Long Futures So the most basic strategy with futures is to find a stock you think is moving higher, and buy a futures contract rather than the stock itself. This immediately multiplies up the impact of your funds. You can apply...

I’ve covered a lot of ground in explaining how futures work and are traded. There are many other factors to do with futures, such as the size of each contract and the specifications, and these are spelled out on the...

When a futures contract is created, with a buyer and seller, the price of it is the amount that both sides think they should pay, in other words the pricing is neutral. It has to be by definition, otherwise one of the parties...

So far we’ve considered only the traditional futures markets, which have their origin in the 19th century. But as I mentioned at the beginning futures contracts are now available on many different underlying things, so we...

There are a number of pointers you should be aware of if you are spread betting on the traditional commodities. With ‘soft’ commodities, which are growing goods such as sugar, you should always look for an annual...

Just to give you a taste of the markets, here are some screenshots from the CME Group website, www.cmegroup.com. These are for Lean Hogs. First here’s the specification sheet which tells you what the contract covers. You can see...

To start trading futures, you have to provide a deposit which is known as a margin. This provides collateral to the exchange against the possibility that you don’t meet the contract. Given the size of standard futures...

Module 14 – Futures Introduction In the last few decades, futures contracts have grown from being solely for commodities to encompassing virtually any financial instrument you can think of. They started with futures contracts on...

Insider Buying No review of the stock markets would be complete without some talk about insider buying, which can be an excellent leading indicator to the performance of particular stocks. If the top executives of a company are...

Comparing Averages Another way of getting a feel for the market breadth is to compare the market averages. The most obvious example of this is Charles Dow looking at both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Dow Jones...