Help Yourself Achieve Better Chances!! October 4th 2022 Futures Trading Levels

Supplementing your current strategy with a holistic, measured approach for better trading results (hopefully!)

By John Thorpe, Senior Broker

When I trade I want to be mindful of the leverage I am employing..

Just because the apple is hanging low and enticing you to grab it and take a bite doesn’t mean you do it, even if you are hungry. My most successful trades have been those trades where I avoided that temptation.

What I speak of is the temptation to over lever the account I am trading.

I take this approach because I want to last a long time engaged with this game, this industry, with these omnipresent trading opportunities.

But which ones? All of the markets move; some faster than others.

..  As an office colleague, repeats, “ there are services that are much smarter than I am” and so I use a number of services from which to get my trading ideas.

I like to trade positions where I am in the market over a period of Time. And when I diversify my portfolio to include different contracts in unrelated markets, my chances for success are even greater than if I am solely fishing from the same pond or eating from the same apple tree.

When I trade intra commodity and inter commodity spreads in my portfolio, this gives the account an even greater opportunity for what I call “Net Liquidating Value stability”.

Spreads attempt to take advantage of price relationships between either two different time periods (Intra commodity spread) or different seasonal tendencies between unrelated but similar industry group products (inter commodity spreads, eg, Heating Oil and WTI Crude Oil or Corn and Wheat. Often times the Leverage is much less than the outright margin the exchange charges for a single leg of a spread. For instance: If I believe corn will rally in the next two months I may buy the front month contract and sell the deferred contract fully anticipating the price to go higher , faster on the long leg than the short leg. Because these contracts are of the identical deliverable grade but have different delivery dates ( current vs future) and I am long one and short the other, I can expect, over time, that these will both move in the same direction, either up or down.

As a result , the initial margin deposit is simply 450.00 for the spread vs. 2750.00 for the outright.

Fast price movements = Fast (evaporating ) opportunities and we are mostly, as humans, too slow to capture these potential windfalls, Fast money=Fast losses, I see it over and over again.

It is MY OPINION:   By using a structure , a service and becoming familiar with the service ( trusting, not Blindly) and utilizing no more than 25-40% of your available capital AND diversifying your holdings, you can have long term success trading futures.

I hope you will want to learn more in the future and utilize a few of the services I like to supplement your current strategies. START HERE

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