Types of Futures Contracts

[jcwonder8]

I've recently switched from trading shares to US index futures (avoiding the S&P 500 ES) which is going pretty well. Which other futures do people like to trade and why? I'm guessing that markets in certain commodities which represent a real physical product with real supply/demand should be easier to trade than securities linked futures which trade on sentiment alone. Is this your experience? Which markets to you like to trade? As a trader trading purely on ta I'd want to avoid getting into the fundamentals on basis that competing against insiders using public info is not going to work and to avoid trading on important announcement dates - is all commodity announcement and report info obtainable on any one site? Which markets are more prone to black swan events? Do any of you bother to hedge against black swan events causing unexpected limit up or down markets by for example buying long dated well out of the money options? Any book suggestions re commodities trading? I've read a ton of general ta but future specific books seem pretty thin on the ground.
Any advice appreciated.
Here's a link to some excellent articles on trading the mini-dow in case you haven't seen it.
http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,927,00.html
And here's my all time favourite article - Don't be put off by the strange style and check out rule 1 in particular
http://www.futuresmag.com/futuresclassroom/phantom/phantom.html

 

[Keystone]

First post and more a question than a reply.
Regarding your comment '..avoiding the S&P500...'

I'm looking to move to Direct Access and I was intending trading the SP500 Emini so your comment has me puzzled. Any particular reason why not?
I just want to reassure myself I am picking the correct trading vehicle to start with. I'm very comfortable with my investment history and TA skills but there are new skills to learn in getting the best fills using either market or limit orders. I would really appreciate any comments/help you can give on this.

 

[jcwonder8]

First post and more a question than a reply.
Regarding your comment '..avoiding the S&P500...'

I'm looking to move to Direct Access and I was intending trading the SP500 Emini so your comment has me puzzled. Any particular reason why not?
I just want to reassure myself I am picking the correct trading vehicle to start with. I'm very comfortable with my investment history and TA skills but there are new skills to learn in getting the best fills using either market or limit orders. I would really appreciate any comments/help you can give on this.

I'm using direct access interactive brokers to trade US index futures. I'm exclusively using market orders for 10 contracts or less at more volatile times of the trading day, (morning and close) and getting very fast good fills through ib. As a new IB client I am really impressed by the speed of fills. Threads at other key trading boards have suggested the SP 500 is more difficult to trade than either the emini russell 200 or the mini dow and it looks that way. Its a much more liquid market than either the dow or russell 2000 so I assume will attract better players as there's more money at stake (in the same way that I wouldn't sit down at the no limit poker table at the Bellagio!), the relative spread is slightly worse than the mini dow which is 1 dow point normally as opposed to 0.25 points on the S&P and it seems marginally more choppy than either the dow or the russell 2000 and less volatile than the russell. There's probably not much in it but that's my experience so far. I do watch both the Nas100 and the S&P 500 throughout the day as they can act as leading indices and drag the other two with their major trends.
As I mentioned I am new to index futures so perhaps we can get some of the veterans here to comment as the above is only my limited experience.