Can anyone please tell me how to get into the futures market?
A brokerage account would be a good start, particularly one that offers that service.
Let me just say this, if you are asking how to get into the futures market, you sohuld NOT be in the futures market. I don’t say that to talk down to you, but you really need to know what you’re doing.
I wanted to buy some agricultural commodities, that’s why I asked about the futures market. I don’t have much experience trading…perhaps you can tell me why I shouldn’t be in the futures market, and how else can I buy agricultural commodities.
Suggest a book on futures market?
If you want to invest in agriculture, you’re better off just buying an index/ETF unless you are really serious about doing your homework and understanding the fundamentals behind each specific commodity. You could buy an ETF like DBA, an ETN like RJA, or FUD which tracks food prices in a regular brokerage account. If you really want to buy specific commodities you can buy ETFs/ETNs that invest in futures without having a brokerage account that allows you to purchase/sell actual individual futurues contract. The majority of these funds will buy the front month contract so you have to really wacth out for contango which causes a negative roll yield and decreases the fund’s value (ask people who bought UNG the past year about contango). BAL for cotton, JO for coffee, etc. there are a ton of them. Like I said though, most people are better off buying an index. On a personal aside, I’m waiting patiently to buy more commodities because they’ve run up so much recently and eventually China and many other emerging markets are going to need to raise rates because inflation is getting extremely out of control due to QE2 and then QE3 which will come this summer. When emerging economies raise rates, you can probably find some nice dips to buy commodities. Especially things like cotton, where 70% of global demand comes from China.
YOU ARE THE MAN!!!
ETF’s are the way to go for sure.