Commodity Futures Trader

Posts Tagged ‘retirement’

Futures trading is one of the ways to make money and grow your wealth overtime. Many people only invest in stocks. However, trading futures contracts like copper, wheat, corn, coffee, soybeans, pork bellies, cattle, crude oil, gold, ethanol, heating, gasoline, silver, interest rates, currencies and others can be highly lucrative.

If you want to profit from commodities than futures trading is the best and direct method of getting access to the commodity market. There are several active futures trading exchanges in the US. Three of the world’s largest futures exchanges are located in Chicago.

Futures trading is no doubt risky but if you learn it, it can be highly profitable. As said before, Ricard Dennis and his turtles used to trade the most liquid contracts in the market. The number one is the CME ( Chicago Mercantile Exchange). The futures contracts that get traded on CME include among others stock index futures, foreign currencies, interest rates, commodities, environmental futures and others.

The commodities futures that get traded on CME include cattle, butter, limber, pork bellies, Goldman Sachs Commodities Index, live cattle, milk, lean hogs, feeder and fertilizer. Now as said before, commodities is an important asset class. CME provides you with the opportunity to trade many commodity contracts.

Major stock index futures contracts like the S&P 500, S&P 500 Midcap, S&P Small Cap 600, NASDAQ Composite, NASDAQ 100, Russell 2000 and their corresponding E-Mini contracts also get traded on CME.

Trend is your friend. But how do you know it is really your friend. Trend can only be your friend if you know that the trend is going to continue or it is about to reverse ahead. Otherwize, trend trading is going to give you a loss. Candlestick patterns can help you anticipate whether a trend is going to continue or reverse ahead. There are many candlestick patterns. Bullish Necklines is one of them. It is a two stick trend confirmation pattern that tells that the trend is expected to continue. There are two type of Neckline Patterns, the In Neck and the Out Neck. When you spot the Bullish Neckline in an uptrend, it is a signal that the trend is expected to continue for sometime.

The candle formed on the setup day should be a long bullish candle that shows a lot of buying. On the signal day a bearish candle either long or short is formed with its closing price very near the close of the setup day.

Now,there can be two types of Neckline Patterns depending on the closing prices on the signal and the setup days. In case, if the closing price on the first day is little lower than the closing price on the signal day, it is a In Neck Pattern. And if the closing price on the signal day is almost near the closing price on the setup day, it is an On Neck Pattern.

Market conditions keep on changing. What works now may not work in the future. What had worked in the past may not work anymore. It is very difficult to develop a trading system that can adjust to different market conditions. In simple terms, it is very difficult to adjust a mechanical trading system to a different market conditions if you are not the author of that system.

You must know this that technical indicators also lose their effectiveness overtime as the market conditions change. So how do you cater for this fact that markets keep on changing all the time. By developing a trading system that uses different trading strategy under different market conditions. For that, you will need to develop a diversified trading system consisting of a set of trading systems that can be used as a basis for a specific trade tactics at any given moment.

Such a diversified trading system can be used according to a trader’s free choice and considering the individual situation. Trading systems based on these principles can be complex and adjustable.

Such a diversified trading system can be optimized for current market condition and the trader’s resources at any given moment. This optimization can provide an effective evaluation of market shits and trends at any given time.

Why you need a trading system? You need a trading system to make sure that your trading decisions are not arbitrary and based on your whims or emotions. When selecting a trading system, first try to paper trade it. You need to paper trade your trading system to get the bugs out. Paper trading is not a substitute for live trading but still you can assume that 75% of the results that you achieve in demo trading can be replicated in live trading.

Money management plan for your trading system is a must. A good money management plan will tell you how much you should risk on each trade with that trading system. For that to know you need two ratios. Win ratio and the payoff ration are two highly important figures to know for any trading system. Use the results of these paper trades to calculate your win ratio and payoff ratio. Determine what your personal win ratio and payoff ratio are in using that trading system over time.

It takes three to tango here. The trading system, your money management system and you yourself, all three of you have to gel together. The stronger and more developed the relationship is between the three of you, the more profitable you will be over time.