Cotton & Cocoa have daily volumes of about 500 million usd or more.
The rest (except maybe xpt & xpd I have no idea about) have volumes of 1 or several billions.
They are unpopular with alot of funds & retail because they (retail & fund clients I guess) cannot really day trade those, too expensive, and they cannot buy & hold for growth those. They are monthly or quarterly contracts, there is no growth like with stocks or gold.
But this is real speculation, and what markets were created for thousands of years ago. There is a real need for us to absorb volatility/risks and there is an associated reward.
The costs range between 5 to 10% of ATR which is acceptable if one picks the high probability moves in strong markets (not sideways) and goes for big moves, not some 15 minute chart ones.
Out of 3 grains + 4 soft + gold copper nickel + natgas oil = 12 if we can catch one nice move a year for each that's equivalent to 1 a month and it's a big deal.
Maybe 2 losers 1 winner on average, with the rare occasional painful gap maybe. 12 times 4R minus 24 times 1R counting spreads, that's 24R.
With 1% risk then this means 27% return. On top of FX if you can handle all of that. I think this is realistic.
As a pro trader with a decent account risk would rather be 0.5% or less because what serious professional wants some huge drawdowns in his capital makes no sense, that 24R becomes 12.7%.
I think this is realistic from what I have seen & heard around but well only way to know what we can probably get out of it is look at our own track record.
1/10R spread means every 10 trades 1R is lost, so there is no place for breakeven overtrading.
“Do not trade every day of every year.” - Jesse Livermore
A dozen commodities plus a dozen currencies...
This means less time to spend on the big aspects of this activity: money management, risk management, avoiding blowing up, doing all sorts of estimates, knowing yourself, getting out of losers and moving on, staying in winners...
I don't think ~25 in the radar is that huge when fulltime, of course as long as they got added 1 by 1 progressively, studied & known well, and being able to stay away of dead markets and only look at the potentially interesting ones.
For example Corn was completely off the radar all of may & june and it is one of the most violent ones last 6 months. NatGas was just nasty for the whole first half of 2020, Oil well you probably know, Silver before going up was in accumulation for years, I could go on... You're not really watching the whole watchlist at all time, maybe really 1/3 so rather than 12 currencies + commodities it is 4+4 and really you pay full attention to up to 3-4 analyse read read read prepare calculate list scenarios get ready etc and the rest is just on the side not 100% focus.
More than this is getting a bit ridiculous in my opinion, especially for a single person.
“It is much easier to watch a few than many” - Jesse Livermore again
“Big movements take time to develop” - Same guy
Damn, plenty of quotes on being patient and my favorite is Livermore again 😂 “There is a time to go long, a time to go short and a time to go fishing.”
“I don’t think you can get to be a really good investor over a broad range without doing a massive amount of reading. I don’t think any one book will do it for you.” - Charlie Munger
“I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up. I do nothing in the meantime.” - Jim Rogers
“Beware of trading quotes.” - Andreas Clenow
With experience and good organisation you learn when to look and when not to, and also understand you do not have to check every news and every chart all the time to catch every move, fearing to miss out is plain dense once you understand how this really works and what it really is. A couple of winners in a year is all it takes.
Those that aim for more than this... They are the ones that fail. George Soros if I am correct just made a couple of big one sided bets, he started with Jim Rogers mostly in commodities (after working as an arbitrage trader on european stocks & 10 years as an investment VP), they made stupid returns and then he did FX? Gosh I might have it all wrong but it's something like that, and he is famous for his big win on the GBP, his big losses on the rubble & Thai Baht. Oh wait no he crashed Thailand kek. He got slapped hard in the face as he kept shorting small & medium cap stocks after Trump election. And didn't he short Bitcoin? Or buy?
The markets really only offer a couple of opportunities once in a while, not 50 a month.
I do not think the spreads get lower than this. Going for a couple of ATR (in moves that take 1-3 weeks) and not trying too often to get in (gets very expensive) it is not that bad. No retail day traders that want to get poor quick is the best part.
Nickel is not available on tradingview, have to look at it via broker or investing.com (they use tradingview charting service).
Rest is all here.
Nickel really trending for long for the past year+
tvc-invdn-com.akamai...a960aa477fd72583.png
The rest (except maybe xpt & xpd I have no idea about) have volumes of 1 or several billions.
They are unpopular with alot of funds & retail because they (retail & fund clients I guess) cannot really day trade those, too expensive, and they cannot buy & hold for growth those. They are monthly or quarterly contracts, there is no growth like with stocks or gold.
But this is real speculation, and what markets were created for thousands of years ago. There is a real need for us to absorb volatility/risks and there is an associated reward.
The costs range between 5 to 10% of ATR which is acceptable if one picks the high probability moves in strong markets (not sideways) and goes for big moves, not some 15 minute chart ones.
Out of 3 grains + 4 soft + gold copper nickel + natgas oil = 12 if we can catch one nice move a year for each that's equivalent to 1 a month and it's a big deal.
Maybe 2 losers 1 winner on average, with the rare occasional painful gap maybe. 12 times 4R minus 24 times 1R counting spreads, that's 24R.
With 1% risk then this means 27% return. On top of FX if you can handle all of that. I think this is realistic.
As a pro trader with a decent account risk would rather be 0.5% or less because what serious professional wants some huge drawdowns in his capital makes no sense, that 24R becomes 12.7%.
I think this is realistic from what I have seen & heard around but well only way to know what we can probably get out of it is look at our own track record.
1/10R spread means every 10 trades 1R is lost, so there is no place for breakeven overtrading.
“Do not trade every day of every year.” - Jesse Livermore
A dozen commodities plus a dozen currencies...
This means less time to spend on the big aspects of this activity: money management, risk management, avoiding blowing up, doing all sorts of estimates, knowing yourself, getting out of losers and moving on, staying in winners...
I don't think ~25 in the radar is that huge when fulltime, of course as long as they got added 1 by 1 progressively, studied & known well, and being able to stay away of dead markets and only look at the potentially interesting ones.
For example Corn was completely off the radar all of may & june and it is one of the most violent ones last 6 months. NatGas was just nasty for the whole first half of 2020, Oil well you probably know, Silver before going up was in accumulation for years, I could go on... You're not really watching the whole watchlist at all time, maybe really 1/3 so rather than 12 currencies + commodities it is 4+4 and really you pay full attention to up to 3-4 analyse read read read prepare calculate list scenarios get ready etc and the rest is just on the side not 100% focus.
More than this is getting a bit ridiculous in my opinion, especially for a single person.
“It is much easier to watch a few than many” - Jesse Livermore again
“Big movements take time to develop” - Same guy
Damn, plenty of quotes on being patient and my favorite is Livermore again 😂 “There is a time to go long, a time to go short and a time to go fishing.”
“I don’t think you can get to be a really good investor over a broad range without doing a massive amount of reading. I don’t think any one book will do it for you.” - Charlie Munger
“I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up. I do nothing in the meantime.” - Jim Rogers
“Beware of trading quotes.” - Andreas Clenow
With experience and good organisation you learn when to look and when not to, and also understand you do not have to check every news and every chart all the time to catch every move, fearing to miss out is plain dense once you understand how this really works and what it really is. A couple of winners in a year is all it takes.
Those that aim for more than this... They are the ones that fail. George Soros if I am correct just made a couple of big one sided bets, he started with Jim Rogers mostly in commodities (after working as an arbitrage trader on european stocks & 10 years as an investment VP), they made stupid returns and then he did FX? Gosh I might have it all wrong but it's something like that, and he is famous for his big win on the GBP, his big losses on the rubble & Thai Baht. Oh wait no he crashed Thailand kek. He got slapped hard in the face as he kept shorting small & medium cap stocks after Trump election. And didn't he short Bitcoin? Or buy?
The markets really only offer a couple of opportunities once in a while, not 50 a month.
I do not think the spreads get lower than this. Going for a couple of ATR (in moves that take 1-3 weeks) and not trying too often to get in (gets very expensive) it is not that bad. No retail day traders that want to get poor quick is the best part.
Nickel is not available on tradingview, have to look at it via broker or investing.com (they use tradingview charting service).
Rest is all here.
Nickel really trending for long for the past year+
tvc-invdn-com.akamai...a960aa477fd72583.png