00:00What do we need to know about actually trading futures?
00:02All right, well, there's a lot that you need to know, and education is a big part of it,
00:05and that's really the main reason that we hooked up with APEX Funded Trading,
00:09so that we can educate the people out there on how to actually trade futures.
00:13The instruments that we're looking at most normally are the S&P 500 futures,
00:18which the symbol is ES.
00:20We trade gold futures.
00:22You can trade lean hog futures.
00:23There's really no limit to what you can trade futures-wise.
00:26And as far as technical analysis is concerned, which is our big thing,
00:29everything that we do is based on technical analysis.
00:32Not that complicated. It's not that hard to learn.
00:35It's just like trading a regular stock. It's just getting used to a different instrument.
00:38But if I'm buying S&P 500 futures, how is that different than just buying an ETF that tracks the S&P 500?
00:45Well, first of all, we're day trading, right?
00:48And it's not different than that if you're day trading.
00:50If I trade the SPY, I think it trades at 400, whatever it's trading at now.
00:55I really couldn't afford to even buy 100 shares of that if I was a regular trader.
00:58It's like $47,000 or $50,000.
01:00When I trade a future, you can buy one futures contract for as little as $50.
01:04That's what it costs when you're trading an S&P futures contract.
01:08So these aren't buy and hold type of trades?
01:11No, we are day traders.
01:13Basically, we are scalpers, which a lot of people might think is a dirty word, but it's not.
01:18We look to get in and out of our trades very quickly.
01:20If I'm trading, for instance, the S&P 500 futures and I buy one contract of an ES, each point that that moves up, I make $50 on if I'm correct.
01:29So if I buy a couple of contracts and I make two points on that, I'm making $200 every time I make a trade.
01:35As a day trader, we're looking to make small amounts of money that add up to bigger amounts of money at the end of the day, the week, the month, and the year.
01:41And we have a very strict set of rules when we're trading this.
01:44We have a stop order on every single trade that we do.
01:47And it's just, it's day trading.
01:48That's what it is.
01:48At the end of the day, we have no positions.
01:51We go home, we put our heads on a pillow, we're able to sleep at night and not worry about it.
01:54Although, listen, I've been an investor since I started working on the floor in 1985, 40 years ago.
02:00We do talk about that occasionally, but we are day traders.
