Thursday 1 January 2009

Four Advantages of Futures Spread Trading

Advantage 1: Easy to trade
Do you see how nicely this spread starts trending in mid February? Whether you are a beginner or an experienced trader, whether you use chart formations or indicators, the existence of a trend is obvious. (If you are looking for a concept of how to identify a trend. Spreads tend to trend much more dramatically than outright futures contracts. They trend without the interference and noise caused by computerized trading, scalpers, and market movers.

Advantage 2: Low Margin requirements
Many spreads have reduced margin requirements, which means that you can afford to put on more positions. While the margin on an outright futures position in corn is $540, a spread trade in corn requires only $135 — 25% as much. That’s a great advantage for traders with a small account. With a $10,000 trading account risking 8% of your account, you can enter 6 corn spreads, instead of only 1-2 outright corn futures trade. How’s that for leverage?

Advantage 3: Higher return on margin
Each point in the spread carries the same value ($50) as each point in the outright futures ($50). That means that on a 3 point favorable move in corn futures or a 3 point favorable move in the spread, you would earn $150. However, the difference in return on margin is extraordinary:
Corn futures - $150/$540 = 27.8% return
Corn spread - $150/$135 = 111% return
And keep in mind that you can trade 6 times as many spread contracts as you can outright futures contracts. In our example you would achieve a 24 times higher return on you margin.

Advantage 4: Low time requirements
You don’t have to watch a spread all day long. You do not need real-time data. The most effective way to trade spreads is using end-of-day data. Therefore, spread trading is the best way to trade if you do not want to watch or cannot watch your computer all day long (i.e. because you have a daytime job). And you can save all the money you would have had to spend for real-time data systems (up to $600 per month).

So where is the catch?
If futures spread trading is so fantastic, why does it seems that hardly anybody trades spreads? Well, it is not true that hardly anybody trades spreads: the professional traders do, every day. But either by accident or design, the whole truth of spread trading has been hidden from the public over the years.


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1 comment:

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