Markets continue to appear erratic, except...

Looking at soybeans overnight, the charts appear to be unusually erratic. This is fairly typical for pre-holiday trading. If the open doesn't show stronger liquidity, I may be finished trading until after the holiday. Ugh! I hate to miss trading days, and with two holidays back-to-back just one week apart, many traders take a vacation, so regular trading with good liquidity often doesn't begin again until the first full week of the new year. One of the troublesome issues I'm dealing with today is whether to continue trading the January 08 soybean contract, or change to the March 08 contract. The March contract has much more Open Interest, but in electronic trading, the January contract still has greater volume. This perhaps may be an additional factor in the poor liquidity showing on this chart. This transition may continue for the next day or two.

Image #2 shows the 10-year treasuries this morning. It is also too erratic to be traded. Treasuries are one of the most liquid of a futures contracts, and the 10-year is the most liquid of the treasuries. Only the S&P 500 futures can match it for liquidity, which I measure by a combination of Open Interest and volume.

The last image is of CBOT gold. I don't trade COMEX gold because I have to pay a separate fee of about $50 just to trade COMEX gold. Since COMEX was purchased/merged with the NYMEX, you would think that a single fee would be sufficient to trade both. But the charge fees for each one. Thus, I discontinued my membership with COMEX, and only trade gold on the CBOT. Open Interest on the CBOT is much less, but liquidity is excellent and fills are superb. Why pay more money for the same service?