The Futures Trading Guide is a complete guide of today's open trades for major commodity futures contracts.
The Futures Trading Guide is a hypothetical trading system based on the 9-18 Day Moving Average Crossover strategy which takes a Buy position when the shorter term 9-Day Moving Average closes above the longer term 18-Day Moving Average, and takes a Sell position when the 9-Day closes below the 18-Day. The hypothetical profit is based on the point value of one futures contract from the Last price compared to the settlement price on the start date of the signal.
The 9-18 Day Moving Average Crossover is the featured strategy for futures contracts on Barchart.com. The hypothetical trade entries and exits for the Futures Trading Guide are calculated at end-of-day, based on the settlement price of the contract. The strategy is then updated every 20 minutes throughout the day on this page, using delayed data from the exchanges. Trades are only closed at end-of-day if the signal reverses, using the settlement price for the day.
The Full List tab shows you a breakdown of major commodity contracts across different categories. There are also separate tabs for each category, highlighting additional futures contracts.
Columns on the page include:
- Signal - either a Buy or Sell, based on the common interpretation of the strategy.
- Strength - the signal strength is a long-term measurement of the strength of the signal compared to the strength of the signal over the past 100-trading sessions. The stronger a signal strength, the less volatile the signal. For example, a maximum buy signal is less likely to change than a weak buy signal. Strength can be one of the following readings:
- Maximum
- Strong
- Average
- Soft
- Weak
- Start Date - the date on which the current trade position was entered. Contracts entering a new Buy or Sell signal for the current session have the Start Date bolded on the page for easy reference, and also will show $0.00 as the Current Profit until the strategy is recalculated again using the contract's settlement price at end-of-day.
- Entry Price - the closing (settlement) price of the futures contract on the date the trade was entered. If a new trade was entered today (the Start Date is bolded) the Entry price will show the last price from when the strategy was calculated during the open session. Once "Days in Trade" switches from "0" to "1" the Entry Price will reflect the closing price on the date the trade was entered.
- Current Profit - the profit or loss, based on trading ONE contract since trade entry.
- Trade Details - this link will take you to the symbols' Trading Guide page, which shows the Current Trade Position details along with a chart showing the 9-18 Day Moving Average Crossover. The link also provides supporting Trade Performance History of all trades generated by the Buy/Sell signals.
What's Included
To be included in the Futures Trading Guide page, a contract requires more than 100 active trading days to run the prices through the 9-18 Day Moving Average Crossover.
Flipcharts
The Flipcharts icon at the top of the Futures Trading Guide table allows you to view charts for every symbol included on the page. The Flipchart uses your templates and general Flipchart configuration settings; it is not designed to show the specific trading strategy/indicator for each symbol. Use the "View Details" option on the page instead.
Download
The Download link at the top of the page allows Site Members to download the data table contents to a .csv file. (This does not download the individual trade details for each symbol.)
