The US economy is going through some tough times, but there are some bright spots that should encourage you to look to the future. The government hopes to encourage women to go to college through Obama scholarships for moms. All types of mothers now have the chance to get a quality education that will undoubtedly benefit their families and future employers. Federal aid called Pell Grants make Obama scholarships possible. To encourage...more
There's a group of agricultural commodity products that trade on the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), known collectively as the softs, although some of the products are hard.Most of them are food related, though a few are not, but all are grown. Plus, many of them are grown in the developing world where statistics are not as available and accurate as those released by the United States Department of Agriculture.They are: orange juice, cocoa,...more
One thing good about trading commodity futures contracts on margin is that you're not borrowing the money from your brokerage, as you are when you buy stocks on margins. Therefore, you don't have to pay any interest.When you buy stocks on margin, actual ownership of these assets is transferred from the name of the old owner into your name. The old owner wants the entire amount of money due to them right away. If it doesn't come from you, it has to come out of somebody's pocket, and that somebody is your broker.Naturally, your broker wants to check out your credit record before loaning you this money, because you then become a risk to them, even though they're being compensated by the interest you must pay on this loan.The placement of stop orders is an important skill whether you're doing it to protect your position from a big loss, locking in a profit or entering a trade. That's because many experienced floor traders try to run the stops, or pull the stops.That is, they let the market reach a point where the stop orders are activated, getting other traders out of the market, and then they benefit from the activity. Some traders advise not placing stop orders at round numbered...more
One of the most popular trading vehicles is now the Interbank foreign exchange market, but which is unregulated. You can also speculate on price moves in conjunction with the US dollar for the euro, yen, Swiss franc, British pound, Canadian dollar and Australian by buying and selling futures contracts for these currencies on the CME via the...more
Many day traders like to work with NASDAQ stocks, because they tend to be more high tech, sexy and popular. Although the big bubble of the 1990s burst, they are still highly volatile.The regular NASDAQ 100 contract is $100 X the index value. It's quoted in dollars. One tick is $25 per .25 points.The e-mini NASDAQ 100 contract is one-fifth the...more
One type of now little used order to commodity futures brokers is called Immediate Or Cancel (IOC). This is much like a Fill OR Kill (FOK).The order is sent to the floor broker. If they can fill it, fine. If not, it's cancelled.The difference is that with a FOK order, the trader will not accept partial fills. They want either the entire order, or nothing.With an Immediate Or Cancel order, the trader is willing to accept partial fills. So if they wish to buy ten December corn contracts but the floor broker can get them only five, they'll take the five.Both KOC and IOC orders are good for day traders who want to get in fast so they can get out fast, to take of very short term opportunities.With an IOC order, the trader can take at least part of the position they wish, if not all of it.There's also Market On Open (MOO) orders. This is where an order is entered before the market opens, and the floor broker is to fill it within the first three minutes of the market being open.These orders used to be more common before electronic trading kept orders open 24 hours a day. A trader could study the markets during the evening or weekend, determine their trades and then get their orders in to...more
Four different grains are traded on the futures exchanges of the United States (I'm pretty sure that some foreign exchanges offer rice futures): corn, wheat, soybeans and oats.All four have the same contract size of 5,000 bushels. The penny price of...more
One bond is the same as another bond with the same characteristics, so interest rates products also are fungible, and therefore have futures contracts based on them.Most of them are based on United States government bond issues, but there's also a...more
The Chicago Board of Trade offers futures contracts on 30-year T-bonds, 10-year T-notes and 5-year T-notes. Each contract represents $100,000 worth of underlying securities.However, remember that such bonds are worth more or less depending upon their...more
After the long bond contract, you can trade contracts for T-notes in the 10-year, 5-year and 2-year category.The 10-year and 5-year notes are very similar to the long bonds. The contracts are for $100,000 and quoted in fractions of par value. One...more
The margin on a eurodollars contract is just around $1,000. Because the contract size is $1,000,000, this represents 1/1,000, or a tenth of one percent. This is amazingly small. Eurodollar contracts expires in March, June, September and December....more
The commodity futures exchange allow people to take positions in their contracts with a much smaller amount of money than stock buyers are allowed. This trading without putting up 100% of the money is called going on margin.The most a stock buyer can...more