-oo0(GoldTrader)
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Click here or search Google for “Seasonal Spread Traders Library.”
Seasonal Spread Trading Books
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Click here or search Google for “Seasonal Spread Traders Library.”
GT - you obviously have much experience with spread trades and have presumably read some (all?) of these books at some point.
Are there any of the above mentioned that you would especially recommend? How about for a relative novice (me)? You have recommended JR's book on other sites - however it's expensive and not everyone shares you high opinion.
Could give is a ''best of the rest''. . .
Cheers
Are there any of the above mentioned that you would especially recommend? How about for a relative novice (me)? You have recommended JR's book on other sites - however it's expensive and not everyone shares you high opinion.
Could give is a ''best of the rest''. . .
Cheers
-oo0(GoldTrader)
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Moore Research Center, Inc.
Heck that is like wanting the cliff notes for medical school.
Why Seasonals Work
Really the best thing to do is take Jerry’s WSC, free trial, paper or real trade a calendar spread, and spend a few hours a day exploring the web site.
Heck that is like wanting the cliff notes for medical school.
Why Seasonals WorkReally the best thing to do is take Jerry’s WSC, free trial, paper or real trade a calendar spread, and spend a few hours a day exploring the web site.
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Beach Runner
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Could I point out that Van K. Tharp's book, 'Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom' which is mentioned above - whilst when I read it I considered it an excellent work - only has a small section on spreads (I've just looked in my copy and it's 4 or 5 pages) just in case anyone thinks it's totally devoted to spreads.
-oo0(GoldTrader)
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Click on Reminiscences!
New Concepts is not specifically about spreads, but it does explain how oscillators work. It is the source of parabolic which is an excellent trailing stop on seasonal spreads. So, the books are what a spread trader should be familiar with if not specifically, Buy this spread on May third etc.Beach Runner said:
-oo0(GoldTrader)
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Complete Guide to Spread Trading by Keith Schap
The greatest American chess champion still alive once wrote a book on how to play chess. After explaining the game, he simply teaches you how to kill. Similarly Ross’s Spreads & Seasonals teaches the game simply, and dives straight to the heart of how you can place your first winning seasonal spread trade.
Mr. Schaps textbook is much more complex. It is written for the already active trader, who may want to switch to or try new spreads. Advanced traders, practicing spread traders, mathematicians, and employees of hedge funds and financial firms, will find this book useful. As a result it covers everything, and updates the older spread books into this century. Mr. Schaps works for the CBOT. He does not see a conflict of interest is suggesting that traders rely on brokers for research, I do.
The author explains spreads from the left hemisphere of the brain. Anything that can simply be shown to both sides of the brain in a picture, graph or chart, is instead reduced to a complicated array of digital formulas and intricate equations.General principles as well as advanced ideas in the various ways to spread are taught. You do not have to read it straight through, but you can move to the areas that address your current interests. Besides futures, he goes on to cover Option spreads.Instead of using the normal spread charts, where all a trader has to seek is the spread differential to go up. Schaps takes it two levels deeper with exhibits of columns of numbers, formulas, and statistics. If you don’t use arithmetic every day, run far, far away from this book and its complicated mathematical explanations of otherwise simple concepts.In normal spread teaching, the long contract is stated first the short second. Schap because he is using rows of numbers, has to remind you what is widening and what is narrowing for each type of commodity. You buy the widening or sell the narrowing. Any mix up as to what widening means and you can find yourself on the opposite side of the spread. While other writers may use simple charts showing the historical tendency. Schap examples show a much shorter period of only one or two years. Where Schap does use charts, he shows two lines instead of one. Usually he uses exhibits with columns of numbers, as an alternative to charts. Spreads carry messages about how the market needs to draw supplies into and out of storage. “The price differentials of the spreads help the markets to regulate the flow of goods into and out of storage.” A carry (contango) market (price plus storage), wants product to go into storage. An inverted (backwardation) market (penalizes storage), wants product moved out of storage.
Schaps dispenses with the confusing terms of inter and intra delivery, but uses terms like “cointegration,” and “yield curve shift.”Because spreads isolate the effect of change in the width of the yield curve spread. Yield spreads carry information in advance.
Unlike many spread books that may suggest vague trade dates, for spreads. Schaps has an overview and advanced concepts of spread groups for traders to refer to before making a spread trade in a new commodity. He takes you to deeper layers with the widening, & narrowing. Deeper still the effect it has on storage.
Many spread books have been criticized for using optimized trade dates. Schaps often uses unoptimized exchange expiration dates to exit many of his spreads examples.
Many books may have a chapter about spreads. Only a handful of books are about spread trading. Anyone who takes trading seriously would want to have access to all of the Spread Trading books in his personal library. One successful spread trade could buy the whole lot! In a case like that, Schaps book must be included.
This book is not for the beginner or uninitiated spread trader. As a preview to the experienced mathematician about to trade a new futures group, "The Complete Guide to Spread Trading," by Keith Schap is indispensable..
"Complete Guide to Spread Trading,” by Keith Schap
ISBN: 0071448446
The greatest American chess champion still alive once wrote a book on how to play chess. After explaining the game, he simply teaches you how to kill. Similarly Ross’s Spreads & Seasonals teaches the game simply, and dives straight to the heart of how you can place your first winning seasonal spread trade.
Mr. Schaps textbook is much more complex. It is written for the already active trader, who may want to switch to or try new spreads. Advanced traders, practicing spread traders, mathematicians, and employees of hedge funds and financial firms, will find this book useful. As a result it covers everything, and updates the older spread books into this century. Mr. Schaps works for the CBOT. He does not see a conflict of interest is suggesting that traders rely on brokers for research, I do.
The author explains spreads from the left hemisphere of the brain. Anything that can simply be shown to both sides of the brain in a picture, graph or chart, is instead reduced to a complicated array of digital formulas and intricate equations.
Schaps dispenses with the confusing terms of inter and intra delivery, but uses terms like “cointegration,” and “yield curve shift.”
Unlike many spread books that may suggest vague trade dates, for spreads. Schaps has an overview and advanced concepts of spread groups for traders to refer to before making a spread trade in a new commodity. He takes you to deeper layers with the widening, & narrowing. Deeper still the effect it has on storage.
Many spread books have been criticized for using optimized trade dates. Schaps often uses unoptimized exchange expiration dates to exit many of his spreads examples.
Many books may have a chapter about spreads. Only a handful of books are about spread trading. Anyone who takes trading seriously would want to have access to all of the Spread Trading books in his personal library. One successful spread trade could buy the whole lot! In a case like that, Schaps book must be included.
Hi GT - given that hedge funds and other financial institutions are moving into spreads wholesale do you think this will have a major impact on the reliability of historical patterns? Is this already happening to some degree? Presumably until fairly recently only commodity firms and some private traders were trading this way? I'm sure the sums involves have always been large but the move rise of the hedge fund over the past 5-8 years seems unstoppable and their hunger for new unconventional investment vehicles insatiable.
What do you think?
FN
What do you think?
FN
This is a great thread! =)
Post some more thought on spreads!
How about the argument that many says seasonal spreads that are computer calculated does not work, since they are just coincidences? like: buy the spread may/oct on agust 3 and sell on septermber 22
Post some more thought on spreads!
How about the argument that many says seasonal spreads that are computer calculated does not work, since they are just coincidences? like: buy the spread may/oct on agust 3 and sell on septermber 22
-oo0(GoldTrader)
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Cycles
If you think Corn bottoms at harvest just by coincidence 25 years in a row.
If you think Corn bottoms at harvest just by coincidence 25 years in a row.
Bet on the fluke.
-oo0(GoldTrader)
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Dragons and Bulls by Stanley Kroll
Kroll
Dragons and Bulls by Stanley Kroll
The art of consistent gain
The first thing that impressed me was how much Kroll's Dragons felt like and reminded me of Jessie Livermore's How to Trade in Stocks.
Memoirs
I knew for sure this would be something special because Stanley was not trying to make a textbook or have somebody else write it for him. Unlike many books written for no one in particular, Kroll assumes readers know how to read charts and has had some experience speculating. This book is inner Kroll. Dragons supplements Reminiscences.
Risks
Not written to praise the market or pay homage to his experiments with technical analysis. Dragons covers the essence of speculating whether it is securities that require the greatest risk margin like stocks, minimum margins like futures, or practically no margins at all like calendar spreads.
Strategies
It is clear that Kroll dabbled with fundamentals. He got over that. Then he may have gone a little to far with technical analysis. But it is clear that he honed in on his true contribution to trading with Dragons. Stanley finely figured it out. He had to draw on none other than Sun Tzu to pull it all together with a little help from Partridge. Traders should be more concerned with an overall profitable operation than catching tops and bottoms. The most expensive loss effecting success, is the loss of confidence.
Mort
Dragons is light on Livermore the trader, heavy on Sun Tzu the philosopher. It is not so strange that many people expound on a philosophy as life itself draws to a close. Do you suppose this acceptance precedes death?
Forces
The long shot pays better, but the favorite is the way to bet. Presuppose that every with-the-trend trade will be the big one. You maintain your potential for profit when you hold on, build positions, and sell your losers. Buying strength and selling weakness applies to portfolio management, right thru selection of markets to the time differences between contracts. Buy what's going up, sell or even short what's falling.
Oscillator/ Indicators
Stochastics – entry
Parabolic – pyramid and stop
Macd – trend confirmation
Bollinger Bands – volatility
Moving Averages
Kroll suggests that moving average crossover systems, combined with the slope of the moving average are good enough to confirm a trend. Stanley reinforces a theme that has made has been taught before by Joe Ross in his excellent "Trading Spreads," and by Wells Wilder in "New Concepts," by Jake Bernstein probably in "Seasonality," and spread guru Jerry Toepke of "Moore Research." It does not matter what technical studies that you use, as long as you are comfortable and use them regularity.
Control losses and allow profits to run
Limit risk – percent of exchange margin
Avoid overtrading – churning or too large a position relative to capital
Cut your losses – advance your stops
Parabolic
The most difficult part of developing a trend following system is fine-tuning your stops. Using a percentage of exchange margins has the advantage of being related to the volatility, risk, and the profit potential of each market. Another strategy is to advance your stop after each week. You have to develop a method to reenter lost positions as well as build your position in a trending market.
Spreads
In the early 80's Stanley told me that he did not specifically trade spreads, but sometimes they showed up to advantage requiring fewer margins. Kroll notes that Spreads advantages include higher profits. Here Kroll shows spread charts from the mid eighties and has a whole chapter on spreads in Dragons. Kroll suggests traders watch spread differences as an accurate indicator for managing positions.
Spread Orders
Stanley does not mention market on close spread orders (MOC), preferring instead to leg in and out. But he does suggest giving your broker the spread order. Stanley details the three reasons that you might want to place a spread, switch, or straddles order.
Entering a new trade,
Shifting forward (rollover)
Spreading a losing position
Wisdom
Kroll's tactics remains about the same as he marketed a decade before with Wells Wilder. You can see this in his long-term winners, short-term losers philosophy.
Tactics
Kroll sets up for a major move entering with-the- trend positions, and try's to stay with them as long as possible. Diversification with the addition of China stock indexes. Price based entry signals, no longer optimized. No long side bias. Stop placement that allows time & space for long-term trades to develop. Kroll may get in late on an entry signal that is showing a loss, but when he gets stopped out prematurely he would get right back on board a day or two later, when the trend resumed.
Regardubg Oruce Keveks?
Just as Stanley likes to quote Jessie, following are some quotes from Kroll's Dragons:
Dragons - ISBN-10: 0201420848
Kroll
Dragons and Bulls by Stanley Kroll
The art of consistent gain
The first thing that impressed me was how much Kroll's Dragons felt like and reminded me of Jessie Livermore's How to Trade in Stocks.
Memoirs
I knew for sure this would be something special because Stanley was not trying to make a textbook or have somebody else write it for him. Unlike many books written for no one in particular, Kroll assumes readers know how to read charts and has had some experience speculating. This book is inner Kroll. Dragons supplements Reminiscences.
Risks
Not written to praise the market or pay homage to his experiments with technical analysis. Dragons covers the essence of speculating whether it is securities that require the greatest risk margin like stocks, minimum margins like futures, or practically no margins at all like calendar spreads.
Strategies
It is clear that Kroll dabbled with fundamentals. He got over that. Then he may have gone a little to far with technical analysis. But it is clear that he honed in on his true contribution to trading with Dragons. Stanley finely figured it out. He had to draw on none other than Sun Tzu to pull it all together with a little help from Partridge. Traders should be more concerned with an overall profitable operation than catching tops and bottoms. The most expensive loss effecting success, is the loss of confidence.
Mort
Dragons is light on Livermore the trader, heavy on Sun Tzu the philosopher. It is not so strange that many people expound on a philosophy as life itself draws to a close. Do you suppose this acceptance precedes death?
Forces
The long shot pays better, but the favorite is the way to bet. Presuppose that every with-the-trend trade will be the big one. You maintain your potential for profit when you hold on, build positions, and sell your losers. Buying strength and selling weakness applies to portfolio management, right thru selection of markets to the time differences between contracts. Buy what's going up, sell or even short what's falling.
Oscillator/ Indicators
Stochastics – entry
Parabolic – pyramid and stop
Macd – trend confirmation
Bollinger Bands – volatility
Moving Averages
Kroll suggests that moving average crossover systems, combined with the slope of the moving average are good enough to confirm a trend. Stanley reinforces a theme that has made has been taught before by Joe Ross in his excellent "Trading Spreads," and by Wells Wilder in "New Concepts," by Jake Bernstein probably in "Seasonality," and spread guru Jerry Toepke of "Moore Research." It does not matter what technical studies that you use, as long as you are comfortable and use them regularity.
Control losses and allow profits to run
Limit risk – percent of exchange margin
Avoid overtrading – churning or too large a position relative to capital
Cut your losses – advance your stops
Parabolic
The most difficult part of developing a trend following system is fine-tuning your stops. Using a percentage of exchange margins has the advantage of being related to the volatility, risk, and the profit potential of each market. Another strategy is to advance your stop after each week. You have to develop a method to reenter lost positions as well as build your position in a trending market.
Spreads
In the early 80's Stanley told me that he did not specifically trade spreads, but sometimes they showed up to advantage requiring fewer margins. Kroll notes that Spreads advantages include higher profits. Here Kroll shows spread charts from the mid eighties and has a whole chapter on spreads in Dragons. Kroll suggests traders watch spread differences as an accurate indicator for managing positions.
Spread Orders
Stanley does not mention market on close spread orders (MOC), preferring instead to leg in and out. But he does suggest giving your broker the spread order. Stanley details the three reasons that you might want to place a spread, switch, or straddles order.
Entering a new trade,
Shifting forward (rollover)
Spreading a losing position
Wisdom
Kroll's tactics remains about the same as he marketed a decade before with Wells Wilder. You can see this in his long-term winners, short-term losers philosophy.
Tactics
Kroll sets up for a major move entering with-the- trend positions, and try's to stay with them as long as possible. Diversification with the addition of China stock indexes. Price based entry signals, no longer optimized. No long side bias. Stop placement that allows time & space for long-term trades to develop. Kroll may get in late on an entry signal that is showing a loss, but when he gets stopped out prematurely he would get right back on board a day or two later, when the trend resumed.
Regardubg Oruce Keveks?
Just as Stanley likes to quote Jessie, following are some quotes from Kroll's Dragons:
Dragons - ISBN-10: 0201420848
