Newbie Lessons - All your questions answered

[Trembling Hand]

Does anyone happen to know where I can start paper trading futures?

Over what time frame?

 

[jonafern]

Over what time frame?

Intraday/daily. I've recently tried to apply for some proprietary trading firms but got turned down. Part of the reason was because I've yet to shown an active interest trading (including paper trading) futures. Any other advice is much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Trembling Hand]

Intraday/daily. I've recently tried to apply for some proprietary trading firms but got turned down. Part of the reason was because I've yet to shown an active interest trading (including paper trading) futures. Any other advice is much appreciated.

Thanks

So you haven't traded anything before?

If you are wanting to trade prop or more to the point want to trade in a fashion that will get you a job at a prop shop then that means active intraday. For that you need a live intraday data feed from esignals.com (will be $$$$) and connect it to something like NinjaTrader (Free) for your sim (paper trading) and charting and performance data.

You could open an account with a broker like Interactive Brokers and pay for their data which is much cheaper. But you will need $10,000 to open an account.

The cheapest option is open a CFD account and trade tiny amounts with Index CFDs but if you're wanting to trade prop I would strongly suggest you don't go down that line.

 

[jonafern]

So you haven't traded anything before?

If you are wanting to trade prop or more to the point want to trade in a fashion that will get you a job at a prop shop then that means active intraday. For that you need a live intraday data feed from esignals.com (will be $$$$) and connect it to something like NinjaTrader (Free) for your sim (paper trading) and charting and performance data.

I'm yet to to start trading. Recently I've been reading up and researching to start trading on a buy-hold strategy (long-term) to get started on something. Now also looking to paper trade futures intraday to gain experience and improve my chances of getting a job.

Esignal.com is about $130~/month, that's abit too much for paper trading, but I could still do their 30-day trial. Interactive Brokers price is $40~/month I think, still going through the website.

Well looks like I'll need to spend some money to paper trade. Appreciate the help.

 

[serg87]

Hi all,

This is my first time trading, my grandad has always been big into share trading and has passed me on some of his shares as an investment for me to hold. I am not looking to get involved in some short term trading in order to supplement my very modest salary at the age of 24 .

An advice that you can give me as to where to start would be great. Im looking at setting up an online trading account with either Westpac or Commsec, any suggesstions?

Ta

 

[matthewdean]

Hi all,

This is my first time trading, my grandad has always been big into share trading and has passed me on some of his shares as an investment for me to hold. I am not looking to get involved in some short term trading in order to supplement my very modest salary at the age of 24 .

An advice that you can give me as to where to start would be great. Im looking at setting up an online trading account with either Westpac or Commsec, any suggesstions?

Ta

Have you looked at setting up an account with Bell Direct or Interactive Brokers (IB)?

They offer much cheaper brokerage, easy to set up an account and great user interfaces. I used to trade through commsec but I found the brokerage was starting to add up. Bell directs brokerage is about half the cost of Commsec.

Good luck.

 

[serg87]

Have you looked at setting up an account with Bell Direct or Interactive Brokers (IB)?

They offer much cheaper brokerage, easy to set up an account and great user interfaces. I used to trade through commsec but I found the brokerage was starting to add up. Bell directs brokerage is about half the cost of Commsec.

Good luck.

Thanks for that i will have a look at them now

 

[matthewdean]

I'm yet to to start trading. Recently I've been reading up and researching to start trading on a buy-hold strategy (long-term) to get started on something. Now also looking to paper trade futures intraday to gain experience and improve my chances of getting a job.

Esignal.com is about $130~/month, that's abit too much for paper trading, but I could still do their 30-day trial. Interactive Brokers price is $40~/month I think, still going through the website.

Well looks like I'll need to spend some money to paper trade. Appreciate the help.

You can't just use a free system for paper trading? I used to use Trade Interceptor to paper trade Forex. I know its not futures but I'm sure there are similar platforms out there available for free. I was able put together a system in 3 months and spent no money at all.

I definitely wouldn't be spending $30/Month to paper trade.

Have you tried setting an account up with IG Markets? They have a decent web platform for futures I believe. I don't know how strict they are taking on new clients.

 

[Trembling Hand]

I definitely wouldn't be spending $30/Month to paper trade.

Have you tried setting an account up with IG Markets? They have a decent web platform for futures I believe. I don't know how strict they are taking on new clients.

I doubt you will ever get the skills to trade prop while learning with CFDs.

 

[Wysiwyg]

Have you tried setting an account up with IG Markets? They have a decent web platform for futures I believe.

No they don't offer 'futures' trading.

 

[matthewdean]

No they don't offer 'futures' trading.

My mistake

 

[ProverbialPaul]

Wow!

SO much information to take in.

I keep seeing useful bits of info everywhere but then forgetting where it all is!

Nevermind, I'll get there.

Thank you Osisofliver!

 

[jimd78]

Ok just spent 3 days on the bus to and from work reading this cheers to all especially sir o! Now to attempt making some cash...

 

[Jerm]

Hi Sir Osis,

Assuming you still post here, has your recommendation of two investment properties before shares changed given the current economic outlook? The housing market looks to be slowly deleveraging.

 

[kid hustlr]

Hi All,

As you can probably tell I kinda got extremely busy and have reneged on my promise to do a segment on Dividend Yields as they approach the end of the cycle. I also need to do some prep work in this area. It's easy enough to put this information together and I did have it on my old comp, but I need to rebuild it and it will take me a couple of hours to collate the data....a couple of hours that I just don't have to spare as we approach the end of the financial year.

I'll try and get back to this when things are a bit more normal for me but the next few months are shaping up to be fairly busy.

Alternatively if someone else wants to do the groundwork and post it here we can discuss the implications.

What is required is a data sample of the top stocks by market capitalisation over the recent cycle (mid '03 to end '07). ASX50 would be good ASX100 is better. What you are looking for is the actual dividends paid during this period of time for the constituents of the index, compared to the share price. (To give you the Dividend yields). Alternatively you can use the EPS (earnings per share) figures. Monthly figures are fine for this purpose.

You'll then need to create several things...

1) A chart showing the fluctuations across the whole index
2) A chart showing the fluctuations across industry sectors (Use the GICS clasification)

The reason for the two is that changes in the sectors reveal things that you cannot see when you look at the index as a whole. For example, you'll see interesting things happening to the yields on Utility companies because of the correlation with the Credit cycle and interest rate cycle, and this is expressed in the dividend yield information.

I'll check back in a week or so to see if someone has posted the info. Feel free to discuss it of course if I am not around about what you think is happening across the various sectors. (and perhaps some of the old salts around here can give us their opinions as well).

Cheers

Sir o

Sir O, Is this what you area after?

There's a couple of sheets there and I havent pulled any diagrams but I THINK that's what you were looking for? I've pasted everything as value's as I was having trouble moving the data around my terminal sessions but all the information should be correct.

It's the top 100 as of today however and not back in 2003 so I hope that doesn't influence things too much.

There seemd to be a couple of outliers or weird data results so I pulled them out.

I also took out any stock which doesn't pay dividends (see sheet 1 vs sheet 2) and thinking about it now this may influence the results. Let me know if you want me to add these back in and I will.

Edit: the close prices are as at 31/Dec that year.

 

[Sir Osisofliver]

Hi Sir Osis,

Assuming you still post here, has your recommendation of two investment properties before shares changed given the current economic outlook? The housing market looks to be slowly deleveraging.

Jerm - I believe I said two investment properties before PPR (Principle place of residence), not shares.

As for the current deleveraging of the housing market... I look at data from across the country. Some places are deleveraging and some are not. I managed to purchase a place in NSW six months ago at a 6.4% yield. Doing a comparative market analysis...and I estimate it has increased in value by 2% during that time. It's important to make sure that when you purchase your IP's that you do so in any area which gives you the greatest possible chance of success and risk reduction...why would you expect to find those characteristics in your local neighbourhood?

Cheers

Sir O

 

[Sir Osisofliver]

@kid hustler

Thanks for that - I'll see if I get some time to look at it and make some commentary

Cheers

Sir O

 

[Iro]

I doubt you will ever get the skills to trade prop while learning with CFDs.

How come? Aren't CFDs just like mini futures? If a system works in CFDs shouldnt it work in futures too?

 

[Trembling Hand]

How come? Aren't CFDs just like mini futures?

No. With CFDs you just hit a button and get given a price. With Futures you execute into an exchange mostly one thats offshore.

If a system works in CFDs shouldnt it work in futures too?

Nope. You learn very little hitting a at market button of a CFD entry screen trading a couple of dollars a tick two or three times a day compared to getting a fill in an exchange at $250 to $2500 a tick and doing 10 to 100 round trips a day like you would trading prop.

Prop shops from what I've seen don't think a great deal about the skills people have picked up trading CFDs. You would be 1000 times better off learning the real thing right from the start.

 

[Jerm]

Jerm - I believe I said two investment properties before PPR (Principle place of residence), not shares.
Cheers

Sir O

Thanks for that answer. You're right I misquoted but I suppose I was asking for your opinion on the housing market and I've got it, thank you.

It was a round-about way of asking if you change your investment plan to suit the economic situation. It seems that you don't really have to as long as you are doing your due diligence and picking the right areas/assets.

I hate all this doom and gloom surrounding everything. It colours my ability to objectively evaluate the situation. Anyway, thanks again Sir O.