Before You Get Started
Trading futures can be a unique way to supplement you income or potentially quit your day job and trade full time. There are a large group of traders that make in the millions of dollars per year strictly by selling futures.
The traders on top of the game have tons of experience and even experience severe ups and down throughout their trading careers. Without experiencing the downs that come with trading, you will not be able learn from your mistakes.
There is, however, an alternative to losing money first hand. You can leverage other trader’s mistakes and learn from them so you do not make the same mistake. This way you can make more money in the market because you have the insight and wisdom of several hundreds experienced traders. Here are some resources to help you do so.
1. Read Blogs – blogs are great resources for current trading information. You can usually follow trader daily moves and learn from their wisdom. Also, you can read further back in their index of post to look for trading mistakes. These are the most valuable tidbits of information and they will help you make money in the long run.
2. Follow on Twitter – Following people actively trading forex and futures can give you access to up-to-the-second trading info. Some people even exactly follow trader’s moves. If the experienced trader is good about updating after every trading is open, you can use this as a free financial advisor. Make sure, thought that the trades are up to date and not from several hours ago. This can lead to huge mistakes.
3. Read Books – Search amazon and you will find a wealth of books, new and old, with terrific information. Some people think that older books do not pass much value but that is completely false. Just as history usually repeats itself in other fields, the same holds true for futures trading.
4. Open a Practice Account – I am probably one of the biggest advocates for practice accounts out there, and rightfully so. I have used them to test and perfect numerous trading systems throughout the years. Trial and error is a huge learning tool and helps you save real money by testing and learning with face money.
Corey Richard is a contributor for Forex education portal TradeForex.com. Along with writing he is also an active trader in both futures and Forex.
1. Before you can start trading futures, you must download a platform to do so. We recommend NinjaTrader, which is the chart we use in the chat room to make trades with. You can download it for free, and get a demo account so you can do ‘paper trades’ (trading on the live market, with fake money)
2. After downloading NinjaTrader, you need to request access to our chat room for your 3 day free trial. You can do so here:
3. We recommend watching this 5 minute video on what the chat room experience will be like, so you can understand the lingo used there.
Terms used in the video:
BT Long Trade: A peak above the zero line on the TSP indicator chart where you place your limit order on the corresponding bullish candle
BT Short Trade: A peak below the zero line on the TSP indicator chart where you place your limit order on the corresponding bearish candle
Opening Line: The start of the day’s trading
Moving average: In this trading style the moving average is set to update every 555 ticks
EMA: Exponential moving average
Tick Chart
TSP ATM Indicator
TSP Momentum Indicator
ADX
Higher High
Lower Low
Peak
Entry
Bullish Candle
Trailing Stop
Point
Ticks
ES
555
5 minutes
