Futures Trading
The Best Futures Markets to Trade, From Crude to Crypto
Beyond the equity index Eminis, a whole board of futures markets trades around the clock – and the same order flow edge works on every one of them.
This page is the home of futures trading on Emini-Watch: a market-by-market comparison of the best futures to trade, practical essentials like margins and taxes, and guides to the individual markets covered in the weekly futures market recap. The approach never changes, whatever the market: Follow the Professionals, Fade the Amateurs.
The Best Futures Markets to Trade
The best futures contracts to trade are the ones that match your experience, account size and time zone – not whatever moved most last week. Here’s the full board compared. Each ticker links to the archive of everything written about that market, and you can check current day and overnight rates on the live futures margin requirements page before you size any position.
| Market | Ticker | Personality | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emini S&P 500 | ES | Deepest futures market in the world, clean order flow | Day trading – the place to start with micros (MES) |
| Euro FX | 6E | Orderly, trends on central bank divergence | European hours, swing trades |
| British Pound | 6B | Sharper, news-sensitive moves | London session day trades |
| Australian Dollar | 6A | Commodity-linked, steady trends | Asian session, swing trades |
| Japanese Yen | 6J | The market’s risk-on / risk-off barometer | Overnight moves, macro swing trades |
| 10-Year Notes | ZN | Huge liquidity, small tick, mean-reverting | Swing trades around macro data |
| 30-Year Bonds | ZB | Bigger tick, trends better than notes | Swing trades |
| Bitcoin | BTC | 24/7 volatility, fragmented data | Experienced traders only |
| Ethereum | ETH | Higher-beta crypto | Volatility seekers |
| Crude Oil | CL | Big intraday range, trends hard, news-driven | Experienced day traders |
| Natural Gas | NG | Violent and seasonal – the widow-maker | Swing trades with defined risk only |
| Gold | GC | Trends on real yields and the US Dollar | Swing trades, wealth protection |
| Silver | SI | Gold with 2-3x the volatility | Volatility seekers |
| Copper | HG | Global economy barometer, choppy intraday | Macro swing trades |
| Corn | ZC | Seasonal, weather and USDA report driven | Swing trades, smaller margins |
| Soybeans | ZS | Most active grain, big report days | Swing trades |
| Wheat | ZW | Headline and geopolitics driven | Swing trades |
Almost every market above now has a micro contract (MES, MCL, MGC, MBT and more) at one-tenth the size. The best micro futures to trade are the same as the best full-size contracts – micros just let you learn on real order flow without doing real damage.
Which Futures Contracts Should You Trade?
Best futures to trade for beginners
One market: the Emini S&P 500, in micro (MES) size. It has the deepest liquidity, the tightest spreads and the cleanest order flow of any futures contract – which means the professional versus amateur activity is easiest to read. Trade one market until you’re consistent, then diversify. The Emini trading guide covers this market in depth.
Best futures to day trade
Day trading needs two things: liquidity (so you can get out at your price) and intraday range (so there’s something worth catching). ES and Crude Oil have both. The bonus of day trading futures: the best moves happen in the first 2 hours of the US session, so you can be done by 10:30 am EST and off the computer.
Best futures to trade at night
If you live outside US hours – or hold a day job – the currency futures are your friend: 6E and 6B are most active in the European session, 6A and 6J in the Asian session. Bitcoin trades 24/7, and Gold moves around the clock in response to macro headlines. Overnight sessions are thinner, so trade smaller and respect the wider spreads.
Practical Essentials
Futures Margin Requirements: Live Data – Current initial, maintenance and day trading margins for every market in the table above, pulled live from Interactive Brokers and TradeStation. Bookmark it – margins change with volatility.
Day Trader Tax Loopholes – How to structure your trading business, and which tax strategies still work versus which are now risky.
Market Guides
Day Trading Crude Oil – Why CL has become one of the best day trading vehicles: volume, volatility and how the ‘Better’ indicators read it.
Trading Forex with the Better Indicators – How to get real volume data on a decentralised market, from a trader who does it in a non-US time zone.
Do the Better Indicators Work on Bitcoin? – Yes and no. The problem isn’t the indicators, it’s Bitcoin’s fragmented data – here’s what to use instead.
Gold and Silver: Protect Your Wealth from Money Printing – Why the metals matter even if you never trade them, and what their big moves tell equity traders.
Macro & Rotation
The Japanese Yen Carry Trade and the US Stock Market – One of the most important macro relationships in futures: when the Yen unwinds, equities feel it.
ChatGPT Macro Portfolio: Can AI Beat the Hedge Funds? – I paid $0 for the kind of macro analysis hedge funds charge $250K a year for. The experiment, live.
ETF Trading Strategy: Find Beaten-Down Markets Worldwide – A simple intermarket rotation method for finding markets the crowd has abandoned, before it piles back in.
All Futures Trading Articles
Futures vs Options vs Everything: Leverage Ranked ($10K Test)
Futures vs options vs leveraged ETFs: eleven ways to trade the same $10K move, ranked by after-tax return using real quotes. One clear winner.
ChatGPT Macro Portfolio: Can AI Beat the Hedge Funds?
This experiment sits squarely in the world of trading global futures markets – the kind of macro-driven, multi-asset thinking that separates serious traders from the crowd. Last week, I paid $0 for macro analysis that hedge funds charge $250,000 a year to access. How? I asked ChatGPT to design a …
Day Trading Crude Oil with the Better Indicators
The ‘Better’ indicators aren’t optimised, so use them on any market or timeframe. Crude Oil is one of the futures markets where they work particularly well. Crude Oil has become a great day trading vehicle over the last few years. There is plenty of volume (liquidity), volatility (intra-day range) and …
Trading Forex with the Better Indicators [Volume Data]
If you’re in a non-US time zone, Forex could be the market for you. It sits alongside crude oil, gold and other instruments covered in the futures trading guide on this site. Here’s a great email from a Forex trader, Petr S., on how he uses the ‘Better’ indicators to …
Japanese Yen Carry Trade and the US Stock Market
I’m surprised I haven’t looked at this relationship before – the relationship between Equities and the Japanese Yen. It’s one of the most important macro dynamics in the futures markets I trade, and understanding it gives you a real edge in reading equity market risk. Traditionally Japan has been the …
How to Protect Your Wealth from Money Printing
Gold and Silver made huge down moves this last month. Why should you care? After all, you’re an Emini day trader. Well hopefully this video sheds some light on the gold and silver markets – and why they matter in non-equity futures markets. “When gold is a free market, not …
Do the Better Indicators Work on Bitcoin? Yes and No
Do the ‘Better’ indicators work on Bitcoin? This is one of the more unusual questions in futures trading – and the answer is a qualified yes and no. And that’s the problem. Bitcoin data is all over the place and there is no single unified data feed. As of November …
ETF Trading Strategy: Find Beaten-Down Markets Worldwide
An ETF rotation strategy is one of the smartest approaches in futures market trading – and this method uses simple intermarket analysis to find beaten-down markets before the crowd piles back in. Been mulling over my longer-term investment strategy for a while now. Emini day trading, real estate and cash …
Futures Margin Requirements 2026: TradeStation vs Interactive Brokers, Live
Futures margin requirements are one of the first practical things to understand in futures trading – and one of the most annoying to look up, because every broker buries them in a different corner of their website. So this page does it for you: live margin data, pulled automatically from …
Day Trader Tax Loopholes: What Still Works in 2024
Structuring your trading business to significantly lower your tax bill is becoming increasingly difficult and risky – but it’s still worth understanding if futures trading is your main income. Clarification – Tobin Tax The Tobin Tax discussed in the video has NOT been introduced for Emini trading. The calculation shown …
Trade Them All With One Toolkit
The guides above give you the map. But if you’re serious about trading futures, these are the indicators I actually trade with – tested on every market in the table above:
- Better Momentum – Identifies momentum shifts before they show up on price
- Better Sine Wave – Pinpoints cycle turning points
- Better Pro Am – Separates professional activity from amateur activity
Click here to see the full ‘Better’ Indicator suite. Follow the Professionals, Fade the Amateurs.
