How to Become a Real-Time Commodity Futures Trader from Home: Living the Ultimate Entrepreneurial Dream

How to Become a Real-Time Commodity Futures Trader from Home introduces the market knowledge, technical tools, and operating practices involved in trading futures from a home-based workstation. Scott A. Krieger moves from contract mechanics and market participants to chart analysis, trade timing, risk management, and trading discipline.

The book combines explanations of futures-market operations with a practical discussion of real-time data, charting software, computer equipment, and broker relationships. It also examines how fundamental information, scheduled economic reports, and intermarket relationships can inform a technically oriented trading process.

Its technical framework covers bar charts, Japanese candlesticks, chart patterns, indicators, trends, and multiple-time-frame confirmation. Keltner channels feature prominently, with appendices devoted to the Keltner Confirmation method, performance summaries, and the integration of systematic signals with discretionary judgment.

Published in 1997, the book documents an earlier generation of home-based electronic futures trading. Its technology, service-provider, and market-access discussions reflect that period, while its broader educational focus centres on preparation, structured analysis, recordkeeping, and treating trading as a business.

✅ What You’ll Learn

• Explain futures contracts, market participants, intermediaries, and exchange operations.
• Understand the roles of real-time data, charting software, and trading equipment.
• Distinguish fundamental, technical, and combined approaches to market analysis.
• Interpret bar charts, candlesticks, chart patterns, and trend indicators.
• Examine Keltner channels and the author’s confirmation-based trading approach.
• Use multiple chart time frames to assess the context of trading signals.
• Evaluate trade timing, order placement, and intermarket relationships.
• Understand the book’s approach to stops, money management, and emotional control.
• Organise trading preparation around broker selection, news releases, and a daily trading log.

💡 Key Benefits

• Connects futures-market fundamentals with the practical organisation of a trading operation.
• Provides a structured progression from introductory concepts to chart-based methods.
• Brings market analysis, execution preparation, and risk considerations into one workflow.
• Uses charts and examples to illustrate the author’s decision process.
• Encourages disciplined study, recordkeeping, and evaluation of trading performance.

👤 Who This Book Is For

• Beginner futures traders building an understanding of contracts, market operations, and trading preparation.
• Intermediate technical traders examining channel-based analysis and multiple-time-frame confirmation.
• Independent traders developing routines for research, execution, and recordkeeping.
• Readers interested in trading history studying the development of home-based electronic futures trading.

📚 Table of Contents

• 1. A Brief History of Futures Trading
• 2. The Mechanics of Futures Trading
• 3. Your Computer Connection to the Trading World
• 4. Trading Perspectives
• 5. Market Dynamics
• 6. Technical Tools of the Trade(r)
• 7. Timing Is Everything
• 8. The Markets
• 9. The Business of Futures Trading
• 10. Your Commission House (FCM)
• 11. All the News That’s Fit to Transmit
• 12. Special Trading—Unique, Fascinating, Fun!

How to Become a Real-Time Commodity Futures Trader from Home: Living the Ultimate Entrepreneurial Dream By Scott A. Krieger