Trading Information - VantagePoint

Soft Futures

Softs is simply a label for a set of commodities, usually including:

Cocoa Coffee Cotton Lumber Orange Juice Sugar

Grain Futures

Grain trading has been around since the beginning of civilization.The grains futures contracts of today are cousins of ancient trading and are as important now as they were then. The most traded grain futures include:

Canola Corn Oats Rough Rice Soybean Meal Soybean Oil Soybean Wheat

Metal Futures

Metals trading takes many forms and some of the most popular metals are:

Copper Gold Palladium Platinum Silver

Energy Futures

The number of hedge funds with energy trading strategies doubles yearly according to Forbes magazine and is now an important part of many overall trading mixes. Energy futures include:

Brent Crude Futures Gas Oil NYMEX Heating Oil Light Crude Oil Natural Gas Unleaded Gas

Meat Futures

Meats futures are financial instruments that are used to hedge price risk or to speculate on price fluctuations in livestock and meat markets. The meat futures include:

Feeder Cattle Frozen Pork Bellies Lean Hogs Live Cattle

Exchange Traded Funds

ETFs are groups of securities that are traded just like individual stocks.

Dow Diamonds (DIA) Energy SPDR Financial Sector SPDR Semiconductor HOLDR ETF MidCap SPDR Trust ETFs iShares MSCI EAFE Index iShares MSCI Japan Index QQQQ (NASDAQ 100) iShares DJ Real Estate iShares Russell 2000 Spyders (S&P 500) StreetTracks Gold Trust iShares TR LEH 20+ T-Bond

Interest Rate Futures

Interest Rate Futures are defined as a percentage of the value of the applicable debt. The value of interest rate futures contracts is tied to interest rates.

30-Year Bonds Bund Trading Euro Forex Treasury Note

Indices Futures

Stock index futures are traded in the number of contracts. Each contract is to buy or sell a fixed value of the index.

Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) CAC 40 Index Continuous Commodity CCI Index DAX Index E-Mini DJIA E-Mini NASDAQ 100 E-Mini S&P 500 Index EuroStoxx 50 Index FTSE 100 Index Hang Seng Index NASDAQ 100 Index NASDAQ Composite Index Nikkei 225 Index Singapore Straights Times Index S&P 100 Index S&P 500 Index Russell 2000 Index Share Price Index 200

Currency Futures

Currency Futures is defined as transferable futures contracts that specify a price at of a specific currency that can be bought or sold at a future date. Common currency futures contracts traded include:

Australian Dollar Canadian Dollar Japanese Yen Mexican Peso British Pound Swiss Franc US Dollar