To most new and struggling traders, being at the screen and seeking perfection in our trading performance can easily become our single focus, and this can often ironically lead to frustration and despair as we enter the market with a newly formed confidence, only to quickly discover that nothing has really changed from the last year after all

A short review from Part 1 of this article shows that each Futures contract has its own unique specifications. In these specifications is the size of the contract and from that we can determine, how much the entire contract is worth.

The New Year is always a time for reflection and looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead. On Wall Street, it's also when the performance of money managers is measured against the major market averages, and bonuses issued commensurate to those results.

I typically use the holiday to catch up on the many emails I receive from students and non-grads of Online Trading Academy worldwide, so I thought I would use this particular opportunity to answer some of those messages publicly, in an effort to share a little advice across the board:

When we speak of a Futures Contract, we are referring to a standardized contract being created between two parties to either buy or sell a specific asset (Corn, Live Cattle, Oil, etc) having standardized quantity and a graded quality at a specified future date at the price agreed upon today.

As we enter 2011, there are some potential major market turning points to be aware of.

I like to keep my trading activities as simple and objective as possible, as this helps me to cut out the noise of over-analysis and emotion and helps greatly in the final decision making process.

The equities markets have been on a tear lately; all the major indices are at, or near, multi-year highs. This is good news for so-called investors as they are generally long-only market participants. For those of us that trade on a shorter term basis, however, this type of market presents some challenges as well as opportunities – seen only if you look inside the daily and weekly candles.

This trade started as a simple directional trade, but as it unfolded, the student-trader reversed his stance once (from overly Bullish to moderately Bullish), then as the trade did exactly what he expected in the first place, he reversed it once again.

I have found in my experiences as a trader that while there is undoubtedly a huge selection of technical indicators built into most quality trading and charting platforms, after time experimenting with them all it becomes clear that where most are concerned, they can be divided into two separate categories: Momentum based and Oscillator based, with the former more widely used for the most basic buy and sell signals.

One of my favorite styles of trading the Futures markets is the Intra-Commodity Spread. For this trade, we are going to be simultaneously buying and selling contracts of the same Commodity in different months.

For the subject of this week's articles, I would like to illustrate three particular scenarios which deal with various aspects of risk management.