Improve your futures trading each day with these professional tips 

Futures trading success is all about having the proper mindset, skill set, and tool set, according to Steve Wheeler, trader, coach and systems developer at NaviTrader. In the recent NinjaTrader Ecosystem webinar, “Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Trading Each Day,” Wheeler outlined many of the things he wishes he’d known before he started trading.

Over his 30-year career and after working with hundreds of traders, Wheeler has cultivated many valuable trading insights. To improve your trading, he said, you must know the major trend—and if you try to look for reversals against the major trend, you won’t get very far.

He likened it to trying to swim upstream. Some days the market will trend up or down the entire day; trading short only to see that the market was in a big uptrend is a common mistake traders should avoid.

Put your biases aside when futures trading, Wheeler said. After all, it’s what the market wants, not what you—the individual trader—wants. For example:

• If the market wants to go up, you want to be in long positions or flat.
• If the market wants to go down, you want to be in short positions or flat.

Another way Wheeler says futures traders can improve every day is to not overleverage. Often, when you’re overleveraged, the market seems to know, and your trades don’t work.

Futures trading: “How many contracts should I trade?”

Focusing on risk management will help keep you in the game, Wheeler adds. He suggests limiting your risk to 1% to 2% of your trading capital on a single trade.

Wheeler goes in depth on futures trading tips in the full presentation, which you can view here:

Interested in more futures trading tips?

• Explore NinjaTrader’s on-demand video education library.
• Register for our upcoming webinars to learn about futures trading analysis and more.