T
here are two kinds of people in the world, those who like to trade futures and those who have no interest in trading futures. If you’re in the former category, your time would be much better spent in developing markets than in trading markets.
Best Books on Trading Futures: THE LIST
1. A Complete Guide to the Futures Markets |
2. A Trader’s First Book on Commodities |
3. Option Volatility and Pricing Strategies |
4. Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns |
5. Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading |
6. Trading Futures for Dummies |
7. Futures Made Simple |
8. Following the Trend |
9. Futures 101 |
10. Fundamentals of the Futures Market |
11. One Good Trade |
12. Technical Analysis of the Future Markets |
13. Starting Out in Futures Trading |
14. Getting Started in Futures |
15. Candlestick Charting Explained |
16. Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets |
17. Trading Commodities and Financial Futures |
18. Schwager on Futures |
1. A Complete Guide to the Futures Markets | Bu Kacl D/ Scjwager
A Complete Guide to the Futures Market is the comprehensive resource for futures traders and analysts. Spanning everything from technical analysis, trading systems, and fundamental analysis to options, spreads, and practical trading principles, A Complete Guide is required reading for any trader or investor who wants to successfully navigate the futures market.
Clear, concise, and to the point, this fully revised and updated second edition provides a solid foundation in futures market basics, details key analysis and forecasting techniques, explores advanced trading concepts, and illustrates the practical application of these ideas with hundreds of market examples. A Complete Guide to the Futures Market:
- Details different trading and analytical approaches, including chart analysis, technical indicators and trading systems, regression analysis, and fundamental market models.
- Separates misleading market myths from reality.
- Gives step-by-step instruction for developing and testing original trading ideas and systems.
- Illustrates a wide range of option strategies, and explains the trading implications of each.
- Details a wealth of practical trading guidelines and market insights from a recognized trading authority.
Trading futures without a firm grasp of this market’s realities and nuances is a recipe for losing money. A Complete Guide to the Futures Market offers serious traders and investors the tools to keep themselves on the right side of the ledger.
2. A Trader’s First Book on Commodities | By Carley Garner
Earn consistent profits trading commodities, even if you’re a newcomer to the commodities markets! Carley Garner’sA Trader’s First Book on Commodities, Second Edition is today’s most practical and realistic introduction to successful commodities trading. More than any other primer, it recognizes that the most important trading decisions are made long before the first trade is executed. Drawing on years of dealing with retail traders from all walks of life, experience levels, and amounts of risk capital, Garner answers the most pressing questions newcomers ask — and the questions they haven’t realized they need to ask. This extensively updated Second Edition reflects major changes in the market over the past three years, including new trading challenges, platforms, tools, data resources, and risks. Garner presents a hard-eyed look at the collapses of MF Global and PFGBEST, their failure to honor the sanctity of Customer Segregated Funds accounts, the implications for investors, and techniques for mitigating these new risks. She has added new charts and example trades throughout; new coverage of commodity impacts arising from recent events in Europe; important information about new technological improvements and competitive intraday position margin standards; and much more.
3. Option Volatility and Pricing Strategies | By Sheldon Natenberg
What every option trader needs to know. The one book every trader should own.
The best-selling Option Volatility & Pricing has made Sheldon Natenberg a widely recognized authority in the option industry. At firms around the world, the text is often the first book that new professional traders are given to learn the trading strategies and risk management techniques required for success in option markets.
Now, in this revised, updated, and expanded second edition, this thirty-year trading professional presents the most comprehensive guide to advanced trading strategies and techniques now in print. Covering a wide range of topics as diverse and exciting as the market itself, this text enables both new and experienced traders to delve in detail into the many aspects of option markets, including:
- The foundations of option theory
- Dynamic hedging
- Volatility and directional trading strategies
- Risk analysis
- Position management
- Stock index futures and options
- Volatility contracts
Clear, concise, and comprehensive, the second edition of Option Volatility & Pricing is sure to be an important addition to every option trader’s library – as invaluable as Natenberg’s acclaimed seminars at the world’s largest derivatives exchanges and trading firms.
You’ll learn how professional option traders approach the market, including the trading strategies and risk management techniques necessary for success. You’ll gain a fuller understanding of how theoretical pricing models work. And, best of all, you’ll learn how to apply the principles of option evaluation to create strategies that, given a trader’s assessment of market conditions and trends, have the greatest chance of success.
Option trading is both a science and an art. This book shows how to apply both to maximum effect.
4. Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns | By Thomas Bulkowski
When the smart money trades the securities markets, they leave behind financial footprints. Combine enough footprints together and you have a trail to follow. That trail becomes what’s called a chart pattern. Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns, Third Edition expands upon Bulkowski’s immensely popular Second Edition with fully revised and updated material on chart patterns. Whether you’re new to the stock market or an experienced professional trader, use this book as a reference guide to give you an edge.
Within the pages of this book, you’ll learn how to identify chart patterns, supported by easy-to-understand performance statistics describing how well a pattern works, what the failure rate is, and what special quirks suggest better future performance. You’ll discover how often a stop loss order will trigger at various locations within a chart pattern, how the chart pattern’s performance has evolved over the past three decades, and how to profit from failure by trading busted patterns.
This broadened and revised Third Edition offers investors the most comprehensive, up-to-date guide to this popular method of market analysis. Written by a leading expert on chart patterns, Tom Bulkowski, this edition includes revised statistics on 75 chart patterns including 23 new ones, with pictures and performance statistics, packaged within easy-to-read text.
- Gain essential knowledge of chart patterns and how they are used to predict price movements in bull and bear markets
- New tables include how often stops are hit, busted pattern performance, performance over the decades, and special pattern features
- Joining Tour, Identification Guidelines, Focus on Failures, Statistics, Trading Tactics and Sample Trade is Experience. It puts you in the passenger’s seat so you can share lessons learned from Bulkowski’s trades
- This edition reports on statistics from nearly four times the number of samples used in the Second Edition and ten times the number in the First Edition
The Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns, Third Edition further solidifies the reputation of this book as the leading reference on chart patterns, setting it far above the competition.
5. Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading | By Larry R. Williams
From Larry Williams―one of the most popular and respected technical analysts of the past four decades―Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading, Second Edition provides the blueprint necessary for sound and profitable short-term trading in a post-market meltdown economy. In this updated edition of the evergreen trading book, Williams shares his years of experience as a highly successful short-term trader, while highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of what can be a very fruitful yet potentially dangerous endeavor.
- Offers market wisdom on a wide range of topics, including chaos, speculation, volatility breakouts, and profit patterns
- Explains fundamentals such as how the market moves, the three most dominant cycles, when to exit a trade, and how to hold on to winners
- Includes in-depth analysis of the most effective short-term trading strategies, as well as the author’s winning technical indicators
Short-term trading offers tremendous upside. At the same time, the practice is also extremely risky. Minimize your risk and maximize your opportunities for success with Larry Williams’s Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading, Second Edition.
6. Trading Futures for Dummies | By Joe Duarte
Explore single-stock futures, ETFs, and alternative energy futuresProtect your assets and maximize your profits in this risky yet lucrative marketWant to take advantage of the futures market? This plain-English guide gives you the surefire strategies you need to be a successful trader, with up-to-the-minute advice on the various types of futures, conducting research, finding a broker, entering and exiting positions, and minimizing your losses. You also get bearish and bullish strategies and tips for trading online.Discover how to:Understand trends in the global economyUse charting patterns and indicatorsExecute successful tradesSet realistic goalsAvoid common trading pitfallsKeep your downside risk under control.
7. Futures Made Simple | By Kel Butcher
This uncomplicated guide for beginners proves that you don’t have to be a financial wizard to successfully trade futures . . . and you don’t have to hire a financial advisor to tell you what to do either. Instead, Futures Made Simple outlines the basic strategies that even novice investors can use to make money with futures. The book lays just what you need to know―what futures are, how the exchanges work, how to analyse the markets, and how to trade futures either on- or offline.
- An excellent entry-level guide to futures trading
- Written by a successful trader with almost two decades of experience in equities, futures, options, and other vehicles
- Features easy-to-understand examples and bulleted summaries of key points to make learning simple
For investors at any level of experience who want to move into futures trading, Futures Made Simple offers expert advice and fundamental guidance for profitable investing.
8. Following the Trend | By Andreas Clenow
During bull and bear markets, there is a group of hedge funds and professional traders which have been consistently outperforming traditional investment strategies for the past 30 odd years. They have shown remarkable uncorrelated performance and in the great bear market of 2008 they had record gains. These traders are highly secretive about their proprietary trading algorithms and often employ top PhDs in their research teams. Yet, it is possible to replicate their trading performance with relatively simplistic models. These traders are trend following cross asset futures managers, also known as CTAs. Many books are written about them but none explain their strategies in such detail as to enable the reader to emulate their success and create their own trend following trading business, until now.
Following the Trend explains why most hopefuls fail by focusing on the wrong things, such as buy and sell rules, and teaches the truly important parts of trend following. Trading everything from the Nasdaq index and T-bills to currency crosses, platinum and lean hogs, there are large gains to be made regardless of the state of the economy or stock markets. By analysing year by year trend following performance and attribution the reader will be able to build a deep understanding of what it is like to trade futures in large scale and where the real problems and opportunities lay.
Written by experienced hedge fund manager Andreas Clenow, this book provides a comprehensive insight into the strategies behind the booming trend following futures industry from the perspective of a market participant. The strategies behind the success of this industry are explained in great detail, including complete trading rules and instructions for how to replicate the performance of successful hedge funds. You are in for a potentially highly profitable roller coaster ride with this hard and honest look at the positive as well as the negative sides of trend following.
9. Futures 101 | By Richard E. Waldron
Futures 101 explains the basics of the commodity futures market and how ordinary investors trade. Examples using trivia and wit illustrate steps used trading in this financial arena that’s bigger than the stock market. Readers from 50 states and 17 countries have found the unusual writing and explanations helped them understand commodities.
10. Fundamentals of the Futures Market | By Donna Kline
From the basics of open outcry trading to advanced technical indicators, Fundamentals of the Futures Market gives beginning futures traders everything they need to get started. This hands-on workbook walks readers through the entire process to read and understand major reports, track prices, follow the major indicators, and more. In today’s fast-paced futures trading arena, it provides the tools readers need to trade in any commodity market―grains, metals, or financials―and minimize risk as they sharpen their trading skills.
11. One Good Trade | By Mike Bellafiore
A proprietary trading firm consists of a group of professionals who trade the capital of the firm. Their income and livelihood is generated solely from their ability to take profits consistently out of the markets. The world of prop trading is mentally and emotionally challenging, but offers substantial rewards to the select few who can master this craft called trading.
In One Good Trade: Inside the Highly Competitive World of Proprietary Trading, author Mike Bellafiore shares the principles and techniques that have enabled him to navigate the most challenging of markets over the past twelve years. He explains how he has imparted those techniques to an elite desk of traders at the proprietary trading firm he co-founded. In doing so, he lifts the veil on the inner workings of his firm, shedding light on the challenges of prop trading and insight on why traders succeed or fail. An important contribution to trading literature, the book will help all traders by:
- Emphasizing the development of skills that are critical to success, such as the fundamentals of One Good Trade, Reading the Tape, and finding Stocks In Play.
- Outlining the factors that really make the difference between a consistently profitable trader and one who underperforms.
- Sharing entertaining, hysterical, and page turning stories of traders who have excelled or failed and why, many trained by the author, with an essential trading principle wrapped inside.
Becoming a better trader takes discipline, skill development, and statistically profitable trading strategies, and this book will show you how to develop all three.
12. Technical Analysis of the Future Markets | By John J. Murphy
13. Starting Out in Futures Trading | By Mark Powers
One of the best-known futures traders explains how to trade for profit in today’s global futures marketplace.
Look into the bookcase of any successful futures trader, and odds are you’ll find a worn, well-used copy of Mark Powers’s Starting Out In Futures Trading. In this new edition―the best-selling book’s first update since 1993―Powers reflects on the many new forces that are shaping the industry. From new rules and regulations to the emergence of electronic trading and the Internet, Powers’s unquestioned knowledge and experience cover all the key basics in the world of futures trading―and show traders from novice to veteran how to profit in that world.
The perfect starting point for a new trader, and a valuable refresher for anyone, Starting Out In Futures Trading, Sixth Edition, covers:
- How to choose a broker and place an order
- The increased importance of stock indices
- New research, rules, and regulations
14. Getting Started in Futures | By Todd Lofton
How to make money in futures and options. This nontechnical, quick-access guide shows you how to play the futures markets in commodities, foreign currency, and interest rates, and how to handle options. The smaller investor has traditionally shied away from these financial instruments as too complex or dangerous. Author Lofton explains the basic simplicity of the workings of these markets, and how you can use them to advantage. He explains how to understand the prices in the newspaper, and he covers buying and selling “long” and ”short”, what to expect from your broker, commissions, hedging, trading systems, “technical tools”, and basic trading strategies.
15. Candlestick Charting Explained | By Gregory Morris
Inside this book you will discover candlestick charting, one of the most popular tools in technical analysis. Candlestick Charting Explained features updated charts and analysis as well as new material on integrating Western charting analysis with Japanese candlestick analysis, grouping candlesticks into families, detecting and avoiding false signals, and more.
16. Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets | By John C. Hull
An Easily Understandable Introduction to Futures and Options Markets.
Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets covers much of the same material as Hull’s acclaimed title, Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives. However, this text simplifies the language for a less mathematically sophisticated audience. The Ninth Edition of Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets offers a wide audience a sound and easy-to-grasp introduction into financial mathematics.
17. Trading Commodities and Financial Futures | By George Kleinman
Commodities have become an asset class every bit as important as stocks and bonds. As the world adds 80 million new consumers every year, commodities’ profit opportunities have grown larger than ever. If you’re an active trader, you need to be in these markets. But in an era of unprecedented volatility driven by high-frequency computer trading, most commodities traders lose money. George Kleinman will help you become one of the winners.
Kleinman introduces powerful new trend-based techniques for making the trades that are right in your “sweet spot” for profits. You’ll learn exactly how the commodities markets have changed – and how you can use consistent discipline to avoid “shark-infested waters” and manage the market’s most dangerous risks.
Building on more than 30 years of success, Kleinman begins with the basics, explaining how futures and options trading work today, how trading psychology impacts commodity markets, and how to avoid the latest pitfalls. He offers extensively updated coverage of electronic trading, today’s contracts, and advanced trading techniques – including his own exclusive Pivot Indicator approach.
Three previous editions of this book have become international best-sellers; they’ve helped thousands of traders master commodities trading. But the game has changed. Win it the way it’s played right now, with Trading Commodities and Financial Futures, Fourth Edition.
18. Schwager on Futures | By Jack Schwager
The definitive guide to technical analysis . . . written from a trader’s perspective.
With the keen insight and perspective that have made him a market legend, Jack D. Schwager explores, explains, and examines the application of technical analysis in futures trading. In the most in-depth, comprehensive book available, the bestselling investment writer demonstrates why he is one of today’s foremost authorities. Here is the one volume no trader should be without.
“Jack Schwager has accomplished the rarest of feats in this book. He has presented material in a way that both the professional and layman can profit from. It is a must read for traders on all levels.” – Stanley Druckenmillern Managing Director, Soros Fund Management
“Jack Schwager’s Technical Analysis is exactly what one should expect from this expert on futures. The book is comprehensive, thoroughly insightful, and highly educational. I recommend it to the beginner as well as the expert.” – Leo Melamed Chairman, Sakura Dellsher, Inc.
“Jack Schwager possesses a remarkable ability to extract the important elements of complex, market-timing approaches, and distill that into something intelligible and useful. Not only is he able to present these ideas cleverly in an easily understood format, but he also demonstrates their application to the markets with clarity and precision.” – Thomas R. DeMark Author, The New Science of Technical Analysis
“Jack Schwager’s book, A Complete Guide to the Futures Markets, was one of the best books I have read on futures trading. We give a copy of it to all our new analysts. Jack’s latest work, Technical Analysis, looks like a gold mine of information, adding significantly to the existing investment literature.” – Monroe Trout President, Trout Trading Management Co.
Jack Schwager is one of the most important and visible figures in the futures industry today. His Market Wizards and The New Market Wizards are two of the bestselling finance titles of all time. Now, in the latest volume in the Schwager on Futures series, Technical Analysis, Schwager has created the most comprehensive guide ever for using technical analysis for futures trading. What makes Technical Analysis unique, besides its in-depth coverage, is that it is written from a trader’s perspective. Schwager doesn’t merely cover the subject, he explores what works and doesn’t work in the real world of trading.
Contains a comprehensive guide to chart analysis written with a particular focus on trading applications
* Includes a separate 200+ page section illustrating the use of chart analysis in the real world
* Details and illustrates several original trading systems
* Includes a self-contained primer on cyclical analysis
* Describes popular oscillators, the pitfalls in their common use, and guidelines to their successful application in trading
* Explains the concept and use of “continuous futures” and compares 10-year continuous futures charts with conventional nearest futures charts for all major U.S. futures markets
* Contains a section on trading strategy and philosophy, including over 100 trading tips
Hundreds of charts, tables, and examples illustrate key points throughout, while the text is written in the informative, insightful, and nontechnical style that has made Jack Schwager one of the most highly regarded and bestselling investment authors ever. This invaluable book by one of the world’s foremost authorities is destined to become the premier industry guide on technical analysis for many years to come.
Final Thoughts on the Best Books on Trading Futures
Although you can trade futures only on an electronic platform, in many cases, they provide more and different features as compared to stocks and commodities. Futures markets give you additional opportunities such as hedging, and limit your risk. Prefer trading futures for regular retirement. The trading of futures for investing is generally regarded to be less risky than trading stocks.
Happy reading!
Do you see a book that you think should be on the list? Let us know your feedback here.
Meet Maurice, a staff editor at Bigger Investing. He’s an accomplished entrepreneur who owns multiple successful websites and a thriving merch shop. When he’s not busy with work, Maurice indulges in his passion for kayaking, climbing, and his family. As a savvy investor, Maurice loves putting his money to work and seeking out new opportunities. With his expertise and passion for finance, he’s dedicated to helping readers achieve their financial goals through Bigger Investing.