This collection contains articles written by Active Trader and Options Trader contributor Keith Schap, author of the book The Complete Guide to Spread Trading (McGraw-Hill, 2006). In these articles, he explores different futures (including single stock futures) spreading techniques, seasonal trading strategies, and ways all types of traders can use volatility to their advantage.

This collection is 30 percent off the regular price. Price shown is the discounted price.

Another Keith Schap collection, "Options Strategy collection, Vol. 1," is available for purchase for $21.70. Click here for more details.


ARTICLE 1: "Trading new-crop/old-crop futures spreads" (Active Trader, August 2005)
New-crop/old-crop spreads have long attracted professional futures traders because they depend very little on price direction. These intermonth spreads are driven by fairly consistent seasonal supply-demand factors. Trading spreads instead of outright positions allows you to exploit the more predictable nature of intermonth relationships.

ARTICLE 2: "The TUT spread: An active spread for active traders" (Active Trader, October 2005)
The U.S. Treasury yield curve adjusts constantly to the ebb and flow of economic news and inflation fears; even relatively small yield-curve shifts can generate gratifying results for yield-curve spread traders. The spread between 10-year and two-year T-note contracts offers a vehicle for taking advantage of interest rate shifts.

ARTICLE 3: "Sector vs. index: The single stock futures-Dow spread" (Active Trader, November 2005)
Trading single stock futures against a stock index contract requires careful preparation, but it allows you to take advantage of areas of the market that are outperforming (or underperforming) the market.

ARTICLE 4: "Energy futures spreads" (Active Trader, December 2005)
Potential supply disruptions can create large shifts in crude oil and gas spreads. Analysis shows how these markets reacted to Hurricane Katrina.

ARTICLE 5: "Trading the energy story with calendar spreads" (Active Trader, January 2006)
Futures spreads tell stories that conventional price charts don't even hint at. Trading the spread in the crude oil and gasoline futures markets is a fairly conservative way to take advantage of subtle price shifts between these markets.

ARTICLE 6: "The platinum-gold sentiment spread" (Active Trader, February 2006)
The U.S. economy cycles between periods of relatively strong growth and periods when rising inflation erodes earlier gains and stunts growth. One way to trade those shifts in market sentiment is to trade platinum-gold futures spreads.

ARTICLE 7: "Implied volatility: An overlooked tool for stock and futures traders" (Active Trader, April 2006)
Implied volatility isn't just for option players - it can provide useful market estimates as well as forward-looking support and resistance levels for all traders.

ARTICLE 8: "Stock index spreads: S&P vs. Naz" (Active Trader, May 2006)
They aren't often the subjects of spread trading, but the obvious connections and subtle differences of various stock index futures (in this case the S&P 500 and Nasdaq) offer opportunities to play one market off the other. If purchased separately, these articles would cost more than $34. Now you can download them as a single PDF collection for $23.81 - a 30 percent discount.