Is A Futures/options Trading System Right For You?

  •  Do you have the financial ability to sustain trading losses and meet margin calls? When trading futures contracts on margin, you risk losing much more money than the initial margin amount. If the market moves against you, you may be required to pay additional funds. The use of margin creates potentially large exposures to loss.
    
    •  Can you lose your entire investment and more without a change in your lifestyle?
      
    •  Do the trading results sound too good to be true?
      
    •  Are the advertised trading results based on actual trading or "hypothetical" trading?
      
    •  Has any trader used the system in actual trading? If so, how has the trader fared?
      
    •  Will the system promoter provide you with independent verification of the claimed trading results?
      
    •  What is the total cost of the system?
      
    •  Have you factored into your purchasing decision the impact of commissions and fees that can result from frequent trading?
      
    •  What are the additional costs (data feed, etc)?
      
    •  Not all system promoters are required to be National Futures Association (NFA) members or registered with the CFTC. A call to the NFA (800-621-3570 or 800-676-4NFA) or the CFTC, or a visit to the NFA's website at http://www.nfa.futures.org/basic, can confirm the status of a particular promoter.
      
    •  Have you checked with the NFA whether the system promoter has been disciplined by commodity regulators?
      

From: http://www.cftc.gov/enf/00orders/enfposting4-tradingsystem.htm

I don’t think a futures/options trading is for me considering that I don’t have much capital to invest and much more, to lose. I will just be contented with the fx where we can spend a little and lose a little too.

Options trading can be started with relatively less( $5K or less), but since it’s more gear for longer term time frames( days - months), growing your account can be pretty slow.

I like equity options trading in that it’s low risk vs. buying and selling stocks. There’s lots of great content out there, but check out www.optionplanet.com if you want to get started from scratch!

Thanks, Pipcrawler, the link is a good one for newbies like me and I will visit the site again when I have the time to learn it. I understand it is an online training, with their software that I have to download and learn before the actual class.

Futures options can fix the amount of risk on a trade with a proper strategy. I have an excellent options book I can give you, one of the best I’ve seen in digital or hard copy format. It doesn’t have an author, so I guess can be given away. To post the link here would be against forum rules, but pm me and I’ll send a direct link to the pdf.

Future/option trading is not for the one who invest more capital, it is for the one who planned and manage trade.