Commodity Futures Trading

Commodity trading involves the exchange of primary products. It can be the buying and selling of future contracts in Gold, Silver, Oil, Gas, Platinum, Copper, Zinc, Cotton, Wheat, Corn and many more physical products. These row commodities are bought and sold in standardized contracts. The products are uniform; one of its quantity or fraction serves the same purpose as any other. Considering the following cases - a barrel of oil, an ounce of gold, and a bushel of wheat - one is pretty much like another. The most extensively traded and most liquid commodities are Oil and Gold.

There are some differences also. This difference is owing to shipping costs, differences in composition, etc. For example, some oil does sell for a diverse price than that from another source. Commodities are usually traded in the form of futures. It can be also traded on spot markets, where the trading is happened immediately in exchange for cash or some other good.

Commodity futures trading, also known as commodity options trading, creates a contract to sell or buy the goods for a fixed price by a certain date in the future. This contract period is the major reason of the huge potential for profit and loss. Future trading also involves all the exciting aspects of trading, as it intrinsically occupies predictions of the future and consequently uncertainty and risk.

The commodity futures trading puts some obligations on the buyers and sellers. The buyer is responsible for taking delivery and paying for the cash commodity during a fixed time period. The seller is responsible for delivering the commodity, for which he/she will be paid the price that was decided in the exchange pit by the dealers.

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How Does Commodity Futures Day Trading Work?

What is commodity futures day-trading? Day-trading strategies are unique mechanical methods for entering a liquid commodity market early in the trading day and exiting some time later in the same day for a profit. Keith Fitschen has developed a family of day-trading strategies for the commodity markets that use the same basic market principle to gain systematic profits. The basic methodology uses multiple timeframe analysis to determine the likely trend for each market early in the trading day. When the likely trend is determined, entry is made in the direction of the trend. Trade exit is made in one of three ways: a stop loss point is hit (and the trade is a loss), a profit target point is hit (and the trade is a windfall profit), or the exit is made at the end of the trading day, usually for a profit.

Keith Fitschen's commodity futures day-trading methods are used in the most liquid commodities in each group: for the grains, wheat and soybeans can be traded; for the softs, coffee can be traded; for the currencies, the yen and euro-currency can be traded; for the metals, copper, gold, and silver can be traded; for the energies, crude oil, heating oil, and reformulated gas can be traded; for the financials, 10-year notes can be traded;, and for the stock indices, the S&P 500, the Russell 2000, and the German DAX can be traded.

Traditionally, the problem with futures day-trading strategies has been transaction costs: slippage and commission. These costs severely ate into the profit that could be made on a day-trade. But with the advent of deep discount brokers, and electronic trading, commission for a trade can be less than $10, and slippage for a trade can be as low as one or two ticks. This evolution has caused a number of successful trading system designers to promote day-trading strategies. Keith Fitschen's strategies are unique because they use the same market approach across all the groups, and because the strategy "works" on all the liquid commodities. This type of day-trading leads to an average profit-per-trade of about $150 across all the commodities, and a winning percentage of about 55 percent.

Normally, successful day-trading strategies have been sold to the public for $3,000, or more. This high bar to entry reduces the funds available for trading for a typical trader. Keith Fitschen's day-trading strategies are offered for a monthly lease fee. This allows a trader to avoid the large upfront expense and spread it over a long period of time, while retaining the right to stop at any time. This means of gaining access to the trading signals is certainly an advantage over the traditional approach.

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Understanding the Fundamentals of Commodity Futures Trading

If we carefully look at the present business scenario then we could easily see that in recent time futures trading are gaining its world-wide popularity. In fact it is the most common trading found on many markets these days. As per the latest definitions- it is more like a trading of contracts called futures contracts, which facilitates the owner with power to trade the basic commodity at somewhere in the future for a fixed rate. Moreover, like stocks and options trading, futures trades are done in precise centralized futures commodity trading markets. However, depending upon the type of futures contracts, it can be broadly classified as commodity futures contracts and financial futures contracts.

In commodity futures contracts, trading of contracts end with a physical delivery. They may include agricultural commodity futures like sugar, oats, wheat, rice etc OR energy commodity futures such as crude oil, natural gas, etc; metals & stones like gold, silver, diamond etc. This means that if a trader is holding a futures contract and the time come when it expires, the appropriate payment will be made by the buyer, and the basic commodity (agricultural or energy) will be delivered by the seller. Whereas in financial futures contracts, trading of contracts end with a cash settlement and it include futures for treasury notes, bonds, mutual funds etc.

The futures contract trading can be executed electronically on electronic trading platforms linked to the major commodity exchanges or by the traditional open outcry method on the floor of the exchange. However, the basic form of futures contract is that it must state a location and date for physical delivery of the particular commodity. There are times when delivery arrangements are also specified by the exchange. This is particularly important for commodities that require high transportation costs, which in turn may affect the delivery place.

All those who are involved in commodity future trading must understand that for most commodity futures contracts, daily price movement limits are specified by the exchange. A limit movement is nothing but a move of price that can shift in either direction equal to the daily price limit. If the price moves down by an amount equal to the daily price limit, the contract is said to be limit down. And if the price moves up by the limit then it is said to be limit up. Price limits and positions limits generally aim to avoid large price movements deriving from excessive speculation. However, at times they act as an artificial barrier to trading when the price of the underlying commodity increases or decreases swiftly. 

Overall, trading with commodity futures is definitely a good way to make handsome money but there are some essential factors that one has to take care. It is highly volatile in nature and more likely to remain unpredictable mainly because of several factors like geopolitical concerns, contracted demand-supply fundamentals, growth and inflation pressures that put pressure on the global commodity market. It is a most interesting market environment but also a dangerous one as many wars have been fought and many nations & leading companies compete for scarce natural resources and food supplies.

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