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 1st 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 1st 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 🙂
Hi Alex, it seems you’ve traded forex quite a bit in the past. As you mentioned, there are some similarities as well as differences. You generally tend to pay more fees while trading futures – the bid-ask spread is wider and there will be brokerage commissions. Also, note that the fx mkt that you are used to is essentially a global OTC spot market and there are no contracts. It is indeed 24 hours, except for sunday. Note that FX futures and options do exist. The risk profile is also significantly different, as well as the levels of leverage that are allowed. A future blogspot with more detail about the differences might be very beneficial for your classmates.
Mark You are absolutely right. I noticed that some significant differences between them after losing huge amount of money. Yeah, time is really important….. I think I’ll learn more about differences during this practical experience and I’ll get it detailed in my blog. I think it will also help my performance on futures. Thanks Mark !