rs1

Exactly, well said. One thing I never understand about this topic is when people ask "does technical analysis work?". What does that actually mean? Do you mean does it work 100% of the time without fail? I think we all know that nothing really works 100% of the time. Or does it work 60%, 70%,50%? And what do you mean by work - surely everyone's definition of work is different. Some might have a profit target of 1R, 2R,3R etc. The question actually makes no sense. The best answer is the one given above, imho. Technical analysis is great as an unemotional filter to put onto markets and give you reasons to get in and out. Your testing and observation will indicate good setups and profit targets, trailing stops and the rest is your money management. That is what trading is all about.

I find futuresource.com | Futures & Commodities Quotes, Charts, News & Analysis to be quite good, and free. Obviously the data is delayed. If you are looking for long term daily, weekly and monthly charts it is pretty useful and covers a very comprehensive list of futures markets.

Ok, here is my take if anyone cares. I think it is essential to be aware of and in control of all aspects of your trading. This includes knowing the last trading day/ first notice day of all the products you trade. Especially if you hold overnights on a swing or long term basis. This information is freely available on the exchange websites. Relying on volume or your broker alone is a dangerous game, in my opinion. Although it can be a useful indicator, if you are already aware of the fn/lt day. Ultimately, it is up to you what you decide to do. You should think about what has been written and see if it makes sense for you. Just trying to give you something to think about. Best of luck

A couple of ideas for you to think about. These are things which helped me but everybody is different. Give yourself a max loss per day and make it a percentage of account or absolute number that you are comfortable losing. If you hit that number, even if it is in the first five minutes of trading, switch the computer off and get up. Allow yourself to only make one trade per day. If the trade is a winner, great, if not then take the loss (which again should be an amount/ percentage you are comfortable losing) and take the rest of the day off. These obviously require a certain amount of self discipline to enact. They should help improve your mindset if you follow them, as they try to get and keep you in a positive mindset by not trading too much and by not letting your losses get out of hand. Again, just a couple of ideas, everybody has a different way of approaching things. Best of luck

One tried and trusted way of doing this is to simply bet a constant percentage of your closed account equity on each trade. As your account increases, your bet size increases (in terms of absolute amount at risk, but not in terms of percentage of account risked). And as your account goes through a drawdown, your bet size decreases accordingly. This probably works better for a larger account as you can finesse the position sizing a bit more, but the principle is sound and removes a fair amount of emotion from the equation. Of course, you have to choose a percentage of account to risk that you are comfortable with. And that may be the most important factor.

Hey, well at least you have a pool. Of course, you can't really swim in it now, but there you go.

That's all well and good if you guys roll like that. Maybe I am just cautious and like to be aware of the types of events that might cause me a problem. In my opinion everyone should at least be aware of the first notice/ last trading day so they don't get into a sticky situation. Just using volume, or relying on your broker is, I think, a little bit dangerous.

Yes but it is still your responsibility to be aware of these things so that you have full control over your trading. Plus you don't really want to get into a delivery situation at all, whether you can afford it or not.

Surely the most important thing is to avoid delivery, therefore you have to make sure you have rolled prior to the first notice day. So everyone who trades oil, or any other commodity should roll prior to the first notice day. That is the key date to be aware of. The volume stuff is useful but not essential.

Fair enough, I will spend some more time looking it up and watching the book. I just thought may be there was someone on here who had real-world experience of trading these futures and could offer an insight that you can't get from the manuals or the books. That was the idea behind putting this out on the forum. Cheers

Yes I see what you mean, the trading side is more important to understand, I get that. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the intricacies of how these futures work could explain further. If anyone knows anything further regarding my questions above, I would be very grateful for any more information. Thanks

I thought I had replied to this this morning but it looks like it didn't take. First of all, thanks for the replies guys. I was looking at the CL October contract in particular. I am definitely not looking to do 100 contracts and am well aware of the volatility in this market! I am just trying to get an understanding of how a large player would move that type of size and how quickly and easily the market can get pushed around. So am I right in assuming that if someone wanted to trade 100 contracts and were crazy enough to just do it, they could move the market quite substantially? or are those 1 lot, 2 lot bids/ offers just icebergs or is there something else going on there? Thanks again

Hi, Newbie question on NYMEX Crude oil futures. Looking at the book, it seems that there is very little size stacked up on the either side of the book and that the inside bids/ offers are not more than 5 or 10 contracts aside alot of the time. Compared to fixed income or even EUR futures, this seems to be a very thin book. Does this mean that if you wanted to buy 100 contracts, you would have to take out all the offers and incur the slippage and move the market to do so? I was under the impression that the NYMEX crude future was extremely liquid. I am clearly missing something here, can the experienced Crude traders please help out? Thanks

Thanks for the reply Soultrader. Great site, by the way, really appreciate the intelligent discussions that go on here. Interesting story about the Nikkei, that must be one tough market to trade!

Hi all, Alot of people say that you should only trade one market and become an expert at that market and nothing else. I guess this makes sense if you are starting out and need to focus to develop your skills as a trader. But if you are trading a consistent systematic method, then surely by applying to it multiple uncorrelated markets can only help your performance? For example, as I understand it, Opening Range breakouts used to work very well on the S&P 500 for a while but then stopped working. However, they continued working on other markets with volatility such as currencies etc. So if you were trading a basket of markets (say one currency, one commodity, one fixed income and one equity index), the other markets would make up for the S&P 500 and your equity curve would be smoother and more consistent. And you don't have to suffer through large periods of drawdown. Does this make sense to people, or am I missing something obvious? By the way, if anyone know where to get hold of correlations between markets on the net somewhere that would be very helpful. Thanks

Thanks for the help Brownsfan, I will look into it.

Hi all, I have recently started looking at the NQ as an instrument to trade and have a couple of questions. The size on the bid/ offer is relatively small ( I don't think I have seen more than 20 to 40 contracts a side since I started looking at it) and the depth of the book is only two prices deep. Does this mean that these orders are iceberg orders and you could do much larger size there if required? And is the order book really only two deep? Thanks for any help.