the same price. Thus, prices on the minis sometimes were stale, but if you looked at the bids and asks or the normal contract's price you knew where you stood.