Extracting Alpha from Futures trading

[rvtrader10]

Hi All,
I would be interested in learning more about futures trading. Would anyone of you share their ideas, without going into details about your own strategy?

Thank you.

 

[Martinghoul]

What sorts of futures are you looking at? I'm sure things vary a lot between asset classes.

 

[rvtrader10]

True.
I would start with Equity Index futures (DAX, Eurostoxx, SP500), but effectively whatever is very liquid. Both manual or automatic trading.
For example, I would not mind hearing about some good ideas about commodity trading too.
Again, I don't want anybody to give out too much about their personal strategy, just few hints to be researched and developed further.

 

[Martinghoul]

Well, from what I understand stuff that's done in crude is all based on trading the "golden roll", i.e. front-running the roll that the monstrous oil ETFs have to do at certain points in the cycle. I don't do these things, so I can't tell you more than that. There's all sorts of things that can be done in the world of rates, but they're somewhat more esoteric.

 

[gibson]

If your interested in learning about futures trading - I would advise reading up about the market profile. This works great on Eurostoxx and Bund (never tried it on S&P so cannot comment). A fantastic book is 'Mind Over Markets' by Dalton.
The Dax can be extremely volatile and hard to trade at the best of times, so personally if your a beginner I would advise you to stay away from this. Although thats just my view.
Eurostoxx, Bund and S&P are good ones to start with, nice movements and all highly liquid.

Cheers,
Gibson