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Success rate for individual investors trading options or futures? Less than 10%. The problem is that futures and options trading is highly leveraged. Take gold futures. These provide about 10 to 1 leverage. So lets say when gold hit $1000 someone thought that it was going much higher and...

Only within the past year has gold exceeded its 1980 high. At the time in 1980 when gold was roughly the same price as it is today, the Dow Jones Industrial average was under 1000. So over the past 28 years, you have a 1100% return on the Dow, vs. a few percent return on gold. Yes, gold...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080406/bs_nm/ford_barrons_dc_1 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares in automaker Ford Motor (F.N) could double from a turnaround being led by Chief Executive Alan Mulally, according Barron's April 7 story. While a recession could hurt projected sales, the story noted...

I recall I had 4 or 5 tech stocks in my portfolio at the time. Two of my stops were hit, and I was ticked to see I had sold at the lows and the stocks I was stopped out of closed practically unchanged. However, I accepted that the market might be trying to tell me something, and I kept the...

You might have to go to the web sites of each of the major futures exchanges and look for volume figures there. You can start with www.cbot.com one of the largest US futures exchanges. Lots of info regarding volume, etc. on that site.

I wish it was something anyone could trade. In the past, some of my most profitable futures trades were actually bets on weather. I've tried signing up there before. If you try to register as an individual with a net worth less than $5 million, it tells you that you are not qualified to...

Market trades down Sunday night, opens lower Monday, then rises sharply to close Monday with a gain?

I've asked the same question. The British Pound is also not rising in recent months. There appears to be the most strength in the Euro. I think this is because the market is predicting (correctly or incorrectly) that the Euro is going to become the world's currency, and thus deserves to be...

Nikkei index price change past 18 years: January 1990 = 39000 March 2008 = 13000 Investment growth in 18 years = -67%

http://www2.barchart.com/mktcom.asp

The Euro has certainly been strong, but the dollar's weakness seems to be spotty, with only some currencies up. For example, the British Pound and the Canadian Dollar have done nothing in recent months. If the dollar was truely that weak, shouldn't all other currencies be going up? Especially...

I'm not sure what my leverage is set at officially (I never changed it from the default, when I opened my account in 2004), but the largest position I have ever had on at any one time amounted to about 6X my account value in the foreign currency. Would that be 6 to 1?

I voted "no recession" because that was the closest to what I expect, which is a mild recession. I could not vote for a serious recession or a mild depression since these are a lot more extreme than I expect. As far as the current downturn - it will be barely a recession, with say one...

I've noticed this recently on Yahoo too, with some other stocks. I found that Yahoo had switched the default chart type to interactive java charts. Once I selected the regular chart types (there is a link), the problem seemed to go away. Must just be a bug in the new interactive charts.

I'm not saying the only reason the Fed is acting is to support the stock market. Obviously, there are real economic problems that are causing stocks to fall in the first place. But what I am saying is that the Fed takes a stock market drop to near "bear market" levels as the signal for when to...

Possibly this is because farmers are so fed up with the high cost of feed that they are selling their cattle and hogs quicker than normal, thus driving down prices?

My personal theory, which is of course just a theory, is that the Fed is defending 11700 Dow. That number would represent an official 20% correction from the highs ("bear market"), and the Fed does not want that. Look how every time this number is approached the Fed shows up with some new...

As I recall hearing it explained, the crash of '87 was a feedback loop that got out of control. Major fund managers subscribed to a mathematical theory of "portfolio insurance" that allowed them to (theoretically) limit downside potential in their portfolios by selling index futures to hedge...

I'm not saying this is what is absolutely going to happen. I'm just asking if there is any reason why it could not happen this way. If there is not, then it seems like this would be as good of an option as any other out there for "solving" the problem. This is to be more of a theoretical...

I don't doubt that a correlation exists; I'm just saying if it was as simple as "of course crude goes up because it takes more dollars to buy a given amount of it" then crude would only be up 8%. Why would it be more than that? Of course, if it is going up mainly because whenever the dollar...