Mastering Futures Trading: An Advanced Course For Sophisticated Strategies That Work by Bo Yoder left me wondering if this was a relevant title for the book. The book touches on the subject of futures trading, but I felt more like this book was written by someone who was a stock trader and they wanted enter the commodities and futures arena. The book does contain some good information on trading in general, but I failed to see the “advanced course” and “sophisticated strategies” that the title implies.

Futures Trading Strategies

Bo Yoder has a relatively simple trading strategy. He basically looks for corrections within a trend where he will buy or sell at a moving average – 20, 40 or 200 period. He tends to look for spike bottoms to buy along with follow through. Simple strategies are often the best strategies for trading commodities and futures if you remain consistent and disciplined.

Mastering Futures Trading contains 6 weeks of Yoder’s trading to give you a better idea of how he trades. You will discover that there is nothing complicated about his trading, except that he uses discretion on taking signals if he feels the market is in a “payback” cycle.

Yoder does a good job with money management, which is probably the most important part of trading. This is the biggest take-away in the book. A simple, but effective trading methodology would be the second feature.

Bottom Line

I don’t think this book had a clear direction when it was written. The title would suggest it is a high-level course, but Yoder covers the basics of futures for a good part of the book. The money management part of the book is really the only thing that could be considered somewhat sophisticated.

While reading the book, I came across a few things that just didn’t sit right. Yoder only concentrates on the E-mini S&P and the T-Notes. However, he consistently refers to T-notes and T-Bonds as 10-year T-Bills and 30-year T-Bills. These contracts don’t exist. Also, he uses the word “stock” where the word “futures contract” should be used several times. I just didn’t get the feel that he is a veteran futures trader.

I have no idea how successful Yoder is as a trader, but he claims to be a successful trader and teaches numerous people how to trade. I’m sure he makes money trading, but he could have done a better job covering futures trading. Mastering Futures Trading: An Advanced Course For Sophisticated Strategies That Work does contain some good information, but he doesn’t hit a homerun as far as delivering what the title of this book suggests.