Hi guys , my this week’s blog  it’s all about telling you how to lose money in a futures market. 🙂

Portfolio

Every  time I see my portfolio, firstly I’m just ……..

then I could only accept the reality ……

…..Now I can show you how I get there and I hope you never will do.

Now as you can see, I did my first trade of week 2 on 25-Sep. Then did some trades intensively in 2 days because I wanted to cover some lost. I did make some little money on soybeans and another wheat contract but nothing can help my first trade of wheat.

Something I did and the outcomes.

1.Limits

As you can see I lost a lot on Wheat DEC-13. It does not happen in a day ,actually it’s a long process. I set limit prices several time but no a once I succeed

2.Hedge

Feeling lost on wheat’s price , I open a contrary relevant trade of wheat (Wheat Mar-14) as a kind of hedge.  It earned a little bit money for me but it was a bad news for me .Because it meaned that I lost more on first original wheat contact.

3.Soybeans

Opened a short contract of soybean, earned some.

Lessons & Info

1. Future VS Forex

1)      time

Now I feel  how important the role TIME plays in Futures market. I used to do some fx trade and that brings me some very bad habits in futures game.

When you do fx trade, it is literally an 24hours market except for Sunday. So you can check your position and do something about it anytime during a day. But when I did futures, many times I just checked my position and then found I didn’t know what to do ! Either  I was after a market closing time or in time of smaller trading volumes. I found prices changed a lot and trading volumes got larger when near the closing time. Such as Wheat DEC-13 and Wheat Jan-14

So it’s all about a good time. A good plan and organized trading or checking schedule really helps.

2)  fees

Futures has larger spreads and brokerage commissions. While fx’s spread is smaller and dependent on different brokers. For example, the fixed spread of EUR/USD is often 2.5 or 3 of different brokers. If you are interested in forex trade,here is an article   How To Pay Your Forex Broker . And if you want to open a demo forex account and have a different try,here are some comparisons of different brokers.Most of online brokers provide very detailed forex trading info from very simple and basic knowledge.I think it’s really friendly for a fresh and anyone can open a demo account just like our MFRE future trade account.  What’s more, from my personal view, I feel more technical using on forex trade and more info using on futures trade.

2.Stop& Limit

Actually I set a lot limit prices for that ugliest wheat contract but not a one succeed. Then I realized that things would get a lot better if I set a stop losing point at the very beginning. Do not always think about earning ,also think about stoping losing. I hope I ‘ve learned such a lesson.

Have a good weekend 🙂

Alex

It’s a first week of futures trading and everything seems exciting. While there are some lessons I wish I’ve learned in this exciting game.

1.If you are in this game ,you should know the basic rules.

Tuesday afternoon, I wanted to check out my Stocktrak account and may do some trading at that time. However, I found the platform closed. Then I realized it’s not like Forex trading which you can do it almost all 24h. It’s more like stock tha you need to know when to start and when to have a nap.

2.Get some tools to help you, at least you won’t feel that you are a moron about something you never touched.

If I want to trade for reasons, I need to expect its trends, right? Actually if I think if you have some softwares or tools ,you feel good and peaceful even you don’t usually use them. For futures, I need charts to help me achieving that. I found stocktrak was really NOT friendly to provide charts of current or history prices so I turn to some software.

I downloaded Futures Live Track’n Trade (2 weeks trail)http://www.trackntrade.com/.It provides chart changes info in minimum 1 minutes. I want to find one can narrow it to 5 seconds but failed ,maybe because it’s not like forex, I cannot just use some stupid commonsense to treat futures—a totally strange guy for me.

Here is a snip of this software. Also our TA provide some other tools on his Bloghttps://blogs.ubc.ca/mliew/2012/10/25/curve-flattener-spread-trade/  I think it’s kind of huge for the 1^st week.

3.Get news , information is important. Find a reliable resource

Actually it’s not a lesson I learned in first week. It’s about something I wanted to learn but kind of failed. I subscribe email news of Futures in the U.S: Weekly Future Insights  .But they never sent to me this week… So the lesson is : find a reliable info rescource.

4.Patience and don’t be so greedy.

Let me show you how greedy I was after I opened 1^st short trade. I opened it and set a limit for covering it. The limit price is…

Yes I opened a short at 6.45 and limited it at 6.20 at that time….  Now I feel only if I am a god like Warren Buffett, or I was just kidding myself.

Then I changed the limit to…6.39. The consequence is I still cannot find a chance to cover it. I thought if I set it at 6.41, I might already earn 100 dollars or something .  Then I will be a greedy person who is not confident for herself. So this lesson tells me don’t be so greedy , because if you become a greedy, it’s a lot easier for you to become a fence-sitter.

That’s my first futures week ~  Guys, happy mooncakes day. Futures always hurt you, but friends and food won’t. Enjoy the moon 🙂

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!