Traders' Roundtable

Hi,
Does anyone have any observations on which month of a particular contract is the best one to trade? For eg. if I'd like to trade soybeans, and at any one time there are 6 contracts being actively traded, each with a different delivery month.

Is there a rule of thumb on which of these contracts is the best to trade at any one time? For eg. trade the contract that has 3 months to expiry, till 3 weeks before expiry, then rollover to the next later contract?

Appreciate your inputs!

If you want to ask Total Newbie Questions, there's a special forum set aside just for those. When you do it would be helpful to mention the introductory books that you are having trouble with. For example,

"I'm reading Getting Started in Futures by Todd Lofton and I have a question about chapter 16, Contracts in Brief".

or

"I've purchased Richard Waldron's book Futures 101 from Amazon.com and I'm working my way through it. But Chapter 4 doesn't seem to tell me how to pick a contract month."

The more you demonstrate that you're not a lazy dilettante, the better responses you'll get. Try it, you'll see!

Hello Hiramhon
Sometimes the problem with newbies is they don't quite know that some questions they may not consider to be total newbie questions get regarded as such. In this case I thought this was a subjective topic that depended on each individual's trading experience so I posted the question here instead.

Thanks for your subtle hints of which books to try.

>>The more you demonstrate that you're not a lazy dilettante, the better responses you'll get. Try it, you'll see!

Ok, let's try it. Both the books Commodity futures and options : a step by step guide and Dummies guide to futures and options do not mention anything on when to roll over in contracts.

Thanks

I feel like I've been reading two sides of two separate conversations.

This thread has not been a good one from a decorum perspective.

Hiramhon, yes perhaps hlpsg's message is a newbie question, it is also a question that perplexes some fairly experienced traders.

Your initial response while harsh was at least productive. Your second response was unjustifiably hostile given hlpsg's response to yours. Please try to give other members a bit of a break. If you don't think a question warrants a response, you can point this out or not respond. You certainly have added a lot to various discussions over the years, however, a response like the one above is very likely to incite a flame war with all the attendant nastiness we've tried to avoid here in this forum.

A search for "contract month rolling" reveals that the most relevant previous discussion (which happens to be of comparable "Newbieness") is in fact located in the Futures section, viewtopic.php?t=112. Since the question hlpsg asked is very futures related. I don't think it was a wrong choice to ask it there. It would have been better if he had found the previous topic using the search option and responded there, but searching sometimes doesn't work if you don't use the right words.

There was also a more recent discussion here:

viewtopic.php?t=1210

I don't want this forum to be such a "proper" place that we are unwilling to confront issues that are unpleasant or disagree vehemently, however, I still believe we can avoid personal attacks.

hlpsg, Hiramhon was offering some advice of value to you and other readers.

This reminds me of a recent thread:

viewtopic.php?t=1358

In that thread I recommended the article:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

In particular, the suggestion to show what you've done to try to answer the question ahead of time, that you've "done your homework" is a good one, here and elsewhere.

Your initial post didn't indicate to me that you were "lazy" so but I can see how others might have thought this. Writing a few more sentences to indicate that you've done some work, tried to solve the problem yourself and the steps you've taken will always help you get better answers.

Please read the thread I cited above which talks about rolling contract months, then respond in that thread for answers to your original question about futures contract months.

Respond here for continuation of discussion about the subject of asking good questions, where to post "Newbie" questions, and how not to incite a flame war, if you wish.

- Forum Mgmnt

One possible answer to the Which months to trade question is here:

http://www.purebytes.com/archives/omega ... 23934.html

If you don't/can't test this solution yourself, then you can at least be pretty sure that the author of this message had done more than extensive research on the subject and chose the alternative that he thought was optimal.

TK

Hi c.f. and TK,
Thank you for the links and the information, I will check them out.