Commodity Trading Systems

What are the main markets in the world? Your first thought probably went right to the stock market, where individuals can invest in major corporations, buy government bonds, invest in institutional mutual funds, or throw their money at an exciting new technology startup. The stock market is not, however, the biggest market in the world.

Ok you say, gas is pretty expensive these days so it must be the commodities market, where commodity traders buy and sell things as diverse as oil, gas, live cattle and coffee. In reality however, neither of these markets is the largest. The largest market in the world, based on cash value traded, is the forex, or foreign exchange, market. Various estimates state that the average daily value of forex trading is between $2 trillion and $3 trillion a day. That, needless to say, is a lot of money.

Where do you go for forex trading?

There is no centralized market organization for forex trading like the NYSE or the London Commodity Exchange. The forex market is a largely unregulated market that occurs whenever foreign currencies are traded with one another.

Who is involved in forex trading?

Since there is no centralized market for foreign exchange trading, forex trading is a rather pricey club to join. For practical purposes, you have to be a major institutional presence to effectively make forex trades. Because of the requirement to have huge amounts of cash, the primary players in the forex market are banks.

Banks make up the unofficial core of the forex market. This is the inter-bank market, where massive investment banks trade billions of dollars worth of currencies back and forth. Central banks, (such as the U.S. Federal Reserve or the Bank of Canada), also play an important role as they intervene in the forex market to help control the price of their own currencies. Increasingly, hedge funds and other investment firms with significant holdings are becoming involved in this market.

Can individuals participate in the forex market?

Because large institutions such as banks dominate the forex trading scene, it is hard for individuals to get involved in the market. Indeed, retail investors make up a negligible amount of the market. Of course, given the size of the forex market, retail investing still accounts for as much as $50 billion a day, (and is growing each year), which is by no means small change.

However, because forex trading is largely unregulated, investors should be careful before putting any money into the market. A large number of scams have come out in recent years promising access to the inter-bank market. As always, be sure you know what you are investing in before you give your hard earned money to someone else to invest.

What currencies are traded on the forex market?

A small number of currencies dominate the forex trading. The most heavily traded currency is the United States dollar. While the dominance of the United States dollar was once unassailable, it is now being challenged by the Eurozone euro, and the Japanese yen is still a very strong player. Rounding out the other major currencies are the British pound sterling, the Swiss franc and the Australian dollar.

Stephen Dolan
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/forex-trading-for-your-future-124091.html

Foreign currency trading is the most profitable and powerful way to make money today in the world.

It is a 2.5 trillion dollars daily global market and business.

For this reason the knowledge and the secrets of how to do it successfully have been kept away from the public for thousands of years.

This is because it is the jealously guarded â??SECRETâ? of how the â??Money and Powerâ? Elites, the multi-national and multi-billion dollars corporations, largest banks and governments of the world, the â??Movers & Shakersâ? of International Banking & Finance, Business moguls & Tycoons, CEOs of major Corporations, secret societies and the privileged blue bloodlines of the Wealthiest Families of Europe and the Americas make their money and get rich.

They create vast fortunes easily trading foreign currencies.

Thereafter, using this great wealth, they create factories to manufacture consumer goods and products and hire you, Joe Bloke to work in those factories, banks and jobs at minimum wages.

So, it is no wonder why they donâ??t want you to know about the REAL TRUTH and â??SECRETâ? on how to generate great wealth through foreign currency trading.

If you know how to trade foreign currency and generate $100,000 monthly for life, will you be idiotic, naïve and crazy to go to work at these DEAD END jobs to earn minimum wages and be paid nickels and dimes?

So, there has been a persistent organized campaign by the powers that be, the Money Elite to KEEP AWAY AND HIDE these â??SECRETSâ? of creating vast wealth from foreign currency trading.

That is why they are always floating false propaganda and negative campaign in the mass media that currency trading is risky and you should not do it because youâ??ll lose all your money.

If you go to your bank manager or money management advisor or investment management company and tell them that you wish to make money at home from online currency trading, they will scream at you and try to discourage you and frighten you with the false information and half truth that it is risky and that youâ??ll lose your money.

This is because it is THE SECRET with which they make money and get rich!

Citibank alone makes $20 billion dollars trading currencies yearly.

Most banks, including your bank trade currencies and it is among the major ways to create income.

It is just that they donâ??t advertise this secret.

George Soros, the King of forex trading makes billions of dollars yearly trading currencies!

It is reported that a few years ago, he nearly caused the government of Thailand to go bankrupt because he made so much money trading their currency!

Yes, foreign currency exchange trading or forex trading can be risky.

It is true, you can lose your shirt and go bankrupt.

But this is half of the truth.

The other half of the truth is that if you buy and study a good forex currency trading e-book guide or program and understand how it works, avoid the pitfalls and get to know the secrets of risk management and trade with discipline, you can get fabulously rich so fast it will make your head spin round and put the devil to shame.

This is why there is an organized campaign to discredit online currency trading.

If you get rich so fast, then youâ??ll not need to depend on the â??Money and Powerâ? Elites and their jobs and welfare system where they allow you nickels and dimes to keep you subjugated.

If you get rich too fast, they will no longer be able to manipulate you into voting and keeping them in power to continue milking your life by making you labor and work yourself to death making them rich.

There are so many reasons why most beginners in foreign currency trading fail to earn money and instead lose all their savings.

When they first hear about how easy and fast it is making money from day trading currency, they search the internet and find a forex trading broker.

Then they open a currency trading account and put in a few thousands of dollars in the online currency trading account and immediately begin to try to earn money from online currency trading.

And they get entangled in all the foreign currency trading sophisticated strategies and systems of technical and fundamental analysis such as reading â??Forex chartsâ?, â??Moving Averagesâ?, â??Elliot waveâ?, â??Stochasticsâ?, â??Bollinger bandsâ?, â??Directional movement indexâ?, â??Trend and Oscillator indicatorsâ?, â??Fibonacci retracements and others.

They spend all day and night listening to business news on radio, reading forex newsletters, forex articles in magazines and watching business news on TV

These beginners donâ??t take their time to buy a valid online currency trading e-book guide to study and understand the forex market and the currency trading â??SECRETSâ? before they begin trading.

They donâ??t open the free demo trial forex trading account to practice for free to develop viable profitable currency trading skills first before they open a paid forex trading account to begin trading and making real money.

They make the fatal and dumb mistake of trying to fly in the world of foreign currency trading market before they learn how to crawl.

So, they get confused, make grievous foreign currencies trading errors and lose their money.

When they lose their money, they will not accept responsibility because that is the difficult part.

The easy thing to do is to blame their mistakes on online currency trading and to declare and gripe that it is risky and a scam designed to con the unsuspecting public.

This gives them the justification to begin filing false complaints and instigating legal action with the lame excuse that they were naïve and didnâ??t know the risk involved and so have been ripped off.

The truth is that there are at least one million people around the world who have foreign currency trading skills and do it well to make millions of dollars monthly!

Yes, sometimes they will lose.

But most of the time they are fabulously profitable.

I once read about a taxi cab driver from New York who started trading foreign currencies about 10 yrs ago.

While driving his taxi cab, occasionally during his lunch break, he will log into his forex trading account and enter a few currency trades.

By the end of his driving day shift, he would check his online currency trading account and was always surprised to find that for a few minutes of trading currencies, he had made more money that day in minutes than he made driving the cab for a whole month.

This encouraged him to stop driving the taxi cab and to begin trading currencies full time.

In 10 years, he made $4 billion dollars ($4,000,000,000) trading foreign currencies online and was listed in Forbes Magazineâ??s 400 richest Americans!

He is just one out of the many average people all over the world who took the time to study online currency trading, understood it and trade it correctly and are making millions of dollars without any hard work.

You too can do the same.

It is simple.

If you can click your mouse once to buy the currency and in a few minutes click your mouse a second time to sell them, you can make money.

It is a no brainer. Even a caveman can do it!

So, foreign currency trading is not difficult to understand or to do like stock or bond or commodity trading.

If you know where to get a good and valid forex trading guide or e-book and be patient to spend 1 hr daily to study it to understand the foreign currency trading market, how to click your mouse to buy and sell the currency; and if you will be patient to do the free demo trial for a few months before you open a paid forex trading account to begin trading, you can get obscenely and insanely rich so fast, it will make your eyes want to pop out, seeing all the piles of cash you generate just by clicking your mouse twice for a few minutes daily!

One powerful secret that will help you as a beginner is to avoid hiring money managers at the beginning to trade currencies for you.

The reason is that 90% of these money managers who advertise with highly impressive websites and brochures and also in TV infomercials and radios and seminars are fraudulent.

When you hire them to trade for you, they will over trade your account (churning) so as to generate a lot of trading fees for themselves because whether they make money for you or not, you must pay them their fees.

The more they trade your account, the more fees they generate for themselves!

By over trading your forex currency account, they expose it to massive risk which will eventually lead you to lose a lot of money.

This is because there are certain days and times which are profitable to trade and there are some days and times which are not.

Therefore by over trading (churning) your currency trading account, they get rich at your expense.

Plus, some of them will even use some profits they generated from trading your account to trade for themselves and make themselves rich without you knowing what is going on.

As if that is not bad enough, some will entice you to trade on margin. This means that they will loan you money to trade.

But the trick is that they are loaning you digital money which is created from the air and has no value.

All they do is go to your account and enter any amount of money they wish to loan you. (They donâ??t actually put real money into your currency trading account!)

This is not real money because it is just digital artificial numbers.

But if you use this fake funny digital money to trade and lose, then youâ??ll owe them real money!

Youâ??ll be required to pay them with real money!

And if you fail to pay them, they can freeze your bank accounts, assets and homes to collect the debt.

This is how most of these brokers get rich at the expense of naïve beginners in online foreign currency trading.

So, if youâ??re a beginner, avoid hiring money managers to trade for you at the beginning. Stay away from managed trading.

Instead learn to trade and after you have made at least $500,000, contact us to give you the list of the best and honest money managers in the world (as well as the best forecasting services) who can trade for you and make you richer.

There is another fraud which some money managers perpetrate.

After you open a paid online currency trading account and put in thousands of dollars in there for them to trade for you, they use your money to trade for themselves.

Then they use a computer software to generate a fake forex trading account statement for your forex trading account which will show that youâ??ve lost money.

There is no way most people will find out, because you canâ??t access their trading activities.

And sometimes even when you find a honest and reputable money manager to trade for you, when your account becomes profitable and you request to withdraw some of the money, they will begin to give you a run around, excuses and try to discourage you from withdrawing the money.

If you persist, youâ??ll find out that suddenly your account will begin to lose money because they have softwares to manipulate it and generate dubious account statements to make seem as if youâ??ve been losing money!

Above all, most beginners in forex currency trading fail to earn money because they spend too much time in doing complicated forex mathematics, reading charts, listening to business news on radio, TV and reading too many forex newsletters and magazine articles, which are conflicting, confusing, time consuming and counter productive.

They spend so much time over stuffing themselves with forex trading news and information that they become constipated with information and overwhelmed and so have little or no time to actually click their mouse to buy and sell the currencies and make money.

Most beginners also are unable to find and use a good currency trading system and software.

Some of them are even conned into buying outrageously expensive trading softwares and system for $4000 from some companies who advertise on TV infomercials late at nights.

They donâ??t know that they can get the same forex trading system and softwares for free online at the websites of some forex trading companies!

These $4000 softwares are not for beginners and when we checked them out, we found they are complicated and not easy to use.

Infact after you manage to master how to use it, they will not help you to make more money!

So, it is not wise squandering your hard earned $4000 to buy them.

If these over priced worthless forex trading softwares work as they are advertised in seminars and infomercial, the companies will not be selling them.

Instead they will keep them secret and use them to make billions of dollars.

If you wake up tomorrow and discover you have a goldmine underneath your house, will you go out and advertise in TV infomercials and radios and seminars to sell your house for $4000???

The truth is that most of these infomercial advertising forex companies donâ??t really trade currencies. They are just sales people. Shysters. Tricksters.

They make their money by peddling worthless forex trading softwares to the naïve beginners for $4000.

When you check one of these companies out (one of them has the audacity to call their worthless software â??Forex Made Easyâ?), youâ??ll discover that the CEO of this company actually admitted that not only that he does NOT use his $4000 software to trade but he knows nothing about trading currencies!

He only lends his name to his company to use to market their worthless foreign currency trading software.

The companyâ??s pitchman who conducts the seminar is a sales man and he also doesnâ??t trade currencies because he had committed fraud in the past and was barred from trading commodities.

While the CEO of the company runs infomercial and seminars peddling worthless forex trading software for $4000, he doesnâ??t use it and doesnâ??t trade currencies.

Instead he hired a money manager who trades the currencies for him!

So, if youâ??re a beginner who desires to get rich fast from currency trading, you must know these insidersâ?? â??SECRETSâ? of currency trading market and the pitfalls and how to avoid all the fraudulent companies peddling worthless forex trading e-books, books, softwares, systems and complicated trading strategies.

There are millions of them.

Beware because they are smooth operators who are very skilled in salesmanship and who can easily dazzle you with their big refined nonsensical English and so con you.

There are billions of dollars to be made in foreign currency trading and you can get abundantly rich trading these currencies online from home or office starting small.

But you must locate and buy a valid foreign currency trading e-book guide.

You must study it and understand it.

You must try the free demo account trading and do well in it before you can open a paid forex trading account to actually begin making real money.

You must begin by trading only one or two currencies at the beginning.

With time as you acquire more skills, you may trade more currencies.

You must learn how to trade with discipline and learn the BEST DAYS AND HRS to trade to be profitable and the other times when YOU MUST NOT TRADE to avoid losing money.

You must know how to â??go longâ? or â??shortâ? on a currency, how to enter â??Market Orderâ?, â??Limit Orderâ?, â??Stop Orderâ?, â??OCO orderâ? and â??Entry Orderâ?.

If you learn how to do Online currency trading hedging, it will help you to maximize your profits.

You must be disciplined and avoid emotional currency trading.

When you make a reasonable amount of money for the day, stop trading because you canâ??t be profitable at all times of the day and if you donâ??t stop and take your profit, you may end up losing all the money you made.

Above all donâ??t open a paid currency day trading account and trade until you have done the free trial demo account trading for a few months and mastered it.

At the beginning, keep your trading strategies simple.

Avoid complications and advanced trading strategies of technical and fundamental analysis because these are the reasons why 90% of beginners lose money.

Use a simple trading strategy to get rich at the beginning.

Afterwards you may then take advanced forex trading courses and do technical, fundamental analysis and use forecasting services to make even more profits and get richer, making millions of dollars effortlessly.

If youâ??re serious in learning all the insidersâ?? â??SECRETSâ? about how to make millions of dollars trading foreign currencies online, without selling your soul to the devil and without losing your shirt, you must get our powerful currency trading e-book which reveals a very simple and yet profitable and powerful trading strategy which is guaranteed to make you $100,000 monthly for life from home or office.

You can learn to get rich from the jealously guarded foreign currency trading â??SECRETSâ? of the â??Money and Powerâ? Elites, the multi-national and multi-billion dollars corporations, largest banks and governments of the world, the â??Movers & Shakersâ? of International Banking & Finance, Business moguls & Tycoons, CEOs of major Corporations, secret societies and the privileged blue bloodlines of the Wealthiest Families of Europe and the Americas.

With the millions of dollars which you make from foreign currency trading, youâ??ll be free like a bird to buy a mansion, with the most lavish and expensive furnishings, jewelry, antiques, electronics, a 50ft yacht, dream luxury cars, pick your choice: Lexus X470, $44,000 Jaguar 2007 S type, Silver Porsche Carrera, $180,000 Ferrari Testarossa, Mercedes 2007 Model S Class, 2007 Rolls Royce Silver Seraph, Bentley Mulsanne S, $220,000 Bentley Arnage Silver Tempest or a flaming red Lamborghini Jalpa!

You can make all your dreams in life to come true, without any hard work!

May these insights into foreign currency online investing, foreign currency trading program, investing online, forex trading, day trading, online trading e-book, day trading online, day trading system, day trading course, day trading future, forex day trading, day trading book, day trading firm, day trading training, currency day trading, online future trading, online currency trading, online forex trading, online commodity trading, online currency trading system, currency forex online trading, online trading course, online trading education, trading, online trading investing, forex, forex trading, forex broker, forex market, forex trading system, forex news, forex trader, forex signal, forex trading, online forex, trade forex, forex quote, forex education help you make millions of dollars and to achieve your lifeâ??s ambitions and dreams.

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Ikey Benney
http://www.articlesbase.com/currency-trading-articles/foreign-currency-trading-the-joy-of-getting-rich-from-foreign-currency-or-forex-trading-126761.html

Futures trading are the trading of futures contracts, which gives the holder the ability to buy underlying products for a predetermined price after a definite period of time. These contracts are created mostly for hedging the price uncertainty at the time of product delivery. Futures trading differ from spot trading, in which the trades are completed on the spot. The delivery time of the product is mostly 3 months or 6 months. Futures contracts can be grouped into two broad categories as commodity futures and financial futures.

The trading futures contracts begun in 17th or 18th century in Japan and Holland for agricultural products like rice and wheat. But the first organized futures trading started in Chicago, United states in 1840. In 1848, the first centralized futures trading market came in to being in Chicago called Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, which allowed both spot trading and futures contract trading. The Board of Trade of the City of Chicago later modified its name as Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).

In 19th century the products available for futures trading are common agricultural commodities like wheat, rice, oats etc; also some live stocks and meats. Most of these products are traded across US, from western agricultural lands to eastern populated lands. Later more products such as gold, silver, crude oil, natural gas, heating gas, etc were also become available for trading. With the development of the market the products increased to stock futures and stock index futures. In 1971, with the ending of currency gold standards, CME introduced financial futures for the first time, which soon became the most traded futures item. In 1987 electronic trading of futures started and futures contracts become available to everyone around the world.

All futures contracts are guaranteed by clearing houses and have unalterable contract specifications including delivery time and price of the underlying product. Although both names, futures contracts and forward contracts, are used alternatively, they differ in the trading style. Forward contracts are traded OTC (over the counter) though broker-dealer interactions, which involve price bargaining. But futures contracts are traded by open outcry of screen in public domain or simply through centralized futures markets. Remember unlike options, in futures trading it is mandatory to own/deliver the underlying product at the end of the contract period.

As discussed earlier, there are a variety of products available for futures trading, which are named after the underlying product they have. The most common type of futures is the commodity futures for agricultural, metal, energy, meat and live stock commodities. The financial futures or money futures are the futures contracts which have bonds, treasury notes, and other interest-based assets as underlying product. Stock futures have individual stocks are underlying product, where as stock index futures are meant for hedging stock market fluctuations as a whole. Like wise, currency futures are for individual currencies and index futures are for one group/whole market currencies. Although not a future contract, futures options are also a familiar product which gives the holder the option to buy a contract for a specified price at a specific time.

Praveen Ortec
http://www.articlesbase.com/investing-articles/futures-trading-definition-history-and-types-125190.html

George Lane completed his 47th year of trading in December 1996 and is still going strong. After many years of trading in the grain pits in downtown Chicago, Lane has shifted to screen trading during his “retirement” in a small community about 80 miles south of Chicago.

However, retirement means different things to different people, as Lane was up until 2 a.m. trading Italian bonds the night before he spoke with this reporter. Lane said, “I was having fun! … it beats working for a living!”

Early in his life, Lane was set on becoming a physician-as his father had been. But, then “I was out roaming around Chicago one afternoon. I wandered into a building to buy a cigar and I heard a bunch of noise upstairs. I went up and saw these men standing around yelling,” Lane said. “All of a sudden, I was hooked and medicine dropped from the picture,” Lane said.

While initially Lane worked as a broker, he said “that didn’t work out very well … because as a broker you want to give customers advice that is in their best interests. Sometimes what you think goes against what the firm thinks.”

In the late 1950s, Lane purchased a membership on the Chicago Open Board of Trade for $25 and started trading the grains. The Chicago Open Board of Trade, now known as the MidAmerica Commodity Exchange, was originally founded in 1868.

At first, Lane said, “I wasn’t doing very well. An old timer came over to me one day after the dose and asked me how I was doing. Every night after trading, he and I went down to the local tavern and as long as I bought the whisky, he taught me everything he knew about the markets.”

“He introduced me to the Taylor trading method, which is a three-day trading cycle” Lane explained. Lane began to pick up trading and started to see some success in the pit. He eventually became the president of the Investment Educators Inc. “I’d trade all day and then we’d meet at night,” Lane said. In that capacity, he invented 64 “stochastics,” a widely used momentum indicator.

“Stochastics measures the momentum of price,” Lane explained. “If you visualize a rocket going up in the air- before it can turn down, it must slow down. Momentum always changes direction before price … It is a very sophisticated tool,” he said.

According to John J. Murphy’s book Technical Analysis of the Futures Markets, stochastics “is based on the observation that as prices increase, closing prices tend to be closer to the upper end of the price range. Conversely, in down-trends, the closing price tends to be near the lower end of the range. Two lines are used in the Stochastic Process-the %K line and the %D line. The %D line is the more important one and is the one that provides the major signals.”

“We had %A and %B-we went through the whole alphabet twice, working on things. Then we discovered %K and then %D and the darn thing worked. So, we quit the research and went into the pit every day and started making a living,” Lane said. He calls himself a strictly technical trader. “I read the fundamentals, but the fundamentals are not the way to trade—the technical side is so much more lucrative.”

But, “it is hard work if you are going to be a trader- you’ve got to be looking at your computer five to six hours a day,” Lane said.

Currently, in his “retirement” Lane trades “about four to 12 times per day.” His time frame is “45 minutes to 1 1/4 hours,” with average gains of “$150, $350, $750″ per trade. “They all add up at the end of the day.”

“You can make $5,000 a day trading one-lots,” Lane said. From his screen, Lane trades primarily off of three-minute, 15-minute and 30-minute charts, relying on “stochastics, volume and trendlines.”

Recently, Lane has been trading the S&P 500 futures contract at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He sticks to liquid markets, avoiding thinly traded contracts such as pork belly futures or lumber.

Lane doesn’t confine himself to U.S. markets, however, estimating that 20% of his trading extends to foreign futures markets. “German bonds and Italian bonds trade very actively,” Lane noted.

However, Lane said he never trades without a stop-loss order protecting his position. “That’s the secret to making money in commodities-control the size of your losses.”

Lane recommends that beginning futures traders read “John Hill’s three books on charting basics-if you are a good chartist-the charts talk to you.”

“You can learn how to do it yourself,” Lane said. “Brokers are salesman. Never take advice from a broker. Because, then you are admitting that you don’t have enough smarts to make your own decisions.” Asked what was a key factor in success in commodity trading, Lane replied “greed.”

“Trading is fear and greed and if you have enough desire to have a successful financial life-you can do it,” He concluded.

Martin Chandra
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/george-lane-still-trading-off-stochastics-at-age-75-90040.html

If there ever was one business that has made a lot of people a lot of money it is futures trading, also known as commodity futures. This is one business that has made millionaires and multi-millionaires in a very short time while starting up with relatively small capital investments.

Just what is a “futures trading”? Loosely defined, a future is an agreement to buy or sell a given quantity of a particular commodity at specified future date at a pre-arranged price. You “speculate” the direction prices will take and decide to buy or sell based on that. Prices are, to a degree, predictable.

The money-making potential in futures trading is astounding. Examples; John Henry started with $16,000 and amassed a wealth worth more than $1.5 billion. Richard Dennis borrowed $1600 and made $200 million in about ten years. Granted, these examples are atypical. But you can see the potential.

Unlike other forms of business and trading such as real estate, stocks, brick-and-mortar etc., where you have to wait years to see any substantial returns, futures market is immediate.

Better still, you can start from your kitchen table, you never physically handle or deliver the commodities, nor market or advertise, and you can buy or sell large or small quantities.

You also have choice of a wide range of commodities from gold, grains, crude oil, gasoline, currencies, and agricultural products and many more to choose from.

As with any business where you can make lots of money fast, you can also loose lots of money fast. This is one reason why this business is not for everyone. It is certainly not for those who tend to get emotional when things seem not go as intended.

Actually, the more you’re able to keep your emotions in check, the more money you can make as panic and hysteria are commodity traders’ best friend.

When starting out, you might make losses. This is expected and may be a good thing as early success can give you a false impression about your own abilities, and lead to disaster. Loss should be treated as part of business and learning process. The key is to limit your losses by learning to trade like a professional. How?

Professionals approach futures as a business, as opposed to the slot-machine, hit-or-miss approach most people make. And, as with any business you need to understand how the market works.

This means learning as much as you can about the business. And no, you don’t have to pay $2500 to attend some seminar to learn “insider secrets”. You would be better off if you could take a trip to Chicago or New York Board of Trade and observe professionals at it. You’ll learn more this way than in any seminar.

Back to limiting losses. One way of limiting loss (risk management) is placing a stop-loss order on a trade. You pre-determine the amount of risk you are going to take, and stick to it. Successful traders always have a stop-loss order before initiating a trade.

Trading without a stop loss order can have catastrophic effects, especially to the inexperienced trader as they can find themselves unable to pull the plug until it’s too late.

Another key is diversification. As they say “never put all your eggs in the same basket”. A rule of thumb is not to risk more than ten percent of your equity in any one trade, thus preventing losing all your money in one or two bad trades.

Amateurs also make the mistake of re-investing all their earnings, and then loosing it all down the road. Professionals pull their profits and start small again, making small capital increments to facilitate growth.

Good record keeping is also important in that it shows you what is working and what is not, as well as the patterns.

Contrary to what you may have heard you don’t need a lot of money to get started in commodity trading. A good brokerage firm can help you get started without spending a fortune.

Details of running a successful futures trading business are beyond the scope of this article. The best investment you can make is to spend time learning how the business works, starting with the basics.

David Kamau
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/futures-trading-how-fortunes-are-made-92967.html

One of the most exciting and little understood markets available to the investor is the Futures Option Market, or Commodity Trading. It is similar to the Stock Options Trading market in many ways, but there are also some major differences. Some of the terminology used in Futures Trading also has a different meaning than the same term when applied to Stock Option Trading, and caution must be used to avoid confusion.

In the United States, all of the trading of future contracts are recorded and monitored by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). This agency was created by Congress in 1974 and replaced the earlier Commodity Exchange Authority. The CFTC acts as a watchdog over the entire market, and has considerable power in enforcing its rules and standards.

The Future trading market is often called the Commodity Market, or commodity exchange. This is because the underlying asset is a commodity rather than a share of stock. The commodity can be almost anything from a barrel of olive oil to the value of an index. The most important difference between a Future option and a stock option is that the contract in a Future option gives you the right and the obligation to purchase or sell the underlying asset at a certain price on a specified date. It is obligation that is the key difference, as the stock option is a true option, and no obligation exists.

The trading of commodities has a long history. Some claim the market can trace its origins back to the Roman era. It was certainly active in Japan several centuries ago where the trade was in rice and silk. The market began in the United States in Chicago in the early part of the nineteenth century. Chicago grew and became a centre for transportation and for the trading of the agricultural products of the growing Midwest. The massive amounts of produce that flowed into Chicago coupled with the primitive methods of transportation and communication created virtual chaos. The supply and demand of various commodities fluctuated wildly, and as they did prices rose and fell so quickly that everyone involved were constantly at risk. The market developed to provide some measure of protection from these risks.

The basic concept behind the market was the idea of “forward” contracts. The forward contract was basically a promise to buy now, but pay and deliver later. It brought order to the chaotic market place because suppliers were given some security that their products would be purchased at an acceptable price.

From this beginning, the concept of forward trading developed in the modern futures market. It has been regulated and brought under control, but it remains a volatile and expanding entity. The definition of commodity continues to expand. No longer is it restricted to grain and cattle, but now includes just about every disposable item, as well as non-tangibles like interest rates, and financial instruments. Economist debate over where the definition of commodity will reach its end. Is it an infinite concept? Are such things as human life and free time considered commodities?

One thing is certain. The Future Options Market is incredibly complex, and very little that happens in the world does not impact the prices of the future. Weather conditions impact agricultural output. Political events on the other side of the World impact oil prices. The global economy intertwines more and more each day as transportation and communication continue to shrink the globe.

All of this may appear extremely daunting to the beginning investor, but with a little bit of work with the terminology and the procedures of the market, a profitable and exciting investment option awaits.

Casey Yew
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/future-option-trading-a-brief-history-and-overview-92192.html

Have you ever heard investors mention speculating in futures of the commodity market and wondered what it they are talking about? While most of us are familiar with investing in stocks, commodities can be an interesting way to have your money make money for you.

But first, you might ask what is a commodity? commodities are goods we are each one portion is the same as the other. For examplee, oil is a commodity because one barrel of oil is the same as the next. Wheat is also a commodity each bushel of wheat is identical to every other bushel of wheat and anyone purchasing them could care less whether they get bushel number one or bushel number two. Gold is another example of a commodity. 1 ounce of gold is the same as the next.

There are some differences in some commodities to external forces such as shipping costs or differences in composition. For example, not all oil sells for the same cost because they may come from different sources were shipping is a consideration. Also they may trade on different markets where the pricing is different.

There are two ways that commodities are traded, in spot markets, or as futures.

Spot markets, refer to trades that take place literally on the spot. The commodity is traded right then and there, usually for cash but also could be for some other product or good. For example, if you want to buy an ounce of silver, you can go right down to the jeweler give him some cash and it will give you so. This is spot trading.

Of course, spot trading can be done in larger volume as well. Some traders exchange millions of ounces of silver or thousands of barrels of oil and then sometime later the actual goods are delivered.

When traders talk about futures or options it is not the actual good that is traded for rather a contract to buy or sell that particular commodity for a particular price a certain date in the future. This is how most commodities trading is done. This type of trading can have huge profits and also huge losses as it involves speculating on the future which can be full of risk and uncertainty.

this type of trading has been around in its present form since the late 18th century . Around this time farming became more modernized which allowed commodity trading to be profitable. Although this is an age-old way of making money, the basics remain the same today as they were in the late 1700’s.

For example, wheat takes many months to grow. So at the beginning of the planning, the market price when the wheat is ready and speculated on. So if a farmer plants meet in May which will be delivered in September, the price at that time may be four dollars a bushel. If in June the price begins to fall, and the farmer feels the price will continue following, he may offer a contract on this week for the current price (lower than $4.00). Now if someone thinks that the price will go up over four dollars, then this contract will look like a pretty good deal and they may take them up on it.

Since no one knows for sure what that price will be, an actual prices based on such unpredictable things such as weather, this whole process Is called speculation. so now when September rolls around, the farmer delivers his wheat for the agreed on price. Now if the price has actually gone up to over four dollars and the speculator has made a profit. But, if in fact, it is fallen to wander the agreed-upon price he has lost money.

So there you have it, the basics of commodity trading.

Lee Dobbins
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/learn-about-commodity-trading-63124.html

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Today many traders buy commodity trading systems and spent money on expensive software when really all they need is to do a bit of research on the net and build their own.

Here we will show you how to build your own commodity trading system that will help you pile up big gains, even if you have never traded before.

First things first!

Let’s look at the logic the commodity trading system is based on:

1. Catching the big long term trends and these only come a few times a year. These are the ones to focus on not short term moves or day trading, this system is geared for profit not low odds trades in short term market noise.

2. This commodity trading system does not predict, it only acts on confirmation of the tend.

3. The system is simple. Traders think that the more complicated a system the better it is likely to perform, the exact opposite is however true.

4. This system uses the same trading methodology for ALL markets and is based on a psychological flaw most traders have and lose.

5. As this system is based on long term trends it should take no more than 30 minutes a day and will work off the closing price ONLY.

Putting it together

This commodity trading system is technically based, so let’s look at what we Need the package to contain. All we want is weekly and daily charts and two basic indictors Bollinger bands and stochastics.

A good package on the web is available at futuresource.com, but there are many others, don’t buy one! You don’t need to.

Trading rules

Trading rules are simple:

1. Look for important valid (several tests over long time span) resistance and support on the weekly chart and note the trend, then look for the same pattern on the daily charts.

2. Once you have found a market that fits the above criteria look for breaks of support or resistance. Don’try and predict wait for the move to get underway i.e you have confirmation (via the stochastic indicator) this is when the odds of the trend continuing are highest.

3. Check the stochastic indicator supports the move this VERY important.

4. Enter with at the money or in the money. Do not buy out eh money options and remember keep time on your side.

5. Don’t move stops to soon, get stop in below breakout point and move immediately to entry if the position moves your way. Wait for larger profits and cover the position with covered write position.

That’s it; If you are not familiar with all the terms check our other articles.

Why will this commodity system work?

It’s based on sound logic, breakouts are easy to understand and trade, most traders wait for market pullbacks and miss the major moves. This system gets you in on ALL the major moves and confirms strength before buying, to get the odds on your side.

Keep this fact in mind Most major trends develop from market highs, that means you have to trade breakouts.

Most traders get stopped out by volatility, but this system assumes the trend will continue rather than reverse as it’s already in motion, so stops are kept wide. When the profit becomes big you can put in an insurance policy, in the form of a covered write option strategy.

Finally, options can be used but unlike the losing majority you won’t buy out the money options with little chance of success. You will keep time on your side and buy in at or near the money.

The other advantage of this system is it costs nothing and is easy to understand.

This means when you practice it, you will have confidence and be able to trade with Discipline, which is a key to trading success with a commodity trading system.

Don’t listen to traders who try and tell you trading commodity systems needs to be complicated, it does not. A simple commodity trading system like the above, traded with discipline is all you need.

Sacha Tarkovsky
http://www.articlesbase.com/investing-articles/commodity-trading-systems-this-ones-free-and-makes-big-gains-65196.html

This video is about a conversation I had with another forex trader. After talking to him I looked at my charts on the longer time frames and could see that it would be best to wait for better signals before entering a trade. When the whole thing unfolded you can see what happened.

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