Futures Trader AMA-again

I'm a futures trader in Chicago, I do fundamental/technical analysis for crude. (Two years)

I did an AMA here a few days ago, feel free to ask me anything.

Other urls found in this thread:

ideabuds.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Thomas-Bulkowski-Encyclopedia-Of-Chart-Patterns-2nd-Edition-1034-pages.pdf
mrao.cam.ac.uk/~mph/Technical_Analysis.pdf
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

how much is the pay?
what did you study to get such a job?
is it easy or hard work?
where do you see yourself in 20 years?

Have you ever dabbled in options? What’s your opinion on online exchanges like NADEX and E*trade? Also what is your job like?

Pay is mostly based on how much money one makes at this point. The longer you're at a firm the more as a % they give you and the more money they let you use.

I studied Econ/Math

Hard work first, but once you get to know an asset it's easier. The hardest part is maintaining a lifestyle that lets you keep a level head... Can't be hungover, overcaffeinated, on a period (for girls). ETC

20 years I hope to be retired, but I think everyone in this generation would like to think that way.

Yes, I know how to trade options. It's good to know when you have a crazy idea, but think it will work anyway, less risk. Futures can be incredibly risky, but better for taxes and other things in the short term.

How much is a “tick” in futures? Like one tick upward is 25 dollars and vice versa?

Can I still be a cool futures trader if I suck ass at mathematics?

what do you think of BTC and cryptocurrencies in general? the future or a fad?

Depends. One lot in oil is 1k barrels and if you assume 1 tick is the smallest movement possible then that's $10.00 per penny change per contract.

You asked about NADEX and Etrade, I don't know about them, it sounds like these brokers run their own side exchanges, which can be fine for most people. People generally open new exchanges to get fees from high frequency guys who pay them fees to let them front run customers.

My day starts pretty early, get to work check charts, half an hour later meet boss/commodities team, sometimes different divisions all meet to get told something. Consider US "Pit" open to be 9:00 AM not 9:30. Day generally ends by "pit" close at 2:30 (these are eastern times).

Do research on pipeline outages, etc when things in the afternoon.

I’ve been looking into futures contracts, and I’ve heard rags to riches stories, and because the news about oil is so unpredictable the risk is basically gambling. Donald Trump could start a war with Iran tomorrow solely for US special interests and the price of oil could plummet, along with your stake in futures. I get it’s a drastic example, but in this world anything can happen. Is it gambling or is there an actual strategy?

Mice have been trained to outperform Hedge fund mangers. There are guys out there who don't even want to know what the full name of the ticker they're trading is so they can just stick to technicals.

Easier to get a job with a mathematics phd, however. Those guys do the advanced modeling.

Bitcoin is both a fad and the future. As more money goes into the system the less volatile it will become and the more usable it becomes. If you buy something on Amazon in bitcoin and ten minutes later Bitcoin crashed 10% then the vendor gets fucked if they don't clear in real time... even small amounts of slippage make it impractical with tons of transactions like that.

I don't yet understand why there are so many coins though, Crypto isn't my area, but if this is like the .com bubble, then maybe bitcoin and one-two other big ones will survive like Amazon did and the others won't.

Thinking bitcoin will be all future currency is Naive- I saw someone saying that somewhere.

What do you foresee in the oil market? Will prices recover? Thoughts on Martin Armstrong? Thoughts on Art Berman? Thoughts on thermodynamic oil collapse?

Futures are extremely dangerous for newbies, that's why you aren't allowed to trade them unless you have a certain amount of capital already and more importantly make over a certain amount of money, so you can prove you won't go hungry if you lose everything.

The news is generally there to give people enough information to make the wrong decisions a lot of the time it seems.

That's why you have a stop loss, which are much easier to fill in futures markets.

From other people who I've talked to, they all seem to think Oil is one of the most trader unfriendly for many reasons.

I keep twitter open basically all day to monitor opec hashtags, etc. There's also livesquawk

Prices ARE recovering. I've never heard of either of those guys though, might read into Armstrong. Dennis Gartman is a famously bad trader and people genuinely trade against his predictions.

it sounds like you're calling the world running out of oil thermodynamic collapse, which won't happen. Shell oil, as an example, views peak oil demand happening in the next 15 years and it will then be phased out for more efficient alternatives... the free market always works this way.

Why are you on Veeky Forums doing this?

Whats up OP I remember you from the last thread. Can you drop the links to some of thous books you posted last time?

I've been studying FX and commodities for awhile. Should I try to get into a prop trading firm? If so how, and which ones are trustworthy?

Prob Jewish shill

Helps me get racing thoughts out of the way... better than meditation which is useless.

What do you think happens tomorrow with the API inventories?

What TA do you use? I was trading futs mainly with volume profile and order flow (though I still wasn’t very good at reading it) before dumping all my capital into cryptos. Would like to get back into it soon though.

This one is just chart patterns, pretty dry.

ideabuds.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Thomas-Bulkowski-Encyclopedia-Of-Chart-Patterns-2nd-Edition-1034-pages.pdf

>This one covers some things like support/resistance.

mrao.cam.ac.uk/~mph/Technical_Analysis.pdf

>The Logical Trader by Fischer is a rather well known book, but he describes his "system" and I don't like learnings peoples systems because if they were really genius they wouldn't sell the idea to you they would just use it.

Lewish Mitchell writes some cool books, he wrote created "The big short" and "Flash boys" which is how high frequency started. These two won't help you to learn technical analysis.

Having studied them is not that useful- having traded them is sort of useful for yourself. Some people develop "systems" and try to get some start up money from investors together, but you would have to prove years of verified trades with that system.

Can't remark on what firms are trustworthy... Don't pay anyone anything.

Api happens on Tuesdays at 4:30 EST. It's an estimate of what the EIA report will be tomorrow at 10:30. You can find API numbers on twitter through Zerohedge/#OOTT if you don't have access.

I can't tell you what my directional bias is.

I don't like what I think will happen though, it won't make sense if it goes that way, even to me.

arent you like a junior trader in a prop firm?

futuresfag, what's your overall TA approach. Trendlines, fibs, big MA's?
And do you use standard deviations of the VWAP? (I know you use the VWAP because you have to).

What do you think about Richard Dennis and the Turtles? If I'm good at math and use those techniques will they carry over into Crypto?

Holy shit. Is that Heidelberg? I was born there.

You Chicago...former runner then clerk @ the CME (@ the CBOT but CME products)...now upstairs screen trading.

DRWs crypto group (Cumberland Mining) has to be shitting their pants defending their long BTC positions right now....along with SIG which Ive been on 3 conf calls the past 6mo and they have no clue what BTC & ETH is but they try to shill it to people

Get shooooook shill faggots

>advanced TA
money snek = gainz

I don't really use VWAP.

A lot of people use some sort of volume profile indicator that shows what sort of volume there is at specific prices. I use this sometimes, but it's not something I have up all the time like they do.

I use trendlines and its older cousin "measured moves" which just says if something moves from bouncing between 90-100$ and breaks 100 then you add on the previous range to the next so you look at it trading 100-110$ now.

A test and rejection of one end of a diagonal "channel" resistance point etc, implies a test of the opposite end of whatever range.

A lot of people use this intuitively. Once bitcoin was at 20k everyone started wondering if it would hit 25k... a 5k measured move even though it doesn't look like 15k was ever a big resistance point before that... dunno.

I use moving averages, 9/50/200 and volume. Low volume after a long bull move implies a reversal of the trend as buying dries up. Higher volume at a lowpoint can indicate a reversal due to some fundamentalists seeing value. Trending volume tends to be somewhere in the middle

Breaking out of a resistance on double or more volume with equities is a good sign. Oil volume is more or less consistent on the day to day though.

I think I call fibs retracements. The most common one is 30% retracement of a move as a "flag" 50% less common 66% more common than 50%. Generally if something breaks 66% retrace I would consider looking for 100% retrace.

I have been using Elliot wave a lot in these recent bull trends.

Let me know if you want me to clarify any of this; I'm typing sort of fast.

How was clerk? I heard some clerks could bring home 6 figures yearly. I was in the pit for a year before going online.

OP if you know how to trade why you just not trade for yourself? Making like 500$ daily with 50k capital is pretty easy so why you losing your health to work in such company?

any good books to read? starting that TA pdf you posted the other night

Thanks a lot, I get what you're saying, I've seen a lot of that stuff work out in the crypto markets when the waves are pure. Which they are a lot of the time. There were some crazy obvious measured moves on the 5 minute chart on the recent BTC push up.
Also, volume spikes at reversals are everywhere on those markets, it's like a big 'buy/sell here' sign sometimes. I'm trying to drill this wycoff stuff into my brain, the springs never get old.

Ja, naturlich. Ich weiss nicht, wie einen Umlaut auf ein Mac tippen :(

Also I only took like a year of German so no idea if that makes sense to you.

Never heard of him. I don't really reading people's techniques because if I had some fool proof mathematical system I wouldn't be selling it- I would be retired.

Sounds exactly like how Enron at earnings calls wouldn't offer balance sheets to analysts and the CEO called an analyst an ass for asking why they were the only company to not do so.

Heard some guy named Bill Miller had his hedge fund invest a small position in BTC and now it's worth half the value of his hedgefund's holdings.
He said he wasn't necessarily selling any though.

Wouldn't surprise me if its these kind of guys hedging by shorting the btc futures on the cme.

This is my favorite pattern. Theres a kangaroo one as well.

I would like to do this, but the advice given to me was to learn on somebody else's dime. It took me six months to even be able to turn a profit doing this stuff, with training.

The other thing that may keep me going like this is because it's much less stressful trading somebody else's money. That's why hedge funds as a whole never beat the market indexes, they don't give a fuck. It's like getting a fund means you retired.

refer to

It looks like crypto trades in a tame way if you can get good at recognizing the pullbacks because they happen fast (I am not familiar with crypto trading).

I don't see a lot of the back and forth I see in normal markets. It doesn't seem like there are a ton of false formation breakouts to provide liquidity for big players... they just seem to dump... oddly.

High volume without a large candle just means disagreement in the next direction.

I also use daily/four hourly candles, which is not useful on crypto. Usually anything smaller will lead to you getting a lot of false impressions. One of the hardest things when you're not dealing with a ton of money is patience... in terms of months/years... and using 1-5 minute time frames generally implies that's something a person doesn't have yet.

How many bags of LINK are you hodling?

Base mid 5figs....w/ bonus was just below 6figs.

But I stated in 2012...most guys were winding down operations.

Didnt have to wear the mustard jacket....coatcheck lady hooked me up a nice mesh jacket someone left behind...made it easier to sneak pizzas onto the floor and avoid the $250 fine from the security guards( aunt Jemima, Hitler, 4x4)

Where did you start?

is john mcafee a retard like everyone says he is on his bitcoin and altcoin predictions/analysis?

I work at optiver, AMA

What's your coin portfolio looking like?

When I was sell side....like the Optiver guys I knew.

Passed the math test and then bombed the 1 on 1s

I generally have anywhere from 10-25 WTI crude oil lots as a 4-12 month position.

Thought about putting $1000.00 into ripple. Decided to go on a trip to Europe instead.

Is there any good meme line courses online that you can do?

I've learned in the past few weeks that I love to trade. A successful trade feels great. How do I look into joining the industry?

Are you an Illini by any chance senpai?

You should probably know about Richard Dennis. Not a huckster; a Chicago futures legend. "Prince of the Pit". There are some good books about him.

Knowing about him now just makes me feel like I'm fucking up.

I'm in the chicago that's not in illinois

>the chicago that's not in illinois

wat

Your financial decision was put 1k into crypto vs go on vacation? What's your net worth if you don't mind me asking

my portion of the family trust is 2mil last i saw

kind of my net worth/kind of not

not sure what else i'll inherit...

Can you post the PDF again please

How many female traders are there at your firm?

Why do you think trading is a male-dominated profession?

maybe he means University of Chicago (not UIC)?

The majority of women don’t like to take risks like men.

I believe poster that asked if he was an Illini meant if he went to U of I @ Champaign-Urbana. Their mascot is the fighting Illini

Yea but what does he mean by it not being in Illinois?

What is your opinion on peak oil?

It seems that po analysts are like the boy who cried wolf one too many times.

The story has changed this time to "yes it's true we have many new oil sources now, but the key is CHEAP OIL will soon run out" also have been saying large oil companies have been using too much debt to fund short term oil pumping that is unsustainable...

Are these new peak oil talking points legit?