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 […]
Crude bulls posted a new yearly high on Friday as WTI rocketed higher in the previous two sessions after Wednesday’s more bullish-than-expected DOE inventory release. More bullish?? Or less bearish might be more like it. Since making multi-year lows on March 18, WTI crude has seen a healthy 42% rebound. Likewise, Brent crude has rallied […]
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? […]
The myriad of bad economic news throughout the first quarter was punctuated today by the Commerce Department report that reported U.S. gross domestic product barely grew, only rising at a 0.2 percent annualized pace in the first three months of 2015. As usual, Federal Reserve officials sounded upbeat in their statement today, and as expected, there was […]
At 10:06 EST Tuesday, news broke from Dubai-based Al Arabiya that the Iranians had sieged a US cargo vessel in the Gulf. Brent and WTI spiked within minutes as the algos went wild. However, both markets failed to breach yesterday’s high. Within an hour, the market erased these gains as it turned out this was […]
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 […]
Success in trading is measured in terms of the growth of the account balance. A CTA is not expected to play God and call every twist and turn in the market correctly. Some professional and proven CTA systems are only correct 25-30% of the time and still consistently pull huge profits out of the markets. […]
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 techniques they are using have a distinct “edge” for the time frame they are trading (short-term, swing, long-term, etc.). Understanding MAE and MFE Positive price movement is when the market […]