Learn To Trade Index Futures
“Trading With Van” Provides Real-Money Trades And Investor Education
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An End To Bull Or Bear
by Alex King, CEO, Cestrian Capital Research, Inc.
To my mind it’s good to have a view on overall market direction; is the longer-term trend up, or down, looking out over weeks and months. This helps set a course for long-term investing of the kind that doesn’t require too much intervention. So far nobody ever got poor following Mr. Buffett’s advice of dollar-cost-averaging the S&P500, re-investing dividends, and sitting back with a cup of coffee to read the newspaper / doomscroll / create memes / whatever.
Investing, though, is not the same as trading. What’s more, one does not need to choose between them. It’s perfectly sensible to run long term retirement-type accounts on a Berkshire Hathaway basis whilst also running short term accounts more actively.
And with that in mind let me tell you a little about one of the services we’re proud to host here at Cestrian Capital Research, Inc - Trading With Van.
Van is a former nuclear engineer turned full-time trader. He keeps it very simple and trades only the S&P500 and the Nasdaq-100. No distractions, no bright shiny objects over there, no today’s-hot-stock, nothing like that. Just the big liquid indices where professional traders can make money all day long in bull and bear markets alike.
His service is based on index futures - specifically e-mini contracts in the ES and NQ family. It utilizes very simple technical analysis - a combination of trendlines and Fibonacci levels - to try to identify key reversals in each index. Van provides alerts to the real-money trades he places at those points. If his analysis suggests the S&P500 finding support ahead of a move up, you will see him add long positions. If the Nasdaq is approaching resistance and his analysis suggests a downturn is on the cards, you will see him apply hedges or move to short positioning. And along the way he explains what he is doing, why, with supporting analysis. Subscribers can also understand the level of commitment to each trade, because Van posts the relative size of each trade - expressed in constant units so that the trade logic can be used in the context of any account or fund size.
If you don’t use futures? Don’t worry. The service logic is based on those index charts - what’s happening with the S&P500 and the Nasdaq-100. So the service can be used very well with simple index ETFs such as $SPY and $QQQ on the long side with $SH and $PSQ on the short side.
The service is going from strength to strength. Van recently posted that he has clocked up a very strong account performance in 2024, exceeding both the S&P and the Nasdaq by a long way; this is the benefit of the hedged model, which if executed correctly means that you can - at a minimum - be hurt less in downturns and - ideally - profit whether the market is falling or rising. No-one does this perfectly, no human, no algorithm, but members of the Trading With Van community have the opportunity to work alongside a full-time trader and learn how to raise their own game along the way.
Join Van if you’d like to raise your game. The service is just $129/month. Or get a 30% discount by signing up for the discounted annual option at $1,099/yr.
Prices for this service rise over time - but you keep your day one price, so the sooner you join, the less you pay, for as long as you remain a member.
You can learn more here, or you can get started right away with the buttons below!
Cestrian Capital Research, Inc - 1 October 2024.