Ready for some fun and a learning experience to boot.  Let's Trade Futures® is a commodity futures paper trading simulator and a basic price charting package designed especially for new traders.  The novice can paper trade (click-through each trading session, no waiting a whole day) commodities by using technical analysis, with the built-in indicators, to make paper trading decisions.  The software, presenting  a simulation of an electronic broker, is intended as a training aid for the beginner.  It can be bought as a complete package containing the program which paper trades and allows technical analysis, an introduction to trading, and over 800 simulated commodity contracts--no downloading necessary.

• Description
          The world of trading commodity futures can be both exhilarating and depressing.  Trading can bring you riches and can drive you to financial disaster.  Interested but don't know a thing about commodities?  Well commodities are all of those items bought and sold as foods and manufacturing items like corn and hogs and oil.  In addition, there are non-physical issues like the S&P 500 but we won't talk about them here.

        To trade, you enter into a contract to either accept or make delivery of a particular commodity at some time in the future (thus a commodity futures contract.)  Where the excitement comes in, is that you need deposit only a fraction of the worth of the contract, called margin, to make the commitment--$800 might be required for a 5,000 bushel corn contract which could be worth $15,000.  As a point on information, the mast majority of contracts are liquidated before delivery--traders are generally not in the business dealing with the delivery of 40,000 pounds of live hogs.

        With only $800 invested, you could profit or lose quickly as the worth of the contract changes on the market.  A 5,000 bushel contract will grow or decrease in value by $50 for each 1¢ change in the price of a bushel of corn.  That change, in the worth of the contract, is added or subtracted from your trading account at the end of each day--a 10¢/bushel change would add or debit your account by $500.  While this is going on, you are required to keep your account above a minimum balance for each contract to which you have committed--maintenance margin.  If it drops below this level, you will receive a call (the dreaded margin-call) to deposit more funds or your contract will be liquidated.

        Needless to say, you should do some practicing before betting with your hard earned money.  This software can provide an easy-to-use tool in testing your trading techniques and to provide some useful trading information.

        After starting Let's Trade Futures and loading a commodity contract, the following screen is presented:

(The colored lines are indicators which you add to the plot.)

        As you can see, the screen display a price char, commodity price information and the status of your simulated account.  The system simulates an electronic broker.  You can:

	Place order to buy or sell contracts.
	Stops can be entered to attempt to protect against excessive losses or to lock in gains.
	A simple click advances the system to the next trading session and you can observe the results.
	Indicators can be added to the display.

This is a complete system.  The trading simulator includes over 800 simulated commodity contracts.  You won't need to download any prices, just start your simulated trading--a sample trading session is included with the simulator.  We've also made Let's Trade Futures - Documentation available.  This file requires Adobe's free Acrobat Reader to open and includes a 160+ page section introducing commodity trading.

The system also includes a basic price charting package, featuring:

	Horizontal line drawing to bound trading channels and to depict regions of support and resistance.
	Vertical line drawing to mark events such as buys and sells.
	Trendline drawing to show changing resistance and support boundaries.
	Bollinger Bands.
	Price Momentum.
	Price Oscillator.
	Zooming Capabilities.
	Daily, Weekly or Monthly time compression.
	The system automatically reloads any indicators (Trendlines, etc.) which you have drawn.
	A multitude of simulated commodity price files ready for your simulated trading.
	You can add your own price files.

• Free Evaluation (Shareware) Version
  The evaluation version is fully functional with the following exceptions:

	This version will not load prices.   One price contract is built into the system.
	Indicators are not saved for later retrieval.  You must draw indicators each time you use the system.
	The evaluation period is limited to thirty days.

To obtain your copy, please go to our Download Area and select the file LTF-SW20.ZIP.

Click for our Download Area

This version is intended to help you decide whether you would like to purchase the Let's Trade Futures software.

• Revisions and Operating Information
  This section lists bug reports, updates and answers to questions from users.
  • Bug Reports
    • 1/21/99
      • Description
        • Program faults when attempting to read price file generated per instruction from MetaStock's Downloader.
      • Cause
        • Multiple "OPEN" column generated by the Downloader.
      • Fix
        • Delete extra column before saving file.
  • Revisions
    • 4/20/98
      • Version 1.0
        First release.
    • 1/11/99
      • Version 2.0
        • Corrects various problems in version 1.0 and adds technical indicators and the ability to save and reload technical indicators.
    • 1/20/99
      • Version 2.0a
        • Fixes program fault when encountering the multiple price columns produced by MetaStock's Downloader.
    • 1/14/00
      • Version 2.0b
        • Prevents adding "Stops" to open orders and corrects a fault that occured when using single decimal prices.
    • 2/19/00
      • Version 2.0c
        • Cleared up program errors that were causing "Illegal operations" errors.  Also corrected errors in some of the price files.
  • Questions
    • How are MetaStock files prepared to be used by Let's Trade Futures?
      • For details on the required format for price files to be used by Let's Trade Futures, start Let's Trade Futures, go to Help, select the Index and search for "Data Files."  You can print the resulting section.  A step-by-step procedure follows:

1. From the Downloader, convert to an ASCII file.
2. Open the file from your spreadsheet.
3. Delete the duplicate column ("OPEN").
4. Change the first ticker to the proper format and then Fill-Down.
5. Save as a comma delimited (CSV) file.
6. Change the filename extension from ".CSV" to ".PRN".

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Last modified: March 17, 2003