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mgratacos
Summary
The definition of //element(*, Future)/multiplier in the documentation is uncler.
I have seen it confused with period Multiplier, price Multipliers and even when used correctly to multiply contract numbers, the calculation isn't always correct.
Element multiplier IS-A xsd:positiveInteger which is documented as "Specifies the contract multiplier that can be associated with the number of units".
The data type is correct, but the description is unclear. The purpose of a multiplier is to add leverage - as one example, take the contract specification for the E-mini S&P 500 on the CME, where the multiplier is 50 times the synthetic ( futures price ) of the Index
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/e-mini-sandp500_contract_specifications.html
Contract Size $50 x E-mini S&P 500 futures price
Please see attached example of Dollar Future on the BMF ( Brazil ) exchange which uses the public extensions to FpML Andrew Parry wrote, so you have for example
NB - Andrew Parry contributed to the analysis of this.
Notes:
mgratacos
09/28/11 4:07 pm
Proposed new documentation for the multiplier element:
The multiplier is the minimum number of the underlying – index or stock – that a participant has to trade while taking a position in the Future contract. The purpose of the multiplier is to inflate the value of the contract to add leverage to the trade. The multiplier for the Dow is 10, for the Nasdaq it is 100 and it is 250 for the S&P.
mgratacos
06/15/12 11:33 am
This has been updated for 4.x and 5.x versions