Studying Futures Trading

Risk Disclaimer

Please read the Risk Disclaimer before reading this post.

Background

An opportunity has recently arisen for some collaboration in the futures-trading space.

Pursuing this opportunity means that I have a bit of learning to do first, as my FX knowledge doesn’t help me with items such as volume tools and concepts such as delivery dates etc.

I will also be learning to use Sierra Charts and its related C++ libraries for automation. Luckily, Sierra Charts has a similar feels to MetaTrader 5 (although it does seem to have many more customisation options), and the language feels familiar if you are used to C++-style languages like MQL, C#, Java etc.

In this post I will document the learning resources that I find over time to serve as a personal reference.

Individual Videos

How To Trade Market Imbalances With Perfect Timing - Footprint Chart Trading | Axia Futures

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Brannigan Barrett a while ago. He is knowledgable and generous, and I have a lot of time for his learning material.

I don’t understand this video yet as my base knowledge is not complete enough. I will come back to it at a later stage.

J Dalton Trading July 6, 2017 How to Monitor a Trade for Continuation

This is on my to-watch list.

JJ AKA vwaptrader1 mentioned Mr Dalton as a great source of knowledge for retail traders to learn about trading futures in his interview (part 1, part 2) on the AlphaMind podcast.

Various Videos from SMB Capital

You’ve really got to appreciate how much free, quality content SMB Capital puts out there!

I have an idea brewing that one day I would like to do some of their courses, even if it this in a few years’ time.

How to Trade with Market Profile and Market Internals Webinar

This is on my to-watch list (it was recommended to me by a contact).

Setting Up Sierra Charts (Brand New User Tutorial)

I followed this as I like the settings he uses for mouse wheel zoom etc.

YouTube Channels

Critical-Trading

I worked my way through this channel and found it helpful and easy to understand.

I bought his paid course and will soon work my way through it.

Cumulative Delta

What Is Cumulative Delta? Source

These are direct quotes from the source:

• Delta refers to the net difference between buying and selling volume at each price level.
• Cumulative delta builds upon this concept by recording a cumulative tally of these differences in buying vs selling volume.
• Cumulative delta ignores limit orders.
• Market Buy Orders – Market Sell Orders = Delta.
  • When this value is positive, buyers are seen as more aggressive.
  • When this value is negative, sellers are seen as more aggressive.

Video Resources

Despite the crazy intro (😂), I found this video to be a useful intro to Cumulative delta.

Branningan helps us out again with his usual high-quality content.

A summary of this video: Cumulative delta on the day is not the same as the net long/short of the day. You can only say that there is a positioning in the market if there is also a price move in the relevant direction.

So for example, positive delta means that more offers have been lifted than bids hit, but it does not necessarily imply an overall long market move.

I learnt some new terminology from this video, along with the help of 2 additional sources (1) (2):

• Buyers lift the offer. This is another way of saying that they agree to buy at a price quoted by another party.
• Sellers hit the bid. This is another way of saying that they agree to sell at the bid price quoted by another party.
• A rotation is when the market changes from moving up to moving down, and vice-versa.

Volume

• Damons webinar 11 13 2019 Part I Volume Analytics (sadly I can’t share this link).

Market Profile

• Damons webinar 11 13 2019 part II Market Profile (sadly I can’t share this link).

Other Resources

• The CME Group education portal.
  • I started on this and quickly realised that I was using too many different learning resources at once.
  • I will come back to these at a later stage.

General Notes On C++ In Sierra Charts

This section has been moved to the post Building Sierra Chart Custom Studies