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Futures

📚 Leveraged & Margin Trading Guide + Examples ⚖️ Leveraged trading allows even small retail traders to make money trading different financial markets. With a borrowed capital from your broker, you can empower your trading positions. The broker gives you a multiplier x10, x50, x100 (or other) referring to the number of times your trading positions are enhanced. Brokers offer leverage at a cost based on the amount of borrowed funds you’re using and they charge you per each day that you maintain a leveraged position open. For example, let's take EURUSD pair. Let's buy Euro against the Dollar with the hope that the exchange rate will rise . Buying that on spot with 1.195 ask price and selling that on 1.23 price we can make a profit by selling the same amount of EURUSD back to the broker. With x50 leverage , our return will be 50 times scaled . With the leverage, we can benefit even on small price fluctuations not having a huge margin. ❗️Remember that leverage will also multiply the potential downside risk in case if the trade does not play out. In case of a bearish continuation on EURUSD, the leveraged loss will be paid from our margin to the broker. For that reason, it is so important to set a stop loss and calculate the risks before the trading position is opened. ❤️Please, support this idea with a like and comment!❤️
OANDA:XAUUSDEducation
by VasilyTrader
14
Tutorial | How To Get Real-time Futures Data Into TradingViewWhen you create an account on TradingView, you're pretty much set for realtime stock, forex, and crypto data. Want to know the price of Bitcoin or Apple? No problem. But futures data is a different animal. In this tutorial I demonstrate how to use a demo account from one of the integrated futures brokers to get futures quotes so that you can practice trading the futures markets using the trading features on TradingView.
CME_MINI:MNQM2021Education
by RodCasilli
79
Crude Oil Spreads: A Quick Intro.Spreads are complex instruments. This is just an introduction and some ideas to get our brains ticking over. I had started writing a guide to understanding these three types of spreads, but it just got a little long. It might be easier to do it this way: What do you see above? Here are some observations to get started: 1 All spreads topped out well before June Crude Oil topped out. From about 17th Feb, those spreads stopped gaining. Could spreads be a way to take a contrary position as a trend exhausts itself, and have a little room for error? It certainly is here (although not always the case). 2 Look at the ATR for each. Spreads show lower volatility. 3 Correlations (the CC shows the spread correlation to the underlying June contract). Correlations seem strong during a trend then do their own thing at other times. Change creates opportunity. Constant correlations are not as fun. 4 Basic spreads: bull and bears – are directional. That is, they move closely with the underlying. More complex spreads, like the fly and condor seem to be suited to shifting sentiment along the forward curve. 5 Flies and condors are very similar. The condor tends to have a little more volatility than the fly. In this case, it’s not much. - It can be a complex subject, worthy of something closer to a book, than a comment here, but it’s a start. Just a warning – going down the spread trading path might change everything. - A couple of futures markets where flies and condors are often traded: Crude, Natural Gas, Grains, Eurodollars (and most other STIRs). Options - that's a totally different chat....
NYMEX:CLU2021Education
by TheTradarien
Volume and Open interest of some CME contractsLooking at the numbers helps us figure out what goals to other market participants have? Do they rollover their positions alot? How far do they project themselves? Do they hold for months of exit after just a few days? We can see the volume of Oil popping off when the expiry is close as traders, for example terrible ETFS, close and re-open the next month and I am suspecting much of this volume are front running algos taking advantage of these rollovers. The S&P is looking more like a casino of short term gamblers than ever. And the EURUSD sees much holding relative to trading, there are no day traders in FX which echoes with the BIS report showing trader's timeframe (almost all retail investors day gamble or "swing" gamble < 7 days but they represent only 5% of the FX market maybe even less). Other notable futures: Gold with a volume of 185 thousand contracts this Monday, and open interest of 472 thousand split almost evenly between the "front" month (in practice the April contract) and June one. 10 year T Notes have an open interest of 3,780,235 contracts (378 billion usd) I think this is the second highest one. 10 year T Notes options also have an open interest of over 3.5 million. The total volume is close to 2 million for futures & 500k for options. So about 250 billion USD. I think the third biggest contract in usd terms is the e-mini S&P 500, with a daily volume typically around 3-3.5 million (> 500 billion usd). The contact volume is about the same it has been for years but the usd value has almost doubled from when the S&P was lurking in the depth at close to 2000 points. Open interest for the S&P is at 3 million for futures + 500k for options, it's sitting at around the same value as the ADV. This is the era of day traders... The largest contract is not even close. Seriously these numbers make my head turn. It's the Eurodollar (the future that represents the London interbank rate). The daily volume hoovers around 2 - 2.5 million contracts (I'm guessing around 700 billion usd). The open interest is eye popping at 25-35 million contracts (Friday it was at 11.8 million futures & 20.9 million options), it's half the GDP of China.
NYMEX:CL1!Education
by MrRenev
Understanding ETFsHello traders, in this post I will explain different types of ETFs and what is an ETF (Exchange-Traded Funds). ETF for example is a package of different stocks that have similar characteristics. One characteristic could be that they all are in the same sector. Some ETFs track indexes, commodities, and more. Those packages are listed on an exchange and are traded just like stocks. Traders and investors use ETFs to diversify with the provided indexes (or other products) with lower costs, or if the trader can’t trade in futures contracts, it is possible to use ETFs that are related to a specific future. Also, there are options on ETFs that can be used as an alternative for expensive indexes. Leveraged ETFs Most of the ETFs are trading in a 1:1 ratio, for example, NASDAQ 100 is currently at $12621 and the relevant ETF QQQ is $307.8, the difference is 1 to 40, but the returns are the same (1:1). The ETF NUGT on the other hand is moving with correlation to the gold miners index, but if the index return will be 10%, the ETF NUGT return will be 20%, because it is leveraged 2 to 1. Those kinds of ETFs are not for investors or long-term traders, only for the short term. This is because the returns are multiplied by 2. If the index will move down 7% NUGT will move down 14%. Eventually, it will move substantially lower in price because there will be a major correction of 30%+ that will cause a 60%+ drop in price. Thus, there will be a split. If you look at September 2012 you can see that NUGT price is $36000, this is because there were many splits due to the phenomenon I described above. NUGT was never really traded at $36000. In the chart, the orange line NUGT. Moving 300% between March to August, the blue line GOLD 40%. Reverse ETFs ETFs that move in the opposite direction to the index. For example, DUST is a leveraged ETF and going in the opposite direction to the gold miners index. In the chart, the green line DUST. Decreasing substantial percents due to leverage. ETFs that based on Futures There are two types: ETFs that own the commodity – those ETFs are moving almost the same as the commodity itself. For example GLD In the chart above, the blue line is the GOLD price in cash, the red line is GLD. ETFs that buy the futures of the commodity and not the physical commodity, don’t track the commodity with the same returns as the previous type, for example, VXX (VIX), USO (oil), UNG (gas). As discussed in the previous post Futures have a time premium. When you buy ETF that is based on futures, that means that you buy also the premium attached to that future. As time passes, that premium is lost, and then the ETF buys the next contract with a new time premium. As time will pass, you will lose this premium also… and so forth… This is something to be aware of.
AMEX:NUGTEducation
by ZoharCho
5
Trading Psychology - Fear and EuphoriaFew words from *Trading the Zone* combined with my little input that I felt worth sharing. Here we go! We know that *Fear and Euphoria* are two big obstacles when it comes to consistency in Trading. Either it stops us from entering the trade or may results in premature entry. Why we get trapped by these feelings? Let’s me explain for fear since Euphoria is just the opposite. We Fear, When we Interpret Market information is threatening Why it is threatening? When it’s not inline with our Expectations. There is nothing worsen feeling than unfulfilled Expectations. Why we have Expectations? Because we firmly *believe* something is gonna happen next. So ultimately *BELIEF* is the origin. So how to resolve this issue?? We start from the Origin that is belief. * Believe* - you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Accept the psychological reality of market. Predicting market moves is predicting how millions of people interpret the market information which always may not be inline with our belief. That’s why there are always random distribution between wins and losses in trades. Edge is just the probability of happening one thing over other So accept the small losses. That’s y Risk: Reward always plays a significant part in consistency. Trade with rules we learnt not with Beliefs. Believe only that you don’t know what’s gonna happen next since every moment in market is unique! *No Expectations* - when you firmly believe that you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Then There won’t be any expectations from the Markets. When there is no expectations from the markets then where is the potential to define market information as threatening or Painful or exciting ? There is none!! At that point, you will be in best state of mind to Perceive the market information and trade mechanically with rules and without or less influenced by fear or Euphoria!! Happy Trading! Pradeep A G
Education
by UrbanTradingSystems
VIX - Future / OptionsHello traders, a couple of facts on the VIX that you might didn’t know. VIX is a 30-day volatility measure. The calculation is based on two strips of SPX options that are used in the VIX calculation (now for example November and December option strips), the strips have a different weighting each day. Every day that passes we have fewer days in the current month and more days in the next month, for example, we have 12 days to the end of this month and 18 days in the next month and we get to 30 days, we can see that the next month has more weight. For longer-term Futures, expiring in later months they will not track VIX well. The VIX calculation can be applied to any set of options that have two strips of options in the two front-months. Because of this VIX calculation of volatility can be made for almost every stock, index, or futures. Examples: VXAPL (AAPL), VXAZN (AMZN), VXGS (Goldman Sachs), VXGOG (Google), VIXIBM (IBM), VXSLV (Silver ETF), and more. Volatility moves opposite to the direction of the stock, index, or futures almost 75% of the time. We can see in the chart that the green areas are when VIX and SPX are opposite in direction and in the red when they move in the same direction. A futures contract has an expiration date but no striking price, unlike an option contract. If a futures contract is trading at a higher price than the VIX, the futures are trading with a premium. If they trading at a lower price than VIX, the futures are trading with a discount. Example: VIX 24.3 VXZ2020 24.875 (December future) -> 24.875-24.3 = 0.575 Premium VXF2021 26.175 (January future) -> 26.175-24.3 = 1.875 Premium VXG2021 26.225 (Februry future) -> 26.225-24.3 = 1.925 Premium We can see that the prices are rising, usually when the markets are going up the longer-term futures will cost more and the futures will have premiums. If the VIX will go up and there will be a big correction or even a bear market the futures will trade with discounts. This since VIX is based on 30 days calculation. This means that the front contract (the contract this month) will have very high volatility and the long-term futures will have lower volatility because when the markets fall it is usually short but violent moves and there will be an expectation of the market to go sideways or reverse. Example: VIX 60 (December), VIX Future (January) 52, VIX Future (Febraury) 47. You can see that discounts can be quite large and the trader that would expect to profit from long-term VIX futures when the market falls, will be very disappointed. This is why usually traders buy the VIX front-month contract. One way to hedge the portfolio. (“Insurance”) Buying VIX calls compare to SPX puts. The calls are better. When buying puts on SPX about 7% out of the money, today example SPX 3567 and the strike price of the puts 3310. If the SPX will go up in price there will no longer be a 7% protection. When buying calls on VIX for protection, if the market will decline the VIX could easily go to 30 and even much higher, even if in the short term the VIX will go down. The lower the VIX when we buy the calls the effect will be much greater. Remember that in March 2020 the VIX was over 80.
SP:SPXEducation
by ZoharCho
20
The major Exchange Traded DerivativesChina continues to privatize companies, open its markets to foreign investors, and develop relations around the future silk road. In 1 month China is launching its international Copper future. It sounds interesting but I do not know if individual investors care enough for this future to be available with my broker, maybe IG will have it. As the USA declines (and perhaps Europe), China might become the "hub" for commodity derivatives (thinking of industrial metals and agri), if this is the case I expect retail traders and their brokers to catch up in only a decade or two (seriously). For this occasion let's look at the most traded derivatives around the world. 1- Agriculture *It is a non-profit, self-regulating and membership legal entity established on February 28, 1993 (when China opened itself to the free markets and emerged out of poverty). Non-profit because that's evil capitalism. Nothing is free though. So who pays? The average chinese factory worker? Haha! Back in 2018 they started opening up to foreign investors (Iron Ore, a little after their Oil contract that was the first one ever open to foreigners), the exchange also has an english website: www.chinadaily.com.cn **The Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange (ZCE) is China's first futures exchange,   Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone is China's first Airport Economy Zone.   Zhengzhou is not a SPECIAL economic zone, it is only an economic zone. Unsurprisingly China is not big on "financial" products (interest rates & equity index) but they are big on more basic things: Agriculture & Mining. 2- Energy So ye Moscow, NYMEX (CME), and London ICE mostly. 3- Metals 4- Equity Index How many contracts would you want? Yes. India and Brazil are at the top of the list. India is famous for its overvaluations and many gambling bagholders, and Brazil for its large numbers of gambling day traders. Stocks and stock indexes (and ETFs) have by far the most individual investors, as those are supposed to be more noob friendly due to having a much lower skill floor. Think of it (lol players) as Yasuo, Master Yi and Volibear mains. For HOMM the equivalent is 3 months afk farm Necro on a giant map. They have been convinced that it was a positive sum game where everyone can make easy money. There are 2 major categories of retail investors: bagholders & day gamblers. They both consistently lose. Due to the power of compounding day gamblers lose money much faster than bagholders, which is why people advise individual investors to stick to bagholding. Bagholding also gives people more time to think it through and quit with some of their money left, while day gamblers will have lost most of their money before the initial excitement has waned off. 5- FX 6- Rates 7- Other No idea what all of this mess is. For my part I only trade a couple of those: 3 grains, 2 metals (Gold Copper), Texas Oil & NatGas, all on the CME (7 total, with some correlations). Sometimes I look at softs on the ICE and Nickel on the LME but I don't really touch them much. Rarely will get into indices, I do follow where they are going from far away. I actually am active in the smallest derivatives that make 7.4%, 5%, 4.9%, 1.6% and 1% while avoiding equities that make 50% :D But I do Forex alot, got around 10 currencies in my watchlist. With correlations and everything I would say FX is about twice to thrice as big as commodities for me. There is already plenty to do and plenty of good uncorrelated opportunities to go for. With on top of that the occasional Bitcoin or major indice or stock bet, I'd say that's about as far as someone can push it with just being coinflipping. I know that professionals hold stocks for quarters or years, Forex for a few days or a few weeks, retail just day trades everything, and I do not know for indices and commodities and rates. But I know commodities sort of behave much more like FX than equities and open interest fluctuates similarly so I would say we are looking at weeks to month in my opinion, for professionals of course, retail just day trades everything they'd day trade overnight swaps and EOD indexes if they found a way. There are alot of those futures. More than enough to have your hands full. Might have some bubbles in China in the future and if this is the case I'll be the first to know way before mainstreet gets all excited and rushes in at the top (and push it higher) as they often do. In July 2019 ZCE Apples (bigger than CME Corn) gapped down by 40%. I am not ready for this. Unless they have some "fair and profit-free" options :D I wouldn't mind getting some surprise 40% infinite gains with tiny limited losses. I guess they are not big on "evil profit driven too abstract for me to understand" speculation. Haha so how are their behinds after that 40% gap with no speculator to absorb the risk? 😉 There HAS to be broken flaws to exploit in the future. Maybe when that happens they will rollback all trades "for fairness" silly commies. Well too early to tell, we will see.
COMEX:HG1!Education
by MrRenev
2
Adding Instruments to TradingView Chart to Track CorrelationsQuick Tutorial video to show how I add and use other instruments like DXY and ES1! to track correlations across markets. These correlations are a powerful confirmation to help identify behaviour across markets, to give confident in the forex or futures instrument you are trading. I briefly mention Support & Resistance zones in this video. You can learn how I produce them in the recording of my recent live streaming class >>HERE<<
CBOT:ZB1!Education
by PBratbyOfficial
2
Next Week's Trading Plan = Last week's result: +57% R.O.I.The week that was... *** Real Time Trading *** We (and you?) have just completed 135 consecutive hours of Live Trading, while simultaneously posting the trades in Real Time on this TradingView page. This Live Trading Session(s) took place from September 13., 2020, 18:00 EST - September 18., 2020, 16:00 EST; I.e. five (5), consecutive and continuous trading days, from Sun.-Fri.. How did it all turn out? - Just as the title suggests: "+57% R.O.I". This post is a summary, as well as a repository for the *** Links to all the live posts *** made during those 135 hours. 1) If one traded along then one has probably long tallied up the results (and the money :-), so obviously, very little use to read on; 2) If one is interested to review / verify / analyze the trades (as one should!), posted during this live trading period. In which case the relevant posts are LINKED BELOW, where all the trades are posted as they were placed. ** However, it will be your task to scroll through(down) to find the relevant ** Real Time entries **, as these posts also contain other, relevant but static information - such as trade setups, etc.; i.e.: just additional, regular "stuff". The Trading System / Techniques used during these Live Trading Sessions are described in detail, in this post: "Nasdaq 100 E-mini; +2036 pts. profit the last 14 days. TUTORIAL" First: These are the LINKS to all the relevant posts containing the Live Sessions posts / markets: - These are Not in chronological order! The actual clues for the Live Trades are further down, in the dated list, *** following this First list, in Chronological Order ***. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nasdaq100 E-mini THe FAANGs EURAUD EURUSD AUDJPY AUDUSD AUDNZD AUDCAD GBPJPY *** We are Not counting this one but one might want to look at it, anyways. This has missed Live Trading Week by 24 hours. Nevertheless,... it's a fair one :-) ***** ====================== ... and finally, here we go ... ================================= September 13., 2020; Sun. --------------------------------- Look for this Nasdaq100 chart: +30.25 points; Look for this EURUSD chart: 1.1834 .. and this EURUSD chart ...: -15 pips September 14., 2020; Mon. --------------------------------- Look for this EURAUD chart: ... and this EURAUD chart ...: +84.5 pips; September 15-16., 2020; Tue.-Wed. -------------------------------------------- Look for this EURAUD chart: -7 pips; Look for this EURAUD chart: +5.5 pips Look for this EURAUD chart: ... and this EURAUD chart ...: +38 pips ... and this EURAUD chart ...: +0 pips (scratch) Look for this AUDJPY chart: +52 pips Look for this EURUSD chart: -18 pips Look for this Nasdaq100 chart: +89 points; ... and this Nasdaq100 chart ...: +243.50 points; Look for this GBPJPY chart: +28 pips ... and this GBPJPY chart ...: -12 pips September 17., 2020; Thur. ---------------------------------- Look for this Nasdaq100 chart: Look for this AUDJPY chart: ... and this AUDJPY chart ...: +32.5 pips Look for this AUDUSD chart: ... and this AUDUSD chart ...: +30 pips Look for this AUDUSD chart: 0 pips (scratch) September 18., 2020; Fri. ------------------------------- Look for this Nasdaq100 chart: +198.75 Look for this USDJPY chart: +19 pips ------------------------------------------------------ Futures Totals: ------------------ Nasdaq100 E-mini Total: +561.50 points; Forex Totals: ---------------- EURAUD: +121 pips AUDJPY: +84 pips EURUSD: -32 pips USDJPY: +19 pips GBPJPY: +16 pips ------------------ Total: +208 pips ----------------------------------------- For the purposes of this Live Trading exercise, we have used $50,000 USD of our own funds. All of the trades, placed above, involved: - 2 ea. Nasda100 E-mini contracts (2x $16k margin); - 4-6 (Full sized) Forex lots ($4k-$6k margin); --- Basing the results on the $50,000 actual capital used, the one week (135 hours) long Live Trading session(s) resulted in: $21630 in Net Profit, or = 56.74% Net Return on Capital. (hence, the title of this post.) ========================================================================================================== p.s. BTW, this does not mean that we will repeat this "exercise" - as in live posting -, right away, this coming week :-) Good luck out there!
ICEUS:DX1!Education
by Nemo_Confidat
4
Liquidation Levels Trading FuturesI've seen lots of people getting liquidated on there longs on this BTC dump. This is why I think people never take into consideration risk management or don't know how it actually works. Maybe this can help a lot of people and help them clarify things. YES, the getting rich quick by leveraging is a probability, but if you ask me, I would consider it luck in the 25x to 100x than in lower leverage positions. I think the getting rich quick scheme in crypto or FX is never talked enough and should always be addressed with proper risk management. This analysis is considering you long your whole portfolio with leverage (which most people do). If you want to long with high leverage, use 1% or 2% of your portfolio, try it out in Isolated mode first and see what it is all about. Your losses will teach you how to be a better trader, but never ever lose your ammo in your first try. I'll do a follow up of this chart with potential gains by leveraging.
Education
by Goldenperro
[Beginners & Intermediate] Where to learn about trading?I will introduce this by reminding that this is not school and not a 9 to 5 job either. No one will just hand over a strategy and go "ok go make some money instead of me now", there are a few strategy out there on the internet an never know one might have an edge, but it's not even worth it to spend hours looking for something. And makes no sense, "too lazy to find one on my own so I spend hours looking for the holy grail on the internet". People got brainwashed to learn something by heart at school, go to work from 9 to 5 - this must be why there are so many day traders, they do not know how to function differently than 9 to 5 -, get a wage every month, the more you do the bigger the reward... Real life does not work like this. Even the cheetah know this. While they run at formula 1 speeds, they still stalk their prey and are real careful and plan ahead and make sure they have a good risk to reward and high probabilities of catching their (big) prey. And then they protect it. They do not leave carcasses lying around and spend all their time chasing prey like idiots. It's like with Einstein, no one told him "k now go prove that Newton gravity theory is false, this is how you will do it". There are plenty of different type of strategy, merger arbitrage, quantitative systematic, discretionary, a combination of both (I think this is what I do), stock long bias, stock short bias (haha), and so on. But in any case you have to do your own research. Arbitrage means analysing data and looking for numbers in sheets of numbers, quant & discretionary means analysing data and looking for numbers in sheets of numbers, and so on. Still you have to understand how markets work, what futures are and are not if you trade those, the different terms, compounding (it does not just mean "waow I make lots of money"), learn that after losing 20% to get back to breakeven you need to make 25%, that markets gap, markets change... Also you need to get used to tools, used to the places you'll get your info from, and constently be learning from especially at some point we do want to learn how to invest to get some passive income because we do not know if we will still be making money 5 years from now. The road is long, so be sure you are legit interested, and it is as important to have reliable sources as it is to make it fun & interesting, because the road is real long. 1- At the source Biggest exchange, and best website: The CME. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Both the best for beginners, and for advanced. www.cmegroup.com The site is huge. They have what is at human scale infinite data. And it is well designed. They even have some courses, webinars, and more. Here you can find courses for each of their asset classes, and if you select none you got generic ones too. All free. Free and reliable. The problem with trolls that sell $5000 education is it is often infested with errors, including very dangerous ones. Maybe the cme is going to get greedy seing millions of new fresh amateur liquidity providers, and start charging for their content. I hope not. Thinking of it, this sort of people is not looking for some sober information dense content, but for flashy lights and "get abs in 30 days with no efforts lose 10 pounds a week make 10% every day". www.cmegroup.com They even have an introduction to dairy, in 13 modules. www.cmegroup.com We live in the day of big data funds, and they charge a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for access to TB of data on their products. Bitcoin and a few other featured/new products are free. datamine.cmegroup.com Crypto is free xd but who cares? Crypto traders won't download this ever will they? Not like there is enough data to get anything out of it, but still can be interesting to look at. If you do not know where to start you can (and probably should if you trade futures) spend thousands of hours on the CME website alone, looking at various info and going throught courses (I'd recommend starting with just a handful of assets and getting into those + taking a quick look at others for greater understanding). The second biggest exchange group is the ICE. They operate the Intercontinental Exchange (no kidding) and the famous New York Stock Exchange. The ICE is king on a few futures: - The big non grain 4 agri: Cotton, Cocoa, Sugar, Coffee. Unless another exchange steals this it is unlikely it will ever disappear, did you know that over 1000 years ago the most traded product after gold was Kola nuts? People were already addicted to "chocolate & coffee" back then. Anything that binds to opiod receptors & is socially acceptable = invest for 100 generations. Sugar is sugar obviously. I think those are the most interesting products they have. - Brent Oil, Natural Gas variations - Equity derivatives (FTSE, FANG) - The Euribor I think those are the main ones. Their site just makes me angry. I want to punch my screen everytime I go there unless I use a direct link and go straight for the info I want. They list their futures so bad so wrong, they have them literally hidden in a list of 100 other ones no one cares about and of course why show volumes so people can get there faster or why put them at the top of the list when you can rather have people waste time every single time? There might be some things no one is looking at in some ignored assets... But one has to get past the anger... They sometimes hide the central, important info, and blind you with absolutely useless and stupid things. Even the dumbest things... I clic on one of their links then the site buttons just move! Why are they not in the same corner? Why is every page built a little differently? Not completely different, but just enough to annoy you. I go on the main page for a CME future I directly see volumes & for the past days and open interest and for each expiry, with the ICE... It's a 5 months projects, I have to clic on some links that are so not explicit at all, then there is another list of links and I always end up on the wrong one and so on. Well I think it improved, it is not as irritating and useless as it used to be. Maybe another 10 years and they enter the 21st century? Recently their charts on tradingview went from EOD to regular, I don't know how that happened, but this sort of thing can help them get into the spotlight a bit more, retail has no interest whatsoever in their futures except maybe Brent so it might not be very helpful, but it is a start. www.theice.com They offer some insights that are pretty helpful. Nah I'm joking they are useless like the rest of the site. www.theice.com Industrial metals are not popular they are less popular than some rando chinese mlm stock (with retail I mean, many of the metals have volumes of over 5 bil a day), but I will link the LME site anyway, it is well designed, and they have plenty of useful ressources. www.lme.com The biggest ones are I think Aluminum, Nickel, Zinc. Nickel has an adv of 10 billion usd which is more than silver & copper, and was very roughly twice the silver volume until recently where it exploded. Volumes have been going up, maybe in large part due to EV batteries needing this metal, and lots of mines getting opened in south america. The limitation for amateurs to get into this is it is priced in tonnes (1 future = 6) and I do not think there are brokers with minimum sizes below 1 unit (tonne). The price being $15000 and min tick size $5 eliminates alot of participants. The spread alone would already be on the min order $30. That is 1% of a 3 grands account so forget it. Another one I really liked the chart of is Zinc, but I did not look much into it. Interesting site even if it is more for advanced participants, there are no e-mini-ultra-super-micro-get-started-with-your-lunch-money-no-experience-required s&p for baby accounts like the CME did recently (e-mini was not small enough for the "legends" to gamble). For FX there is no "at the source". But interesting places would be GS website, they publish public reports sometimes, the international bankers with the imf & bis, the fed websites have alot of info, but there is no "learn trading" or market data there. And FX does not have all its info available if you are not part of a bank. So objectively it is probably harder to get into. The FED (one of them) published a report on patterns in charts, their conclusions are "sometimes head and shoulders work". They have some info. A little of verified tested and legit info is better than tons of worthless crap filled with mistakes a marketting troll put together. Morgan Stanley... Here is a pdf from them with performances from hedge funds (max drawdown, sharpe ratio, returns), shows what is possible and realistic. www.morganstanley.com Then for stocks there are all kinds of places. The nyse I never go to and is as ugly as the ice website, probably as bad too. www.nyse.com The nasdaq that was always down when I used to check. News, short interest (They showed you that half the planet was shorting Tesla a year ago), all the important stock info you would expect... www.nasdaq.com For crypto: nothing. There simply is nowhere to go to. Satoshi whitepaper maybe. The CME & Nasdaq website have a little on crypto so might as well go there check it out (I haven't, no idea what is inside). Who I would not recommend on the "at the source" side: Brokers. I mean... lol brokers come on. 2- Specialised websites There is already enough to be busy for several thousand hours in 1-, but there is more. First there is tradingview. Not sure if I wanted to put them in social networks or here. You will find all kindz of people making all kindz of gainz- I mean losses. It's a place to exchange ideas, see what others are doing, learn crowd psychology... And they have the most ergonomic convenient charting service. Support page to find how to use the tools and ... I had to link something. www.tradingview.com Babypips is offering an education on forex in 348 lessons (free), they have quizz also. Remember to never take anything as reality, in general I mean not them in particular. Have the chart & source data at the tip of your finger. Completing this should take a good 500 hours. Since you are not just rush reading it and seing for yourself on charts how things play out. Doable in 30 days if you spend 16 hours a day on it. Maybe faster if you skip the indicators part, but nah everyone should look at those at least once. Prime brokers on their PF offer indicators and pros use them (especially small funds) so if it helps... I think most PM use at least some indicators they just don't over-rely on them and not any indicator. And it is interesting, you might indirectly learn something, also early on maaaaybe they can help because you are not experienced enough to see with the naked eye. www.babypips.com Investing dot com. Now with free ebooks! www.investing.com Investopedia has all sorts of definitions and articles www.investopedia.com 3- Social networks MyFxBook contains the best systems that go from the top followed to the top discussed when they go to zero. Coinflip outliers get popular, go to zero, get most discussed, disappear. There is no big "went to zero recently" at the moment, but they happen all the time. Some might not go to zero because they found a bug with a broker and are exploiting it until it gets fixed. Some people also cheat the results are fake, if you look for it you can find it explained how it works. If seing huge results makes you sad, then stay away. I only check from time to time to see fools blow up. www.myfxbook.com www.myfxbook.com Forexfactory, pretty classic, with calendars forums and all, they have variants of the site for stocks & for commodities www.forexfactory.com EliteTraders www.elitetrader.com Trade2Win I never go there not flashy and full of dumb trolls enough for me, must mean it's half decent. I get most of my entertainement elsewhere, and I don't want to say I know everything but I don't really need tips - that are always the same ones - anymore. www.trade2win.com Stocktwits stocktwits.com Then there are also youtube channels. Some I like are: - The ukspreadbetting channel, they have interviews with traders, and for the past couple of years Mark has been pumping out videos at an inhuman rate. - MoneyWeek, especially their old videos which are also the most popular - Patrick Boyle channel, he is quantitative speculator (he analyses data and looks for pattern) that worked with Soros I discovered his channel recently he was being interviewed and cracking up about "fast car trading educators". "Patrick Boyle is a hedge fund manager, a university professor and a former investment banker." - OBVIOUSLY Peter Schiff, GoldSilver (w/ Mike Maloney), and any permabear I can get my hands on will be a favorite ^^ - Dan Pena videos for the screaming - Ricky Gutierrez, Timothy Sykes, Tai Lopez, FxLifeStyle Forex for... well let's just leave it there shall we? There are plenty of channels. The list could go on. 4- Books & other tools Math & stats sites are usually pretty safe. The sort of people that wants to get rich quick is not the sort of people that goes to those ;) They're not infested with wolfs of wall street advice. Books are boring but some I know of and are good are Market Wizards, Reminiscences of a stock operator, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. You can find the last 2 on the internet as free pdf. A probability calculator is here (to estimate odds of drawdown, and other things): vassarstats.net Well tradingview, excel, and the printscreen button. 5- Expensive educators I don't want to only bash them, hey even pro athletes and gamers have coaches and mentors right? It makes little sense to me for a novice that knows nothing to go pay hundreds or thousands to learn basics that are out there for free. I would at least pick someone with credentials, and be aware that because someone was a floor traders or a market maker in a bank, or a trader only supposed to execute clients orders like Nick Leeson, does not mean they know how to make money speculating (especially if they are Nick Learned his Lesson). Chances are they don't, they tried but they just can't because not every one can make it into one of the hardest games. There will always be people that want to lose 30 kilos in 30 days and want quick abs and so the scammers will keep proliferating, can't even blame them. Just get in front of a chart and grind your way up noting what happened everytime specific conditions came together checking how often it worked out and what was the payout and far did it go in the wrong direction first, find the point where the SL is the most optimal for WR & RR, run stat tools and note everything about it. Log your trades, gain experience, read about economic news, keep learning, keep analysing charts, work on your routine, get more organised, design ways to decide you will look at a specific asset, then design your method for building an opinion on it based on your vast database of probabilities, intuition, macro conditions etc. It's not that hard. You either want to be a financial speculator or you don't. And this is what it is. You can't go for a job but without doing that job and constantly looking for tricks to do anything but that job. Or just go try to become a multi millionaire golf player without ever picking up a club, at least you'll get some fresh air. Same goes for going for it but expecting the journey to last 200 hours and then that's it you are profitable and can now relax on your expensive boat delusional to the max 😆
NYMEX:CL1!Education
by MrRenev
Some unpopular commodity spreadsCotton & Cocoa have daily volumes of about 500 million usd or more. The rest (except maybe xpt & xpd I have no idea about) have volumes of 1 or several billions. They are unpopular with alot of funds & retail because they (retail & fund clients I guess) cannot really day trade those, too expensive, and they cannot buy & hold for growth those. They are monthly or quarterly contracts, there is no growth like with stocks or gold. But this is real speculation, and what markets were created for thousands of years ago. There is a real need for us to absorb volatility/risks and there is an associated reward. The costs range between 5 to 10% of ATR which is acceptable if one picks the high probability moves in strong markets (not sideways) and goes for big moves, not some 15 minute chart ones. Out of 3 grains + 4 soft + gold copper nickel + natgas oil = 12 if we can catch one nice move a year for each that's equivalent to 1 a month and it's a big deal. Maybe 2 losers 1 winner on average, with the rare occasional painful gap maybe. 12 times 4R minus 24 times 1R counting spreads, that's 24R. With 1% risk then this means 27% return. On top of FX if you can handle all of that. I think this is realistic. As a pro trader with a decent account risk would rather be 0.5% or less because what serious professional wants some huge drawdowns in his capital makes no sense, that 24R becomes 12.7%. I think this is realistic from what I have seen & heard around but well only way to know what we can probably get out of it is look at our own track record. 1/10R spread means every 10 trades 1R is lost, so there is no place for breakeven overtrading. “Do not trade every day of every year.” - Jesse Livermore A dozen commodities plus a dozen currencies... This means less time to spend on the big aspects of this activity: money management, risk management, avoiding blowing up, doing all sorts of estimates, knowing yourself, getting out of losers and moving on, staying in winners... I don't think ~25 in the radar is that huge when fulltime, of course as long as they got added 1 by 1 progressively, studied & known well, and being able to stay away of dead markets and only look at the potentially interesting ones. For example Corn was completely off the radar all of may & june and it is one of the most violent ones last 6 months. NatGas was just nasty for the whole first half of 2020, Oil well you probably know, Silver before going up was in accumulation for years, I could go on... You're not really watching the whole watchlist at all time, maybe really 1/3 so rather than 12 currencies + commodities it is 4+4 and really you pay full attention to up to 3-4 analyse read read read prepare calculate list scenarios get ready etc and the rest is just on the side not 100% focus. More than this is getting a bit ridiculous in my opinion, especially for a single person. “It is much easier to watch a few than many” - Jesse Livermore again “Big movements take time to develop” - Same guy Damn, plenty of quotes on being patient and my favorite is Livermore again 😂 “There is a time to go long, a time to go short and a time to go fishing.” “I don’t think you can get to be a really good investor over a broad range without doing a massive amount of reading. I don’t think any one book will do it for you.” - Charlie Munger “I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up. I do nothing in the meantime.” - Jim Rogers “Beware of trading quotes.” - Andreas Clenow With experience and good organisation you learn when to look and when not to, and also understand you do not have to check every news and every chart all the time to catch every move, fearing to miss out is plain dense once you understand how this really works and what it really is. A couple of winners in a year is all it takes. Those that aim for more than this... They are the ones that fail. George Soros if I am correct just made a couple of big one sided bets, he started with Jim Rogers mostly in commodities (after working as an arbitrage trader on european stocks & 10 years as an investment VP), they made stupid returns and then he did FX? Gosh I might have it all wrong but it's something like that, and he is famous for his big win on the GBP, his big losses on the rubble & Thai Baht. Oh wait no he crashed Thailand kek. He got slapped hard in the face as he kept shorting small & medium cap stocks after Trump election. And didn't he short Bitcoin? Or buy? The markets really only offer a couple of opportunities once in a while, not 50 a month. I do not think the spreads get lower than this. Going for a couple of ATR (in moves that take 1-3 weeks) and not trying too often to get in (gets very expensive) it is not that bad. No retail day traders that want to get poor quick is the best part. Nickel is not available on tradingview, have to look at it via broker or investing.com (they use tradingview charting service). Rest is all here. Nickel really trending for long for the past year+ tvc-invdn-com.akamaized.net
TVC:PALLADIUMEducation
by MrRenev
Here are a few tips every one should knowHere's a couple of tips from me that might help in your trading. Those are just my opinions and all are belong to me. Practice think practice think review old ones repeat repeat repeat. It takes a whole lot of thinking and a whole lot of practicing to be good. Give your brain practice all the time like a muscle, and just repeat over and over. Look at examples, past trades, re-read what to do and what not to, re-read all your rules over and over, not until you know them, until forever or they'll just fade away. The more you hammer it in the better you get. Be logical DO NOT FOMO AND INSIST (or enjoy lose lose lose and then miss the final move that is a winner). Mistakes are really expensive. Best to miss out and not force and go look at something else, possibly analyse that one you missed and understand why you missed it, and how to fix, maybe by simplifying the way you detect those. Spend a whole lot of time analysing markets... Try really hard to really think every trade through... do not waste time on "meh" setups. Missing out is not that big of a deal imagine you get 10 of those a month, that's 120/year, now imagine you miss out 2/month you still get to 96/year and you had more time to spend on the 96. And you can still learn something from what you missed out on. Better than losing sanity from looking at charts hunting for setups all the time (and ending up forcing trades and bleeding capital). Price action is not physics. A "weak uptrend" is really what they call a long bull market that ran over countless bears that are all underwater in much pain, and often it ends up with bears giving up and a massive green candle up. And same, a "strong uptrend" is what they call price action with no bears. They did not vanish into another dimension, they just are not present in the market right now. But they are around. Which means they could be just around the corner and all jump in at the same time and reverse the price. In general I think the best is to not go against a "weak" trend ever. What is weak and what is strong enough? That's for you to find out. If you want to go against a pullback it is generally better to enter on vertical price action. People when they see violent price action get scared and remove their orders. The opposite is the right thing to do. Slow price => remove order. Violent price => GOOD, bring it on. Of course you will get run over from time to time. This is your job as a speculator. Speaking of weak trends, do not just use a price stop, but also a time stop: Price just goes nowhere for a long while => Get out. There is no reason for risk ever to be over 2% , and those are reserved for top stuff. Usually around half a percent is good especially when starting, then it can be scaled as the acc grows and even increased progressively to 1% to get a decent sized account. If you really are very certain of your strategy and want to go fast and cannot contain yourself then it is perfectly fine ok I understand you can risk more than a small 2% that barely will make you any money who wants to be spending hundreds of hours to make $50 :) Go for it. Make sure you can not lose more than all of your money, such as with using options or stocks that can only go to zero. At that point the strategy does not even matter. Also make sure you use alot of money, that you spent years to save up. And then keep taking trades until you lose everything. You really have to make sure it is very painful and you go into despair and lose all hope. Trust me when I say with 99% certainty you will really learn your lesson and won't require to learn it again. You will then not ever want to "go quick" again. 99% efficiency guarenteed. You won't have these stupid urges to risk big. If your spouse leaves you it is even better. Leaves a scar that won't heal as a permanent reminder. And consider yourself lucky that you only lost everything.
Education
by MrRenev
1
Winning Daytraders Understand Trend Trading.Hey guys, most people that get into the markets want to learn how to daytrade. They want to learn how to play the market on a day to day basis and eliminate a lot of the stress. Smart day traders understand trend trading. At the end of the day if you are trading something like a 15 minute time frame you're aware of how much noise their is in the markets. You need to eliminate the noise and focus on trend. Stop trying to scalp every little move getting in and out and racking up your fees. What we do is identify some of the largest trends that we can find... the more noise you filter out, the better your odds are at winning. Then we just follow up with good risk management. Take a look at the ema dots indicator. This takes out the complicated noise that most traders battle back and forth all day long either selling too early or buying too late. You need to stop focusing on trying to capture the exact bottom and the exact top. Just focus on capturing the overall trend transitions. Every 15 minutes for example on this chart of the ES futures CONTRACTS we will get a set of dots to close a certain color. We take our position when they align and set a take profit, or hold till next transition. Easy. You risk a little to win big, meaning you play good risk management knowing that the next major move is right around the corner. Technically you don't really need to understand support and Resistance but it does help. I personally believe trading the trend is the way to the gold mine.
CME_MINI:ES1!Education
by UnknownUnicorn2319099
1
CRUDE OIL (WTI) Weakening Market & Consolidation Crude oil is becoming weaker and weaker. though many fundamentalists promised a quick return to "normal" price levels after the lockdown removal, it looks like things are much more complicated than that. if you are a swing trader and you are looking for an opportunity to jump in in the market, I guess it is not the best moment. for the entire month, we could not set a new high. ATR drops as crazy and volatility is missing:) let the market start moving. let it pick the direction and then just act accordingly. swaps are now very expensive on oil, so no need to incur these losses.
FX:USOILEducation
by VasilyTrader
13
GOLD (XAUUSD) Structure Analysis & Thoughts gold is just unstoppable. the price is growing like crazy this week. if you missed this movement and plan to jump in, it is too late and very risky atm. the price is relatively close to our next potential reversal area 1823 - 1833. this area is based on a resistance line of a rising channel and fib.extension confluence of the last two major daily impulses. attention! I don't say that we should just blindly short from that area. always look for a confirmation on a lower time frame to trade against the trend. moreover, if you want to catch a bull rally, a pullback from the above-mentioned area may let you buy on a discount from the support of the channel. apply these structure levels based on your strategy and good luck!
FX:XAUUSDEducation
by VasilyTrader
16
A brief introduction to RISK MANAGEMENT:If you like my ideas and the work I do, please check out the links in the signature and give me a like ;). As I tend to get a lot of questions about this topic, most traders don’t seem to understand basic risk management in trading! From my experience capital protection and risk management are probably the most important part of any trader's skillset. So that is why I wanted to address this in a more elaborate educational Idea. The kind of questions I get: - I’ve got half my portfolio in this coin and the other in this do you think I need to sell. - Do you think I need to sell my … and buy … - I've been holding this since it was at that price do you think it will go down more ... I know these don't necessarily seem like bad questions to most people, but that is not actually how you should be trading. Note: In crypto trading lots of people (myself included) keep their portfolio in BTC or ETH. Now in doing this, you should not look at the dollar amount of the asset, but the goal should be to increase the amount of the asset you hold. If you are going to switch every five minutes because you think about the dollar amount of said asset, I would advise you to stay in dollar and trade from there. Now with that little particularity out of the way, we can look at how trading should be done. It is known most retail traders take positions with their entire capital and then when it drops they get scared and don’t want to sell because psychologically they can’t handle the risk. Now, this is the best way to blow up your entire portfolio in the shortest amount of time. In trading, you can never be sure a trade will be a winner so you should always make sure you can handle a string of losers without it affecting the bottom line too much. Example of how human psychology works in regards to this is a study done around the Kelly Criterion formula: ( This example is from the Wikipedia page of the Kelly Criterion ) Each participant in this study was given $25 and asked to bet on a coin that would land heads 60% of the time. Participants had 30 minutes to play, so could place about 300 bets, and the prizes were capped at $250. The behavior of the test subjects was far from optimal: Remarkably, 28% of the participants went bust, and the average payout was just $91. Only 21% of the participants reached the maximum. 18 of the 61 participants bet everything on one toss, while two-thirds gambled on tails at some stage in the experiment. Using the Kelly criterion and based on the odds in the experiment (ignoring the cap of $250 and the finite duration of the test), the right approach would be to bet 20% of one's bankroll on each toss of the coin. If losing, the size of the next bet gets cut; if winning, the stake increases. If the bettors had followed this rule (assuming that bets have infinite granularity and there are up to 300 coin tosses per game and that a player who reaches the cap would stop betting after that), an average of 94% of them would have reached the cap, and the average payout would be $237.36. In this particular game, because of the cap, a strategy of betting only 12% of the pot on each toss would have even better results (a 95% probability of reaching the cap and an average payout of $242.03). Now, this is why we do not want to trade like this. We should choose a risk level we are comfortable with per trade and keep this consistent. You can use the Kelly Criterion which can be difficult to do because it requires the win probability per trade for the calculation. Now you could get this by trading a certain trade setup you like to trade, let’s keep it simple, a 100 times. By doing this, you could gage the probability of this setup being a winner and that would allow you to use the Kelly Criterion formula. For beginners, a simpler way of doing this is the 1 percent rule. This means you risk 1% of your portfolio per trade. Simple example: You have a risk-reward per trade of 1/1.5 and your strategy has a win rate of 50% of the time and you make 100 trades on a 10000 dollar portfolio. You would end up with a 25% gain after 100 trades even though the 50 losing trades lost you a total of 5000 dollars. Because of the risk-reward the winners got you 7500 dollars which brings you to 12500 dollars in the end. This is a simple example but it shows the importance of both risk/reward and position size. Of course in reality it would play out slightly different. You would recalculate after every trade if your portfolio decreases due to a loss, which means you reduce your positions to make sure your risk stays at 1% of your portfolio and if you win you increase your positions to do the same. Another thing people get wrong with this rule is they start just betting the same position on each trade of let's say 5% and think they will get out when they lose 1%. This does not work!!! You should look at your setup and where you want to place your stop and look at the percentage between your stop and your entry. If this is for example 20%, you take your 1% risk tolerance and divide it by 20, then multiply it by 100 and that will be your position size. If you are using leverage you will need to divide this position size by the amount of leverage used. An example of risk-reward is shown above. From my experience, some general rules I use which tend to improve your results on top of a risk management system as described above: 1. Cut your losers quickly and keep your winners. 2. Don't change your stop unless you take profit and move it above break even. 3. Always place your stop at a technical level and not a random percentage, for example, the last highest low. Of course, you can adapt this to fit your trading strategy and style but the basics will be the same. I hope this was helpful and if anything is unclear feel free to ask me a question through chat.
Education
by VrotteOtter