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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.

Richard Dennis had started with only $400 and ended up making more than $200 Million trading commodities. If you want to trade commodities than trading commodity futures is the best way to profit from the boom in the commodity market. Now, let’s discuss the three largest futures exchanges in the world. There are many futures exchanges in the world but these three are the most popular and the most important.

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. 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 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.

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

The world premier futures exchange is the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). The futures contracts that are available on CBOT include agricultural futures like the corn, wheat, soybeans, ethanol, rice and mini contracts on corn, soybeans and wheat.

Interest rate related futures contracts that get traded on CBOT include Treasury Bonds, FED Funds, spreads, municipal bonds, German debt and swaps. Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) futures popularly known as Dow futures and its E-Mini version plus gold and silver futures and their mini versions also gets traded on CBOT.

The third most important exchange is NYMEX. 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.

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! 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.

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