Futures charts will visually represent the price history of a futures contract. They can include intraday data--five, ten, 15, and 60 minute intervals--or longer term intervals--daily, weekly, monthly. The bottom of a chart will show the time frame, i.e. daily or weekly data. The right side of the chart indicates the price range for the select time period.

Each bar along the body of the chart is representative of the price of the contract at that particular point in time. For example, on a daily chart, a bar would indicate the high, low, open, and close of the trading session. Visual representation of price data is why traders look at charts. They can clearly indicate whether a contract is in an advance or decline.

The study of charts, along with other tools, is known as technical analysis. Traders use technical analysis to try and predict whether or not the market will continue to advance or decline. There are very popular trading patterns--cup with handle, double bottom, head and shoulders top--that traders believe will indicate a contract's future direction.

The Usefulness of Futures Charts
The widespread acceptance of technical analysis amongst traders, especially amateur traders, is a large reason why most people fail when they try to trade futures. First of all, learning how to properly read a chart is difficult. You can easily lose a lot of money by simply misreading one futures chart. Secondly, futures charts are unreliable indicators of the market's future direction. At the very best they will be right only 50 percent of the time.

Fifty percent, nor even 70 percent isn't good enough for us, especially in the futures market. We would rather be right 100 percent of the time. You might be thinking that is impossible, and you would be right if you relied on futures charts for timing buys and sells. We focus on a trading system we developed that does not rely on charts or any other form of predicting the market's future. Our system generates profits regardless whether the market moves up or down.

In our e-book Trading Futures: Only One Way To Win you will learn the STARS system and how it can never generate a losing trade. By trading closely related contracts in the correct ratio, you too can generate continuous oscillations of profits without ever learning how to read a technical chart. In our book we explain in full detail what contracts to trade and exactly what ratios to trade them in. It is all very simple and is much easier than trying to make sense of charts and graph that do nothing but make you think you can predict the future.