Trading futures contracts on crude oil, wheat, corn, coffee, soybeans, pork bellies, cattle, interest rates, currencies, gold, ethanol, heating, gasoline, silver, copper and others can be highly lucrative. Remember the summer of 2008 when crude oil prices jumped from around $60 to around $150 per barrel in a matter of two to three months. Those who had been trading crude oil futures made a lot of money during those few months. Similarly, gold market is in an unprecedented boom for the last many years. However, many people are just afraid of trading futures. Most invest in stocks thinking that futures trading is risky. Statistically speaking futures trading is no more riskier than stock trading. However, the returns in trading commodity futures can be much higher than those in stocks.

If you want to profit from commodities than futures trading is the best and direct method of getting access to the commodity market. There are several active futures trading exchanges in the US. Three of the world’s largest futures exchanges are located in Chicago.

Futures trading is no doubt risky but if you learn it, it can be highly profitable. As said before, Ricard Dennis and his turtles used to trade the most liquid contracts in the market. The number one is the CME ( Chicago Mercantile Exchange). The futures contracts that get traded on CME include among others stock index futures, foreign currencies, interest rates, commodities, environmental futures and others.

The commodities futures that get traded on CME include cattle, butter, limber, pork bellies, Goldman Sachs Commodities Index, live cattle, milk, lean hogs, feeder and fertilizer. Now as said before, commodities is an important asset class. CME provides you with the opportunity to trade many commodity contracts.

Now, one of the ways to trade stock market is to trade stock indexes like the various S&P 500 like the S&P 500 Midcap, Small Cap as well as the Russell 2000 and the NASDAQ 100. CME provides you with the opportunity to trade futures contracts on these stock indexes as well as their mini versions the E-Minis.

You can easily trade almost all these contracts from the comfort of your home electronically using your computer.GLOBEX is the Electronic Trading Platform owned by the CME Group that allows the electronic trading of these contracts almost 24 hours a day.

The second most important futures exchange is the CBOT ( Chicago Board of Trade).The futures contracts that are available on CBOT include agricultural futures like the soybeans, ethanol, rice, corn, wheat and others. Mini contracts on corn, soybeans and wheat are also available for trading on CBOT.

A mini version of Dow Futures called the E-Mini Dow is also available. You can also trade mini versions of gold and silver futures contract on CBOT. CBOT gives you the opportunity to trade one of the most popular stock indexex the DJIA Dow Jones Industrial Average) in the form of Dow Futures.

Now the best place to trade crude oil, natural gas, gasoline as as well as a host of other energy futures in the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange).This is infact the global hub for energy trading and offers futures contracts on unleaded gasoline, heating oil, electricity, light sweet crude, natural gas, propane and coal.

NYMEX also provides you with the opportunity to trade precious metals like the gold, silver, platinum as well as palladium. You can also trade metals like copper and aluminum on NYMEX. Futures trading is something that is not difficult to do once you get the hang of it. In the beginning, you should just paper trade these contracts for a few months!

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Know this shocking Dow Futures secret that can make you rich. Get your FREE COPIES of the HVMM Ultimate Day Trading System and the Universal Risk & Money Management Tool just now.