Training programs on futures trading

can someone please suggest any training programs on index futures trading, preferably in distance learning mode

What are you looking for?

e.g. What is a future? How do I place an order? What are the risks etc?

Or are you looking for trading strategies and techniques?

I would suggest the book The Futures Game as a starting point.

go sit in al brooks room he will teach you how trade the es e-minis. his website is brookspriceaction.com

Your question begs the question, "What do you know about futures trading?" What are you willing to give into this serious endeavor that is trading, whether you choose intra-day or inter-day positions.

Ken Shaleen, Chartwatch, Inc., has written White pages for the CBOT (and other exchanges around the world, taught trading courses at universities, brokerage firms and offers a course that'll prepare you to pass the Series 3 exam in three days. I took the course and passed the Series 3 exam with no further studying. His daughter has written White Papers for exchanges as well, including the CME and the CBOT. Mr. Shaleen has a Technical Analysis Characteristic Reliability Index with 30+ years of data to support this, his statement, "Equity index futures are one of the worst performing markets when applying technical analysis, and tend not to produce tradeable probabilities, e.g., the triangles." You can get a quick overview of the candlestick patterns (tradeable probabilities are vague) at www.candlesticker.com. Fair value, sell and buy threshold and program levels can be found at www.indexarb.com.
And one of my favorite sites, besides my own, is this fine web site, WWW.MYPIVOTS.COM

Books: Ken Shaleen offers his. I like Mr. Shaleen's ethics. The CMEGroup asked Mr. Shaleen to write a White Paper about the equity index futures and technical analysis. He told them (and provided the Technical Analysis Characteristic Reliability Index data) that "they will not like the results because ... "Equity index futures are one of the worst performing markets when applying technical analysis, and tend not to produce tradeable probabilities, e.g., the triangles."

The Disciplined Trader by Mark Douglas, MD will provide you with an understanding of the mental map you don't have and will need to heal your trading account and your trading perspective (perform your own frontal lobotomy) after you've had a string of losses (and you will).

Always trade price, not price following moving averages, not oscillators, not histograms, etc.,... all of this will be explained in the book by Mark Douglas, MD, The Disciplined Trader.

Good luck. Luck is prior planning.

I agree with Hunter's suggestion about The Disciplined Trader and if you can read two books read that and his subsequent book Trading in the Zone. If you were to select only one of his two books I would suggest the second, Trading in the Zone.

I thought I would offer a comment on this subject

I talked with Ken Shaleen some years ago about this subject (trading index futures)...I do understood his comment and as a result I found a way to customize my analysis so that it conforms to the idiosyncracies of those markets. My method combines several elements together (I use the confluence of several basic methods) and one approach that I was taught by my employer called "time based pivots"...It seems to work quite well. As with most approaches, the success is in part due to the fact that it is not well known. Recently I have started to teach the method to students in a small class (limited to 20 students)..We are in our 2nd month and I think the class is going well. The basis for time based pivots is simple, you make note of the open, high and close for the year, quarter, month, week and day. As each time period comes to a close there seems to be a tendency for participants to defend (this is particularly the case with the open)....If there is interest I can talk more about the method...
Best Regards
Steve

Originally posted by steve46

I thought I would offer a comment on this subject

I talked with Ken Shaleen some years ago about this subject (trading index futures)...I do understood his comment and as a result I found a way to customize my analysis so that it conforms to the idiosyncracies of those markets. My method combines several elements together (I use the confluence of several basic methods) and one approach that I was taught by my employer called "time based pivots"...It seems to work quite well. As with most approaches, the success is in part due to the fact that it is not well known. Recently I have started to teach the method to students in a small class (limited to 20 students)..We are in our 2nd month and I think the class is going well. The basis for time based pivots is simple, you make note of the open, high and close for the year, quarter, month, week and day. As each time period comes to a close there seems to be a tendency for participants to defend (this is particularly the case with the open)....If there is interest I can talk more about the method...
Best Regards
Steve

I would love to hear you flesh this out a bit. Sounds very interesting.

Time-based Pivots are oriented to the prime reporting periods. They include the open, high and low of

1. The year
2. The quarter
3. The month
4. The week
5. The day

So what happens is that institutional players use these numbers as "targets"...As each time period draws to a close, they are motivated to move the market (if they can) so that they can obtain bonus money at the end of the year.

I use these numbers on a daily basis (the previous day's numbers were important today). As I post this, on a friday, the previous week's numbers were also important (O =1261.75/H =1293.75/L =1261.25

The system I am using to trade the ES contract integrates time-based pivots, supply/demand analysis, and the concept of value (taken from Market Profile). The short version is that I mark my charts to show areas where price will tend to reverse or to show continuation. For reversal I require "confluence" meaning I am willing to do business at areas where two or more of these elements coincide.

The final piece in the puzzle is tape reading..I have learned to read the time & sales strip and I use it confirm my entry and manage risk on the exit.

I was taught by a bond and currency trader and although it is a straightforward process, like most good things in life it requires discipline and patience.

As an aside if you look at today's ES chart you will notice that we closed on the low at 1261.25 (the low of the previous week) It will be interesting to see what happens on Sunday when the Globex opens.
Will they take it up and defend that low price or continue to mark it down on concerns over both US and European Debt Problems.

Best Regards
Steve

Interesting Steve. I have a few questions if you don't mind.

1) Do you distinquish between day session or all session when picking out all your key levels ? Using overnight data will change all the data points.

2) How do you handle rollover in respect to all the levels ? Do u like continuous data ? Lets pretend we just rolled over to the September contract in the ES. What highs and lows and opens do you use ? The June levels or the September levels? Once again all the levels will be different.

3) How do we qualify a time period " drawing to a close" ? When would these institutional traders begin to look at the weekly low or high ? On Wednesday , thursdays ? Would they focus on the current lows and highs for the developing week or foucs still on the previous completed week ?
When would they look at the monthly "targets" ? Third week of the month ?? Would they ALWAYS then look at the previous completed month or the current developing month highs, lows and open?

You can tell from my questions that we can have loads of data points depending on all session data, previous expired contracts and current developing ranges or previously completed ranges. I'd like you to drill down for us and tell us what they would actually use.

Thanks.

Bruce

R u the same steve on Traders Laboratory ? Welcome aboard here !

Alright Bruce I will go down that road a bit more

First, I use RTH only not 24 hour data

Second, I use continuous contracts on Esignal. There are still however some dislocations that occur because of the change. Those problems exist no matter which solution you try. They disappear of their own after a few days.

As for your last question, its pretty much common sense. For the weekly time period, one would start to see active interest at any time however if we are in the vicinity on Thursday or Friday late in the RTH session, and price revisited that level, institutions would then be motivated to come in and try to move the market. The same is true of every time period. You simply extend the time frame as you move out in time. For example if we are talking about the monthly, then one might see interest in moving a market along about the last week. If we are talking about the quarter then you might see institutional interest along about the last 2-3 weeks before that time period expires. Same idea for the yearly period, depending of course on how near (or far) we are from the open of each period
This is not earthshaking information, if you follow options expiration the same effect occurs as we draw near to that date.

Thanks for your questions.

Steve

Sorry I did not address the last part of your question

Yes I am Steve46 from Traderslaboratory. However I do not plan to post there much longer...unfortunately I seem to be attracting trolls and by that I mean that there are folks who have tried to get me to provide very specific details about my method, and when I demurred have spent their time stalking me....frankly I am a little tired of it

I am teaching a very small group of folks how to do this...I cannot do this for a large group because (in my opinion) to really show someone how to trade in a professional manner requires personal attention. I don't see how it can be done on a large scale like some of these vendors do it (with hundreds of people trying to piggyback someone's buy or sell signals)...to me this isn't training so much as simply trying to generate some money and for me thats not what I am about....I have had to refuse a few folks (mostly because they simply didn't have the pre-requisites or weren't acting like adults on the site...and predictably folks get upset. Interestingly some have complained that I wouldn't "prove" my method by trading in front of them.....I went so far as to invite the owners of the site to sit in on my class, but apparently thats not enough....So I am going to stop and trade on my own (with my class) for the next 2 years (my curriculum takes about 2 years to complete). At that point I am going to be asking my students to stop and trade on their own....the class is fairly new (we started a little over a month ago), so I am still getting used to working with people looking over my shoulder.....I hope this helps you understand where I am coming from...By the way, no solicitation here, I am happy with my class just the way it is...
Good luck in the markets
Steve

Originally posted by destiny

For traders who are not familiar with Mark Fisher. In his forward to mark Fisher book, Paul Tudor Jones wrote quite a tribute to mark Fisher. Like " There was no one better and there never will be anyone as good as Mark Fisher when it comes to smelling an order that a pit broker has in his hand".

mark Fisher was the youngest silver pit trader, graduated with honors from Wharton MBA program and runs a very successful prop firm.

To top all this, his system is the best for day trading VOLATILE instruments. AS MF said in his book, of all the traders he taught his trading system, more than half slept through the class, rest did not have patience and discipline and thus only 5% or so became really Successful. Nothing surprising here, it's like this in most professional endeavors. Emphasis being really successful.

thanks for the suggest