Futures and Options 101
Origin of the Futures Markets
Why Should I be Interested in Commodities?
How is Money Made and Lost Trading Commodity Futures?
Why do I Need a Broker
What are Options
What is a Spread?
Order Types & Placement
What is Technical Analysis
Origin Of The Futures Markets
EXCHANGES: The U.S. futures markets were developed out of necessity in the
mid-1800’s. As our country was expanding and spreading west, farmers were having
a difficult time reaching buyers efficiently. Farmers would carry tons of goods,
hundreds of miles, only to have a prospective buyer back out of a deal. Quarrels
repeatedly erupted relating to the quality, quantity, and price of the goods. A
central marketplace where many willing and able buyers and sellers transacted business
was the answer. Commodity exchanges were created to serve this function and also
provide safeguards.
CONTRACTS: The unit of exchange that trades in the exchanges is the futures
contract. Each contract provides for the future delivery of goods at a specified
date, time, and place. Each particular commodity is bought and sold in standardized
contractual units, which makes them completely interchangeable. For example, each
sugar futures contract for a particular month is the same size, is of the same quality
and grade, and is due for delivery at the same day and time.
Why Should I Be Interested In Commodities?
ADVANTAGES:
Leverage---Unlike the stock market, where you might have to actually spend
up to $100,000 to buy $100,000 worth of a stock, through
margin
deposits, a commodities trader can leverage hundreds of thousands of dollars
worth of a commodity for pennies on the dollar.
Government regulated---The futures markets are so crucial to the well being
of our nation, that the government established the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
(CFTC) to oversee the industry. There is also a self-regulatory body, the National
Futures Association (NFA), to further monitor the activity of all market professionals.
We also encourage you to
check
the background of any broker or brokerage that you may plan to trade with.
Liquidity---The U.S. futures markets are the largest in the world in terms
of trading volume and dollars, transacting hundreds of millions of dollars daily.
Low transaction costs---For example, if you thought the price of coffee was
going higher, you could attempt to locate a seller and buy 37,500 lbs. of coffee,
(the standardized size of one coffee futures contract). You could have the coffee
shipped to a warehouse, and insure it until the price hopefully rose. When you felt
the price wasn’t going any higher, you would have to find a buyer, ship it to them,
and hopefully receive your money. Instead, by depositing margin, (approximately
$4,200 in this example) from your ALTAVEST Worldwide Trading, Inc. trading account,
and going long a coffee futures contract, you could trade coffee (or any other commodity)
without the hassle of locating a buyer and seller, and without incurring the extra
costs of transportation, storage and insurance. Your only true cost would be your
commissions and fees.
Options---buyers have virtually unlimited gain potential with limited risk.
HEDGING & SPECULATING:
Almost every product you consume would likely cost dramatically more without the
existence of the commodity futures markets...sugar, coffee, bread (wheat), gasoline,
and borrowing costs, etc. Due to the intrinsic risks of being in business without
the ability to shift risk, a manufacturer/producer of goods or services would be
forced to charge higher prices, and the user of goods (you) would incur higher costs.
Shifting risk to someone willing to accept it is known as
hedging. Manufacturers
could effectively lock-in a sales price by going
short an equivalent amount
of goods with futures contracts. If a mining company knew they were going to sell
1000 oz of gold in several months, they could protect themselves from a future price
decline by going short 10 gold futures contracts today. If the price of gold fell
by $30 in the following months, they would receive that much less in the cash marketplace
for their gold, but earn that much back when they
offset (liquidated) their
short gold futures position. The futures price will eventually become the cash price.
A user or buyer of goods can use the futures markets in the same manner. They would
need to protect themselves from a future price increase, and therefore go long futures
contracts.
The person willingly accepting a risk does so because of the opportunity to profit
from price movements, this is known as
speculating. The lumber and mortgage
for your home, the cereal and coffee you had for breakfast and the gas in your car
would be priced many times higher without the participation of speculators (you)
in the futures markets. Through supply and demand market forces, equilibrium prices
are reached in an orderly and equitable manner within the exchanges, and world economies,
and you, benefit tremendously from futures trading.
How is Money Made and Lost Trading Commodity Futures?
GOING LONG & SHORT:
Going
LONG & SHORT…to make a profit on anything requires that something be
bought and sold, and that you sell at a higher price than you buy.
When trading a
futures contract it doesn’t matter if you initially sell or buy, as long as you
do both before the contract comes due. If you were bearish you would sell,
or another word would be go
short. If you were bullish you would want to
buy, or go
long.
"How do I sell something that I don’t own, or why would I buy something I don’t need".
The answer is simple. When trading futures, you never actually buy or sell anything
tangible; you are just contracting to do so at a future date. You are merely taking
a buying or selling position as a speculator, expecting to profit from rising or
falling prices. You have no intention of making or taking delivery of the commodity
you are trading, your only goal is to buy low and sell high, or vice-versa. Before
the contract expires you will need to relieve your contractual obligation to take
or make delivery by
offsetting (also known as unwind, or liquidate) your
initial position. Therefore, if you oiginally entered a short position, to exit
you would buy, and if you had originally entered a long position, to exit you would
sell.
LEVERAGE:
The following contains
mathematical examples of leverage in the commodity markets.
No representation is being made that any account has, or is likely to achieve profits
similar to those shown in these examples.
If I buy a bushel of corn from a farmer for $2.65 per bushel, and it subsequently
rises to $2.95 per bushel, haven’t I only made 30 cents?
If you only purchased one bushel of corn, you would be correct. What if you had
purchased 5,000 bushels (the equivalent of 1 futures contracts) of corn? At $2.65/bushel
X 5,000 bushels you would need to have spent $13,250 to initially purchase the corn.
If you had a storage silo and the extra cash, and the price rose 30-cents, you would
have made $1,500 (30 cents X 5,000 bushels = $1,500) less storage, insurance, transportation,
and opportunity costs. If the price dropped 30-cents, you would have lost $1,500...less
storage, insurance, transportation and opportunity costs.
What if you don’t have an extra $13,250 in your pocket, or a grain silo to store
the corn? The good news is you don’t need $13,250, or a grain silo in the backyard.
With only approximately $600 as a
margin deposit, you could go long 1 corn
futures contract with your ALTAVEST Worldwide Trading, Inc. broker and if the price
of the corn contract rose 30-cents, you would reap the same dollar reward...$1,500...earning
250% on margin, (less fees & commissions). You would incur no silo storage, delivery,
or insurance costs.
Risk Disclosure -- However, it is important
to realize that if you had bought a corn futures contract and prices dropped 30-cents
you would be losing $1,500 plus fees and commissions. Leverage can work for or against
you.
If you wanted to buy every stock listed in the S&P 500 index, it would take hundreds
of thousands of dollars. As a commodity speculator, you could leverage the equivalent
value of our country’s 500 largest stocks with one futures contract, using approximately
90% less money, and with far less in transaction costs.
Why Do I Need A Broker?
The vast majority of individuals, especially new traders, need a broker to execute
trades on their behalf because trading futures is not as simple and straightforward
as trading stocks. If you are experienced you may want to transmit orders
online.
ALTAVEST Worldwide Trading, Inc. exists to provide you with a link to the markets
and offer you valuable trading resources, services, guidance and experience. As
an
Introducing Broker, we also need a conduit to the exchanges, and someone
to act on our behalf. In our case, that is the role of R.J. O'Brien, one of the
oldest retail Futures Commission Merchants (FCM), or
clearinghouse, in the
world. They are a full clearing member of all U.S. exchanges and you can be assured
that when trading with us you will receive reliable, rapid, and efficient order
execution and trading support.
To transact trades more efficiently, ALTAVEST Worldwide Trading, Inc. uses
Market Center Direct (MCD) to transmit your orders. You won't be placed
on hold for an eternity when you are attempting to enter a trade, nor will your
order be placed in a pile with hundreds of other orders. Delays like that can cost
you money! With us, your order will be at the exchange within seconds from when
you placed it.
What Are Options?
There are many people who choose not to trade futures contracts because they feel
the potential gains do not outweigh the potential losses. For those people, options
are the investment vehicle of choice. An option is simply the right, but not the
obligation to buy or sell a futures contract, at a pre-determined price, (
strike
price) on or before a pre-determined
expiration date. To go long
(buy) an option requires the buyer (
holder) to pay a
premium. When
going short an option, the seller (
writer or
grantor) receives the
premium.
The following contains mathematical examples of leverage in the commodity
option markets. No representation is being made that any account has, or is likely
to achieve profits similar to those shown in the examples. CALLS:
A call option is simply the right to buy, (go long). You can choose to be either
long or short a call. For example, If you felt crude prices were going to rise,
you could purchase (go long) a call, and pay the premium to the seller (grantor
or writer). Lets look at what would happen if Crude was trading near $22/barrel,
and you purchased an
at-the-money July $22 (strike price) Crude call option.
You would have paid a $600 premium (estimated example price for illustration use
only, plus fees and commissions) for the option. The call option you now own represents
the right to buy 1,000 barrels of July crude at $22 barrel. For $600 plus fees and
commissions, you would be leveraging 1,000 barrels of crude oil.
Every dollar July Crude moved above your strike price, your call option position
would gain $1,000 of
intrinsic value. If the price rose just $3/barrel to
$25, each option would be $3
in-the-money, and your call option would have
an intrinsic value of $3,000. Depending on how much
time value remains, and
the
volatility of the market, the option position could actually be worth
much more. If prices didn’t rise, your maximum risk would be limited to your original
investment, ($600) plus fees and commissions.
It is also important to realize that at any time prior to the expiration date, you
could place an order with your ALTAVEST Worldwide Trading, Inc. broker to
liquidate
all or part of your option position. This would further limit your risk by allowing
you to recover whatever premium remained. For example, with a month of time value
left, and Crude hovering around $21/barrel, let’s say your option is now worth only
$200, the value having fallen from our original purchase price of $600. You may
tell your broker to sell your July Crude option because you feel the
underlying
market, and therefore your options, will not increase in value within a month. By
doing this, you would be recovering $200 from your original investment, and implementing
money-management.
If you thought the price of July Crude was going to fall, you could sell a July
Crude call option, and receive the premium from the buyer. You would do this because
if prices did fall, the value of the call to the owner (the person you sold the
call to, and who paid you the premium) would drop, because the option is less likely
to become in-the-money. If prices didn’t rise before the option expired, the value
of the call would drop to zero, expire worthless in the owners’ hands, and you would
keep the entire premium the buyer originally paid you.
As an example, if July Crude were trading near $22/barrel and you felt that prices
were going to drop, you could short a July $23
out-of-the-money call. To
do this would require the suitable margin deposit for a Crude futures contract because
you have unlimited risk, assuming the option is
uncovered (naked). You would
essentially be selling to the purchaser (holder) of the call, the right to go long
July Crude at $23 per barrel, no matter where the July futures price
settles.
You would receive a $600 premium (estimated example for illustration purposes) from
the purchaser to assume this risk.
If prices were to rise to $25 per barrel, and you had not
offset your short
call, (by placing an order with your broker to buy it back) the owner of the call
could
exercise his right to buy (which you sold him) crude at $23. Then he
would be assigned a long position in a July Crude contract from $23, and you would
end up assigned a short position from $23. He would be sitting on a $2,000 gain
(1000 barrels per contract X $2/barrel= $2,000), and you would be sitting on a $2,000
loss.
PUTS:
A put option is simply the right to sell, (go short). You can choose to be either
short or long a put option. For example, if you felt July Crude prices were going
to fall from $22, you could purchase (go long) puts, and pay the premiums to the
seller (grantor or writer). Imagine you purchased a July Crude $22 at-the-money
put for a premium of $600, less fees and commissions. The option you now own represents
the right to sell 1,000 barrels of July crude, at $22/barrel, regardless of where
the futures price settles. Every dollar the July Crude market falls below your strike
price, your put would gain $1,000 of intrinsic value. If the July Crude price fell
to $19, your put would be worth a minimum of $3,000. If prices didn’t rise, your
maximum risk would be limited to your original investment, $600, less fees and commissions.
If you thought the price of July Crude was going to rise, you could go short a July
Crude put option, and receive the premium from the buyer. You would do this because,
if prices did rise, the value of the put to the owner (the person you sold the put
to, and who paid you the premium) would drop. If prices didn’t fall before the option
expired, the value of the put option would drop to zero, expire worthless in the
owners’ hands, and you would keep the entire premium the buyer originally paid you.
What Is A Spread?
FUTURES SPREAD:
A spread is the simultaneous purchase and sale of the same or similar commodity,
in different or the same contract months. Spread trading is usually considered to
be a lower risk strategy than an outright long or short futures position, and therefore
margin requirements are usually less. For example, if the price trend of soybeans
is currently up, and you are in a soybean spread, the gain on a long position would
offset the loss in a short position. If the trend is lower, the gains on the short
side will negate the loss of the long side.
You must be asking "How do I make money if I am both long and short the same commodity?"
The answer is you are hoping to profit from the difference in the two contract months,
not from a move higher or lower in soybeans. With a spread, you follow the relationship,
or difference between the contracts, without having to pick a market direction.
For example, if July Soybeans were trading at $6.50/bushel, and November Soybeans
were at $4.90, the spread would be $1.60 to the July side. If you bought a July/November
bean spread at this level, and July went to $6.90, while November went to $5.10,
the spread would now be $1.80. You could then sell the spread position, and make
20 cents/bushel * 5000 bushels=$1,000. This example is known as an
intra-commodity
spread, buying one month and selling another in the same commodity. An
inter-commodity
spread is buying a commodity month in one market, and selling another related commodity
in the same or similar month. Ask an ALTAVEST Worldwide Trading, Inc. broker for
further explanations and strategies. For Spread Charts
click
here.
OPTION SPREADS
Not only can spreads be utilized in futures markets, but options provide even more
opportunities for successful spread trading. Options can even be utilized in conjunction
with futures spreads to limit risk. With so many variables including strike prices,
trading months, and different markets available, the permutations and combinations
of option strategies are tremendous. The explanations are a bit more detailed, and
beyond the scope of this brief introductory course. We do invite you to call one
of our brokers for further explanations.
Some of the advantages of spreads are:
1. typically require smaller margin deposits;
2. make money no matter which way a market moves; and
3. seasonal patterns exist among spread relationships.
Order Types & Placement
There are many methods of entering and exiting a market. Below are a few examples
of some of the most common order types, and examples on when to use them. This is
by no means an extensive listing, and it is important to realize that not all orders
can be used in every market. Click here for more details on order placement.
Market Order---The most frequently used order, which in most cases, assures
you of getting in or out of a position. It is executed at the best possible price
obtainable at the time the order reaches the trading pit. It DOES NOT mean your
order will be filled at the last price your broker may have quoted you. An example
might be telling your broker, "sell 5 contracts of September Comex Silver at the
Market."
Limit Order---It is an order to buy or sell at designated price. A limit
(sometimes known as an "or better") order to buy must always be placed below the
current market price, and a sell limit above the current price. If the market price
touches a limit order, it does not necessarily mean the order is filled. Also, a
limit order may never get filled.
An example of a properly placed limit order would be if the price of September Silver
is currently trading at $4.20/ounce, you could tell your ALTAVEST Worldwide Trading,
Inc. broker to sell at $4.27, or buy at $4.11. In either case, you are looking to
obtain a fill price better than the current trading price. In the case of your sell
limit at $4.27, your fill price could never be lower than $4.27, but could possibly
be better (higher). In the buy limit example, the fill price could never be higher
than $4.11, but could possibly be better (lower).
Market-if-Touched (MIT)---They are used in the same manner as a limit order,
but can be filled if the market touches your order price. If so, then the order
instantly becomes a market order and can be filled above or below your initial order
price.
Stop Order---This is nothing more than an order that once is touched, becomes
a market order. A buy stop must always be placed above the current market price,
and a sell stop below the market price. A stop order can be used to minimize a loss
on a short or long position, protect a profit, or initiate a new long or short position.
An example would be if September Silver were trading at $4.20, and you wanted to
buy, but only if the price reached $4.25, you could place an order to "buy one September
Silver at $4.25 stop." If $4.25 is touched your order becomes a market order, and
is filled accordingly.
Market on Close (MOC)---An order to be filled during the period designated
by the exchange as the close, at whatever price is available. The floor broker does
reserve the right to refuse an MOC up to 15 minutes before the close.
Stop Close Only (SCO)---The stop price on a stop close only will only be
triggered if the market touches or exceeds the stop during the period of time the
exchange has designated as the close of trading, (usually the last few minutes).
What Is Technical Analysis, And Why Do I Need To Learn More
About It?
The answer is quite simple…because it is another tool available to assist you in
your quest for profits. Find out more about charts in
spreads,
candlesticks,
seasonals,
scale trading and
Elliot wave.