Are you following these forty commodity trading guidelines? Follow them all and you have a better chance of becoming a consistently profitable commodity futures and options trader. Design your trading plan around these rules. Don't underestimate their value for your success.


We All View The Market Through Fuzzy Glasses

34) Be fully willing to change your mind. A flexible mind is a sign that your ego is under control. Stay in the now moment and let the market unfold as it may. You should be simply watching for clues to make a decision. The commodity futures contract market doesn't "have to" do anything. Remember that everyone views the world through their very own fuzzy, distorted and colored glasses. There is a tremendous amount of information we miss.
It's like trying to watch a live football game through a soda straw. We see just a tiny bit of what's really happening. However, we think we are seeing the whole picture - that's where we run into trouble. The good news is your competition is in the same boat. We need to be flexible and change our minds when we must. Our input of the world is too small, biased and inaccurate to be correct most of the time.


Know Your Trading Time Frame and Eliminate the Useless Noise

35) Pay attention to the time frame that is larger than the one you are trading. If you are trading five-minute bars, be aware of the 30 or 60-minute chart. If you are trading daily bars, then watch what the weekly futures chart has done. We are looking for clues. The balancing act is to take in just enough information that is important, but not too much.

Many futures and options traders have their charts loaded with too many things; redundant moving averages, momentum indicators, multi time frames, etc. These indicators are fine as long as they each add important information and you can digest them. In reality, all you really need is a few price bar chart time frames and a few personally developed indicators you trust to convey information that you cannot see otherwise. The brain receives information in a serial manner, meaning we take in data in a single, narrow stream, one idea at a time.

We should make our futures contract trading information unique and different, not redundant. Information overload is a big problem. Everyone goes though it. There should come a time when every good commodity trader cleans house and removes the useless accumulated junk on his charts. Keep your charts Spartan lean with as few competing indicators as possible.

Each one should sing for its supper and pull its own weight. Each one needs to tell you a story that cannot be seen in the price bars alone. That's what the computer is for. To have a 10-day, 20-day, 40-day, 100-day and 200-day moving price average is pure noise. There's much better stuff to put up there. I'm sure you get the picture.


Watch Out For Market "Scenarios"

36) Be careful when hanging your hat purely on fundamental commodity futures information. These are news events, supply and demand figures, etc. I've seen the biggest losses taken as a result of traders getting fixated on news. Their trading gets sloppy and a long haul stock investor mentality begins. What started out as a disciplined short term trade turns into a long haul trade, once the loss begins.

Recently, gold has been in a bull market. Traders were lining up and pyramiding as prices went higher from news of big India and China buying. Many commodity traders did quite well for a while as gold quickly moved from $500 to $750 an ounce. But then the correction came. Many were prepared for a nerve racking $30-50 slam. The gold gurus were warning of it. It corrected as expected and many bought more gold and talked about the same bullish news. Buy alas, the gold market continued down into the low $600 area. This was a devastating correction for many. In reality, this was just a normal correction when compared to many other commodity futures or stock markets.

For example, stocks often run up to 75 and correct to 62 (same percentage) as well as pork bellies, and other commodities. But because many of these traders were fixated on the news and then pyramided, they got caught badly. I heard stories of $100,000 accounts going to less than $10,000 even after the first $50 gold correction. Most were wiped out way before the full $200+ correction. Being vulnerable and inflexible is a dangerous game. Don't swing on just one branch of a tree.


Part Seven of Seven, Coming Next!

There is substantial risk of loss trading futures and options and may not be suitable for all types of investors. Only risk capital should be used.