Futures & Options For Dummies will show you how trading is done and how to survive and succeed in these ever-changing markets. Filled with nuts-and-bolts advice, you’ll soon discover how to manage the risks involved and reap the rewards of futures and options trading.
Introduction:
Futures markets are resurging and are likely to be hot for several decades, given the political landscape. Changing world demographics and the emergence of China and India as economic powers and consumers, coupled with changing politics in the Middle East, are likely to fuel the continued prominence of these markets. I take you inside these markets and give you tools that you can use for:
- Analyzing, trading, or just gaining a better understanding of how money works and affects your daily life.
- Starting fresh in your views of how the markets work. A traditional buy and hold mindset is a recipe for trouble in futures and options trading, while profit taking or hedging a position before the weekend is normal operating procedure.
- Discovering that time is on your side in the stock and bond markets, but it’s your enemy in futures and options. You’ve got to be on top of how much time you have left before your trading position expires worth-less or when you have a load of something delivered with a bill for a large sum of money.
- Reading a sentence just the way it’s written. No tricks, hidden clues, political agendas, or attempts to make you look foolish. If you don’t get it, I didn’t do a good job of writing it.
- Remembering that measuring the return of your money is more important than measuring the return on your money.
I’ve organized Futures & Options For Dummies into six parts. Parts I and II introduce you to the futures markets and market analysis — technical and fundamental. Parts III through V take you into the nuts and bolts, the exchanges, the contracts, trading strategies, and indicators. Part VI is the now famous For Dummies Part of Tens, in which you can discover a little about a lot of different futures and options information.
- Part I: Understanding the Financial Markets: Sure, this sounds like a lot to swallow, but if you don’t understand how the pieces fit together, you won’t get the finer points that can make you a better trader.
- Part II: Analyzing the Markets: This part is where you get your basic training. It’s all about fundamental and technical analyses, and it gives you details about supply and demand, how to use economic reports, and how to take advantage of seasonal and chart patterns and market sentiment.
- Part III: Financial Futures: Most stock investors think the stock market is the center of the universe. After you read this part, you’ll see things differently, because I look at the role of the bond market, and how it’s really the tail that wags the dog.
- Part IV: Commodity Futures: Yeah baby! We finally get to pork bellies, soybeans, and wheat. But more important, this part is about trading oil, natural gas, steel, copper, gold, you name it — all of which are affected by strange things like weather, pollution, and electricity, thrown in for good measure.
- Part V: The Trading Plan: This part is a big case of the nuts and bolts of trading. Relax, it isn’t catching, but it is likely to get you a bit more organized. Who can’t use a little discipline, eh? This part details how you can set up, organize, execute, and operate a trading business, starting with the trading calendar and working your way all the way to deciding what your best markets and surefire strategies are and how to mix and match approaches while trading and hedging.
- Part VI: The Part of Tens: Here I give you lists of rules and resources that can help you make money and keep you from losing big chunks of it whenever the markets turn on you.
Contents:
- The Ins and Outs of Trading Futures and Options
- Where Money Comes From
- The Futures Markets
- Understanding the Not-So-H
- air-Raising Truth about Options
- Yeah Baby! Basic Stock Option Strategies
- Understanding the Fundamentals of the Economy
- Getting Technical Without Getting Tense
- Speculating Strategies That Use Advanced Technical Analysis
- Trading with Feeling Now!
- Wagging the Dog: Interest-Rate Futures
- Rocking and Rolling: Speculating with Currencies
- Stocking Up on Indexes
- Getting Slick and Slimy: Understanding Energy Futures
- Getting Metallic without Getting Heavy
- Getting to the Meat of the Markets: Livestock and More
- The Bumpy Truth about Agricultural Markets
- Trading with a Plan Today So You Can Do It Again Tomorrow
- Looking for Balance Between the Sheets
- Developing Strategies Now to Avoid Pain Later
- Executing Successful Trades
- Ten Killer Rules to Keep You Sane and Solvent
- More Than Ten Additional Resources
Futures and Options For Dummies By Joe Duarte pdf