best futures to trade

His cows eat a mixture of hay, which MacDonald grows on his own, and corn, which he has to buy. When corn prices are low, Old MacDonald makes more money, because it costs him less to feed the cows that produce the milk he sells. But when corn prices best futures to trade are high, the profit margins on MacDonald Farm’s milk shrink. It is possible to make a very good full-time income in just hours in the futures markets. There is no need to sit in front of the computer for hours on end looking for opportunity.

What is the best futures trading strategy?

A pullback strategy is a popular approach to trading where we take advantage of temporary price revisions or 'pullbacks' in a bullish market. You must identify an uptrend and wait for the price to retreat from its highs, getting an opportunity to buy the asset in the future at a lower price.

Using the same factors of liquidity, volatility, trendiness, and margins, compile your own data and research. Vary the time-frame, time period, markets, and component weights to arrive at your own conclusion. If not, you should consider trading futures that are active in a different time zone. Futures on the Hong Kong’s HSI and Korea’s KOSPI are great alternatives. It is not entirely indicative of which market is the best for your day trading.

Finding The Best Futures For Day Trading

However, there are some basic things that all platforms have in common. They each work with different types of contracts and allow for various types of orders to be placed. Online brokers have made futures trading more accessible to a broader audience.

best futures to trade

Because of the strength of its desktop platform with its robust backtesting and availability of data, however, we have chosen TradeStation as our best desktop platform for futures. TD Ameritrade’s margin rates and commissions for futures trading are higher than other platforms focusing more on futures trading clients. Mobile thinkorswim is an easy-to-use platform and the company provides excellent educational and instructional content for people to learn how futures can complement portfolios. This isn’t just in terms of the volume discounts that only start after 1,000 contracts. This acts as a risk management tool, ensuring you can handle a 1% to 2% swing in the underlying stock price. It is also another clear signal that IBKR is meant for larger professional traders.

Energy commodities

Live futures trading on NinjaTrader, however, requires a data subscription that, while inexpensive, still represents another cost to the trader. Finally, we like that NinjaTrader offers 24-hour support during the trading week. Another essential tool Interactive Brokers offers is the SpreadTrader, a single-screen command center that helps traders manage their futures positions seamlessly. The platform’s Index Arbitrage Meter is another useful tool that traders can use to analyze index arbitrage strategies. The tool measures the spread between futures contracts and their respective spot prices, making it easier for traders to identify opportunities and execute trades. Funded traders can trade futures contracts from Crude to E-mini S&P 500 and the most popular CME products.

  • Some markets may be open for a limited time while others remain closed.
  • NinjaTrader is a full-featured trading platform for professional traders, with an easy to use interface.
  • This is the total of how much you have to pay in spreads, commissions and other costs for trading 10 futures contracts.
  • In our ranking, we used the simpler method of calculating the average bar range.
  • If you are a beginner who wants to get essential information about futures trading, this is your book of choice.

To this point, I am going to provide a detailed overview of each highly liquid contract. You can use this list as a starting point to determine which contract best meets your trading goals. This high liquidity provides you the investor somewhat of a safety against sharp price movements and market manipulation. To solve our own problem, we created a website that helps investors find, https://www.bigshotrading.info/blog/short-squeeze/ learn and compare the different platforms to save and invest online. Lumber prices soared dramatically in 2020 as the pandemic led to production cuts at sawmills while demand for lumber for building and renovating houses went up. Now there’s a price correction in the lumber market because the growing housing shortage in North America is generating demand for homebuilding.