Customer Reviews

Getting Started in Futures, 4th Edition

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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've read many futures trading books and I think this is "the" best book for beginners. The language is easy to understand and the author explained things step by step in a very organized matter. If you ever consider learning about futures, this is the book you have to read. I still use it as reference and it's one of my favorite books.

Thank you Todd Lofton. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when I read your book. Having to learn an awful lot about futures trading for a new job fairly quickly, this book was a godsend. I first learned about it from a "strong buy" recommendation at tradingmarkets.com. Between the two, I have made my boss a very happy camper.

This is an excellent book that I recommend to anyone just getting started in learning about futures. The author writes in wonderful detail, and makes it easy for a person to understand the basics of the futures markets. This book is *the* place to start - it's a must read for beginners.

Todd Lofton is affilliated with Futures Magazine and has written an excellent book for beginning traders. I picked this book up at a Chapters location in Canada, and, if you can find it, get it for your library for future reference on futures trading.

Todd's book should be in every beginner's library at home because of its detailed description of each commodity in detail and where to get futher reference info. Also, it introduces and explains what commodities are all about in an easy-to-read format suited for 8th grade level reading. Perfect!

With these good points, it does however to skim over several important issues. First of these is actual trading techniques; Todd gives just a few examples of techniques like call spreads and triangle formations, but wished he went on... Second, he gives little, next to no info on money management leaving the reader knowing that while it is important, how do we do it??? And thirdly, an area that many futures how-to books seem to avoid is price forecasting. True, we can't trade the past and past performances are only statements of what happened with prices. Ok, now where do we go from here?? We sort of need suggestions or tools to predict the market and with a good degree of accuracy. This causes the reader to form one of 3 dangerous trading habits: Guessing the markets, trading at random without a plan and/or doing nothing because the trader is confused. Sure, the readers are taught the basics so that they can call their broker to say "Buy one July Porkbelly at 68" to place a trade, should they be selling instead of buying or should they have a virtue of patience???

Strategy and money management are the heart of successful commodity trading...Readers should then be shown what to do and how to do it. Otherwise, this book will fall into the realm of "Information without application."

I am a successful stock trader and have been for over 5 years.I also trade ETF's.I have been searching for a good futures book to get a good understanding of the rules of the game.This book is poorly organized.It rambles from commodity to order fillings to exchange to nothing.If you are wanting to learn the basics of the exchanges,what is traded on what and the nuances of deliveries and all the questions a beginner has,do not buy this book.I have stopped reading the book after chapter 8.I can not waste anymore of my time.Any book on the subject is better than this one.

The book is really basic in nature and tries to cover what the title conveys. I am disappointed that the math involved in most futures and options is not even touched upon (it could have been even without calculus). There are plenty of other books out there that do a much better job in introducing futures with math.

I am a laid back reader and I prefer to read a book like a novel. Especially when I do nto know anything about a subject.

This is a book for me . I would like to thank the author for his helpful samples with the bottomline (clearly visible) --- it really helps .

Great Job. I will watch out for other books coming from Mr. Todd now.

:)