Category: Managed Futures Education

When a CTA or Money Manager is testing or back-testing their entry signals, one of the most important aspects they look at is if the technique’s they are using have a distinct “edge” for the time frame they are trading (short-term, swing, long-term, etc.). Positive price movement is when the market goes in the direction […]

I know a lot about grains. In fact, I know much more than the average person about energies, metals, currencies, softs, and financials. I would never try to trade any of them for customers for a simple reason. I know others who have done nothing for most of their careers except focus on each area. […]

Buying (Long) a Put Option:A basic options strategy to be familiar with and learn the advantages and disadvantages of is Buying a Put Option (Long Put). Buying a Put option is the opposite of buying a call option in that a Put gives you the right, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying futures contract at a specific […]

Cash Price – Futures Price = Basis (at a specific point in time) A producer’s decision as to when and how to market their crops or livestock can have as significant an impact on their net bottom line profit as any production decision they may make throughout the year. Farmers today have more marketing alternatives […]

In my previous article, we reviewed the first seven of 13 “mental blocks” to investing an average CTA or investor may butt up against throughout trading or investing. To continue from where we ended off in the previous commentary, we will cover the final six biases and blocks that may affect how a CTA tests […]

A tranquil session today in the soybean market, with soymeal taking a backseat to oil. The nearby soybean spread May 15 vs. July 15 strengthened even with abundant total U.S. supplies in the picture. We have now seen Chinese imports lagging the year-ago pace for the last three consecutive months, with the cumulative seven-month import […]

Average CTA’s, investors, and people generally have an overwhelming desire to be “right.” Who likes to be wrong? You read and hear daily from friends, and fellow traders (spouses – J), how important it is to be correct, especially when they make a market prediction or, even worse when they put real money into a […]

When looking at a managed futures investment, a primary consideration should be whether a CTA’s program is offered as a fund product or a single managed account. When investing in a fund, an investor subscribes to the fund and invests the minimum capital requirement or more. Here, the investor pools their assets with other investors […]

Previously, we went over the first 3 of the 6 key variables to trading; a CTA or Money Manager knows that you may not, and as promised, here are the last 3 Variables. To recap, the first three were Now onto #4, 5, and #6… #4. How often do you have the opportunity to trade? […]

Most professional CTA’s look and think about trading much differently than an average trader or investor would, and the reason for this is not hard to understand. If a CTA is successful, they have dedicated their lives to the craft. Every trader wants to be successful; the subtle difference with a profitable CTA is that […]

The range of market prices gives a non-high-tech measure of historical volatility* throughout a trading interval, usually a day or a week. The range of prices is defined as the difference between the high and the low for that given trading interval. For example, if the current day’s range lies beyond the previous day’s range […]