Strategies

Finding price points for profit, forecasting option breakeven prices and energy market commodities...

Using the electricity spark spread to tap into energy’s numerous opportunities...

The movie “Trading Places” taught many of us much of what we think about trading and orange juice, but do the assumptions hold?...

Discovering profits in live cattle, lean hogs and corn futures spreads...

Profiting from the fundamentals that bind gold and platinum ...

Using logarithmic calculations, we can understand options and the importance of upper and lower break-even...

Forming a trading strategy for copper using displaced moving averages and price shock concept...

Understanding stochastics’ weaknesses to exploit its strengths...

Use these new dynamic strategies to better capture backwardation...

This pair’s colorful relationship make them a ripe target for options on futures trades...

What goes up, must come down; and commodities are at historic highs...

You can use the stock market to exploit one of today’s hottest commodities: uranium. But investing in the wrong companies can bite you big time...

Major breakouts are where trading fortunes are made — and lost. Long-term charts can help you be on the right side of those moves...

A bad economy can hurt. If you know the right option trading strategies, though, you can dull the pain. Here, we see how selling options on gold can help...

Using the rattlesnake breakout method to exploit explosive true breakouts while ignoring false ones....

Steel futures and options may be coming your way — like it or not. Here’s where they fit into the metals market landscape....

There are fundamental reasons markets follow patterns over the course of a season. However, taking advantage of those patterns is not the sure thing history may suggest....

Selling option premiums is easy to understand but difficult to master. As a strategy, it is alluring and can be extremely profitable, but new traders often make these common errors....

Following the big money in the agricultural markets through the Commitment of Traders report (COT) can lead to big profits, but takes inside-the-numbers smarts. ...

Rule of Seven can help you know when to enter and exit a position....

How to use options-based strategies on softs futures markets....

Explaining the tradable relationship between home sales and lumber....

Copper futures and options traded at Nymex and the London Metal Exchange, mimic each other’s price movements, but the time difference presents some opportunities....

We discuss a technique that uses monthly price momentum to identify price shocks by testing it in crude oil....

Here's how to use price shocks as opportunities to position yourself for the next move....

You don’t have to run from the volatile precious metals markets. With this classic options trade, you can profit regardless of which way the market moves, as long as it moves....

It is no question that screen-based electronic trading now dominates the industry. In this new digital world, however, there is still a need for human logic, perspective and instinct. These two can work in tandem. ...

The costs and potential profits from feeding livestock and processing soybeans can be approximated on paper by using price data on cattle, hog and soybean futures. Implied profits and losses on...

Yield curves in U.S. financial markets have long served as an invaluable guide to the bond market’s prevailing assessment of the cost of money, and more important, as an effective predictor of the...

We are currently facing some of the most volatile market conditions that we have ever seen. Uncertainty in the marketplace creates this volatility and makes it difficult for the average trader to...

Measuring the price of oil against gold offers a valuable perspective on the true value of these commodities as it provides a unique alternative to measuring them solely against the currency in which...

If you trade corn, you know the top chart shown in “Light on their feet” quite well. The extent to which prices have moved during this six-month period has been historic in its scope. However, the...

Without a doubt, most investors, if they could, would only employ investment strategies that maximize their profit opportunities, minimize their risk and take little time or effort. Call it human...

Here’s the landscape that commodities are facing today: An energy policy that mandates 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, an agricultural policy that restricts acres and prevents supply from...

We’ve all witnessed the volatility in the commodity markets in 2007. Major moves in markets such as soybeans, crude oil and equities have reminded us that investing can be a thrill ride, no matter...

Gold, the one asset that has been used for hundred’s of years as a means of currency and wealth accumulation, is used today primarily as a hedge. Since peaking in the late 1980s, gold prices steadily...

Focusing on short-term commodity price trends, many investors and other market observers conclude that fundamentals do not affect prices, and that prices are determined primarily by speculative...

This much is obvious: to profitably trade markets, it is necessary to predict the movement of prices. However, price action can be predicted only in terms of probability; nothing is certain. Many...

Systematic traders often use the same trade entry rules across all commodities, with the idea that the same system should work in all markets. Indeed, some systems are sold for a basket of markets...

Traders shouldn’t limit themselves to one way of thinking about the markets. Yes, there is something to be said for focusing on an approach until you have mastered it, but that doesn’t mean you...

Studies that examine the returns of futures-based investments often ignore unique aspects of these markets. Speculative futures positions exist amid many contracts with different expirations and...

There are many daily trend analysis tools, such as the relative strength index (RSI) and moving average convergence-divergence (MACD), that can effectively predict a coming change in price direction...

For example, a client who had been day trading with modest success asked for trading advice, I saw a formation on a 5-minute bar chart that seemed to indicate a very strong close. The timing was...

As commodities continue to overwhelm financial assets, more attention is being paid to the relationship between prices of fuel and metals, specifically oil and gold. Crude oil is rallying on generous...

T-bonds, currencies, metals, ags, financials, interest rates, softs - where to begin? For someone just starting out in futures trading, the hardest task often is deciding what to trade. Here are a...

You often hear or read about the term “rotation” when different market sectors take turns exhibiting relative strength. In a bullish situation, this tends to occur when one major group runs up to a...

One of the downsides of mechanical systems is their tendency to thrive in some market environments and blow up in others. If only you could tell ahead of time when a logical shut-off time was...

Our goal is to develop a standard model to forecast the average fall price of new-crop soybeans. To do so, we will use standard multiple regression analysis to assign weights, or correlation...

Traders trade price and keep score by the bottom line. Account equity is their measure of success. Still, there is much more to be learned from the equity curve. As the well known trader Larry...

Spot gold closed at $850 per ounce in January 1980, and shortly thereafter the market entered a steady decline that lasted nearly two full decades, finally bottoming at $252.80 on July 20, 1999....

In recent years gold has changed from a range-bound, listless market to one of the hottest in the commodity sector. Traditionally, markets such as palladium, the Japanese yen and coffee are...

Yes folks that is a legendary country singer Willie Nelson strumming away at the pumps. The Father of Farm Aid is now trying to get us to use his Biodiesel fuel. Willie is managing to extend his...

If you are involved in commodities brokerage at any level you would have noticed the recent interest in bio-fuels. Indeed, an entire bio-fuel strategy has emerged. For example, the traders on the...

As the concept of selling options continues to grow more popular with retail investors, volatility has become the new buzzword for traders in search of high premiums. Indeed, selling (or writing)...

The partnership of gold and silver has added a few members, the eurodollar quarterly rates and the U.S. dollar index. We’ll analyze the current state of this relationship and how we can exploit it with moving average ratios....