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First, be sure to read the introductory article found here. When you first login to LESE you will see a set of labels at the top of the screen:
Click on the "Futures" tab to go to the futures contract market. In the frame at the bottom of the page you will see four tabs:
Account List: The list of all DMT accounts you have LESE-enabled, along with the amount available for trading. If you have Active Orders, then the escrowed amounts for those orders have been deducted from the balances shown here. If you need to Transfer In money from DMT, click on the "Transfer In" button that is shown above the Account History screen. Example of Account List:
Account History: A history of your LESE accounts, including orders placed, and escrowed amounts deducted, as well as changes in the account balance from purchases and sales, and from realized futures profits and losses. If orders are cancelled, a record of the cancelled order also shows up here. Example of Account History:
Active Orders: A list of all your bids and offers, including futures bids and offers. Under "Volume" in the table below is listed the number of futures contracts, along with the number of lots of capital per contract potentially at risk if the order is filled. Example of Active Orders:
Futures Contracts: If someone has hit one of your futures bids or offers, the ensuing futures contract shows up here. This futures contract will automatically stay in effect until the next mark-to-market (at the close of the trading day). At that time futures profits and losses will be calculated, then the contract will be closed out if any one of the following three conditions are met: Notice that there is a button to the right of each of your futures contracts listed on the screen, saying "End Contract". If you wish to cancel a futures contract, then press this button, and the contract will be cancelled at the time of the next mark-to-market. So if you wish to cancel an existing contract, do it now. If you wait until after the next mark-to-market to cancel it, it will stay in force for a second day, until the following (second) day's mark-to-market.Example of Futures Contracts:
Example of Placing an Order: Suppose you wish to sell 2 December Dow contracts at a price of 7700 with 2 lots of capital per contract. You will hit the "Sell" button above the December Dow contract on the LESE futures market page and fill in the information. Your sell order on the LESE market for December Dow futures will look like this: 2 lots * 2 7700There are potentially $1000 at risk (2 lots * $250 * 2 contracts = $1000), so $1001 will be deducted from your LESE dollar Account balance, and placed in escrow—$1000 for the potential capital at risk and $1 for the potential fee.Now suppose someone lifts your offer, bidding for 1 December Dow contract at a price of 7700 with 1 lot of capital per contract. Your offer on the LESE market will now read: 2 lots * 1 7700There will now be a futures contract in existence, which will show up in your Futures Contracts screen. Since only 1 of your offered lots of risk capital was taken up on the existing contract, $250 of the escrowed risk capital (and an escrowed fee of $0.25) will be returned to your LESE dollar Account balance and will be available for trading. You will still have $500.50 in escrow on your market offer, and $250 in escrow on your new futures contract. Also at this time, $0.25 of the escrowed fee will be released to LESE.Now let's consider three different examples of mark-to-market at the end of the day. The Dow is at 7640. There has been a change in futures value of
The Dow is at 7550. There has been a change in futures value of
How Orders Are Matched: Orders are matched manditorially by price, and after that by the number of lots of risk capital per contract. If, for example, there are two orders to sell at 7700, one offer of 2 lots*2 contracts, and the other offer 1 lots*2 contracts, and you wish to buy 2 lots*2 contracts at 7700, then the offer of 2 lots*2 contracts has precedence, and your buy order will automatically be matched with that offer. In brief, bids and offers of more lots per contract always have precedent (for bids and offers at the same price) over fewer lots. Further details are contained in the Appendix. Daily Mark-to-Market: To see the daily mark-to-market price, click on the name of the contract on the LESE futures market page. It will show recent activity for the contract, as well as the daily mark-to-market price. Appendix: How Orders Are MatchedThe market ladder shows the bids and offers sorted primarily by their 'price'. For each price the entries with the same number of requested lots per contract are grouped together and shown as a separate line. Each such line thus shows the total number of available contracts for this specific combination of price and number of lots per contract. Internally, all entries within such a group are sorted according to the time they were entered on the market. Entries are sorted so that older entries within a group will be considered for a trade before newer entries. When a new offer/bid is sent to the market, it is first compared with respect to the price of all the currently existing entries. As with all LESE markets, a price match means that the buyer is willing to pay at least as much as the seller is willing to sell for. The actual match-determination price is decided by the price of the entry already on the market, not by the price of the new incoming offer/bid. For each matching price the market engine now searches the matching groups of entries for a best fit with respect to the number of lots per contract. A 'best fit' means an equality of the maximum capital commitment for both seller and buyer. The rule is that all the existing groups with the same price are searched, first for an exact match of the lots per contract, then for entries with increasingly higher numbers of lots per contract and finally for entries with decreasingly lower numbers of lots per contract. For each match, the minimum of the number of lots per contract for the seller side and the buyer side is used to create a new futures contract agreement to be registered by the system for later mark-to-market processing. The stored futures contract agreement contains the agreed futures price, the number of actual contracts and the capital commitment, based on the agreed number of lots per contract. The search for matches continues within the same price, and then to the next matching price (for a bid price higher than several offered prices, or an offered price lower than several bids), until the number of contracts requested by the new incoming entry has been filled, or until there are no more price-matching entries. Any remaining unfilled requested contracts are put on the market, available for the next round of trading. The only exception is if the incoming bid/offer is marked as 'one-shot', in which case any remaining contract balance will not be placed on the market. Instead all remaining escrowed funds will be immediately restored to the customer. |
