Let's
Trade Futures?is a commodity futures paper trading simulator and
a basic price charting package designed especially for new traders.
The novice can paper trade (click-through each trading session,
no waiting a whole day) commodities by using technical analysis,
with the built-in indicators, to make paper trading decisions. The
software, presenting a simulation of an electronic broker, is intended
as a training aid for the beginner. It can be bought as a complete
package containing the program which paper trades and allows technical
analysis, an introduction to trading, and over 800 simulated commodity
contracts--no downloading necessary.
Description: The
world of trading commodity futures can be both exhilarating and
depressing. Trading can bring you riches and can drive you to financial
disaster. Interested but don't know a thing about commodities? Well
commodities are all of those items bought and sold as foods and
manufacturing items like corn and hogs and oil. In addition, there
are non-physical issues like the S&P 500 but we won't talk about
them here.
To trade, you enter into a contract to either accept or make
delivery of a particular commodity at some time in the future
(thus a commodity futures contract.) Where the excitement comes
in, is that you need deposit only a fraction of the worth of the
contract, called margin, to make the commitment--$800 might be
required for a 5,000 bushel corn contract which could be worth
$15,000. As a point on information, the mast majority of contracts
are liquidated before delivery--traders are generally not in the
business dealing with the delivery of 40,000 pounds of live hogs.
With only $800 invested, you could profit or lose quickly as
the worth of the contract changes on the market. A 5,000 bushel
contract will grow or decrease in value by $50 for each 1?change
in the price of a bushel of corn. That change, in the worth of
the contract, is added or subtracted from your trading account
at the end of each day--a 10?bushel change would add or debit
your account by $500. While this is going on, you are required
to keep your account above a minimum balance for each contract
to which you have committed--maintenance margin. If it drops below
this level, you will receive a call (the dreaded margin-call)
to deposit more funds or your contract will be liquidated.
Needless to say, you should do some practicing before betting
with your hard earned money. This software can provide an easy-to-use
tool in testing your trading techniques and to provide some useful
trading information.
After starting Let's Trade Futures and loading a commodity contract,
the following screen is presented:
(The colored lines are indicators which you add
to the plot.)
As you can see, the screen display a price char, commodity price
information and the status of your simulated account. The system
simulates an electronic broker. You can:
- Place order to buy or sell contracts.
- Stops can be entered to attempt to protect against excessive
losses or to lock in gains.
- A simple click advances the system to the next trading session
and you can observe the results.
- Indicators can be added to the display.
This is a complete system. The trading simulator includes over
800 simulated commodity contracts. You won't need to download
any prices, just start your simulated trading--a sample trading
session is included with the simulator. We've also made Let's
Trade Futures - Documentation available. This file requires Adobe's
free Acrobat Reader to open and includes a 160+ page section introducing
commodity trading.
The system also includes a basic price charting package, featuring:
- Horizontal line drawing to bound trading channels and to
depict regions of support and resistance.
- Vertical line drawing to mark events such as buys and sells.
- Trendline drawing to show changing resistance and support
boundaries.
- Bollinger Bands.
- Price Momentum.
- Price Oscillator.
- Zooming Capabilities.
- Daily, Weekly or Monthly time compression.
- The system automatically reloads any indicators (Trendlines,
etc.) which you have drawn.
- A multitude of simulated commodity price files ready for
your simulated trading.
- You can add your own price files.
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