Review of "A Trader's First Book on Commodities" by Richard Stooker 

This book lives up to its title pretty well. If you've wondered about trading commodities and futures, this is a good introduction.

Do not expect or plan to start trading after you read it. She doesn't pretend to tell you how to trade to make lots of money. She gives you the basics so you at least know the terminology and how these markets work.

I would haggle a little bit. She mentions a few times that when you trade futures you can lose more money than you actually put at risk, but I don't believe she doesn't stress it enough.

I suspect that many people, who want to trade to make money because they're desperate, don't understand that one trade can very wrong can wipe them out financially. That is very different from buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options and Exchange Traded Funds. With those investments, you can lose (at most) the money you put in, but no more.

Futures contracts typically employ a lot of leverage. If buy a contract and the price goes down a lot, the cash equity in your brokerage account can be more than wiped out quickly in short order.

I can't say this happens a lot. Before it does, your broker will try to liquidate your account to minimize the damage. But sometimes futures prices move so quickly that nobody can get out as fast as they want or need to, not even your broker.

Therefore, it's very important to stay in regular touch with your account balance. And don't trade with scared money. Technically, you should not trade with money you can't afford to lose.

I realize there's a great contradiction there, because people who are most comfortable financially have the least motivation to put their money at risk to make even more of it. So the people most attracted to trading as a second or first income are often the most financially unfit for trading.

She mentions futures options, but not in great detail. That is fair, because she's also written a book aboutfutures options. However, I think she could have mentioned -- without going into great technical detail -- that you can use options to construct "synthetic" futures contracts. These have the same ability to benefit from positive price moves in the commodity, without the hazard of going bankrupt while your back is turned.

She does mention using options to manage risk when a future position is going bad.

She does a good job at explaining the current state of futures exchanges, the types of commodities now available, and the characteristics of their contracts, as well as tips on how to calculate your profit and loses.

Sometimes her reassurance that you can learn to calculate the numbers seems a little too cheery. I couldn't help but think that people who have trouble understanding a contract's quote system probably doesn't understand the commodity itself and therefore shouldn't be trading it.

She did do a pretty good, though probably too brief, job of explaining why trading systems -- especially expensive black box software programs costing $2,000 and up -- aren't reliable. I wish she'd explained the problems of backtesting and data mining more fully, because most of the readers of this book are going to be pitched trading systems, and without knowing exactly why they're a waste of money, they may forget what she said and buy anyway.

Ah, but the commodities markets thrive on naive people who can come up with money they can't afford to lose.

If you're thinking of trading in futures, this is a good first book. But read a lot more before you put any money at risk.

John Foreman of The Essentials of Trading recently reviewed "A Trader's First Book on Commodities" by Carley Garner of DeCarley Trading.  Here is what he had to say:

I was recently given the opportunity to read Carley Garner’s book, A Trader’s First Book on Commodities. I think Garner, whose bio lists her as Senior Market Analyst and Broker with DeCarley Trading, as well as a columnist for Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities Magazine, has put together a pretty solid introduction to futures trading. Notice I use the term “futures” there rather than “commodities”, though. The book title tends to reinforce the view that commodities and futures are the same things. The markets were effectively the same thing for many years, but the advent of financial futures a couple of decades back means commodities are in reality just one facet of the futures markets at this point. Garner’s writing doesn’t restrict itself just to commodities in her discussion of futures trading, though.

That little terminology nitpick aside, as I said, it’s a solid introductory book. One of its strengths is that Garner spends more time than most authors do talking about the brokerage side of trading. It’s something a lot of users are likely to benefit from as they make their own trading plan decisions.

In standard introductory trading book fashion, the book also covers the usual material on market history, market structure, margin, terminology, instruments, order types, and quotes. She’s also got solid discussions on the subject of trading as a business and the emotional side of playing the markets.

For more information on A Trader's First Book on Commodities by Carley Garner, visit http://www.atradersfirstbookoncommodities.com/

CXO Advisory Group on "A Trader's First Book on Commodities" by Carley Garner

In her 2012 book A Trader’s First Book on Commodities: An Introduction to The World’s Fastest Growing Market (2nd Edition), author Carley Garner hopes to convey “the realization that anything is possible in the commodity markets. Never say ‘never’ — if you do, you will eventually be proven wrong. Additionally, trading the markets is an art, not a science. Unfortunately, there are no black-and-white answers, nor are there fool-proof strategies — but that does not mean that there aren’t opportunities.” Her further hope is that “this book is the first step in your journey toward victory in the challenging, yet potentially rewarding, commodity markets.” Some notable points from the book are....

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Carley Garner's latest book, "A Trader's First Book on Commodities" is now available at all major book outlets. 

Helena Travaka of the Library Journal had this to say about Carley Garner's upcoming book, "A Trader's First Book on Commodities"

See a Review of "Commodity Options" by Carley Garner in Futures Magazine!

The trading world is full of complex approaches to making money, but none surpasses commodity options trading in its complexity and risk-reward ratio. Betting on the future is what all traders do, but commodity options traders do so with hedging possibilities that make it an attractive approach. In their book, Carley Garner and Paul Brittain lucidly explore this trading approach. The book is well written, clear, and informative as to how one might employ specific commodity options trading strategies to make money. 

SFO Magazine Ranked "Commodity Options" in the Top 10 Investment and Trading Books of 2009!!

DeCarley Trading is honored that "Commodity Options" written by Carley Garner was ranked in the top 10 of 2009 by SFO Magazine.  We have been truly lucky to have such great support from SFO Magazine, FT Press, TradersLibrary.com, Stocks & Commodities Magazine, friends, family and colleagues.  Thanks everybody!

Aaron James of Eastside Financial had this to say about "Commodity Options"

"I'm not even kissing up when I say it's about the best book on option trading I've read.  So many focus on long options or only discuss positions at expiration.  Carley's book covers short options at length, margin requirements for them, (which must be considered) how to profit from them, (not just at expiration) double and out, half and out, (two strategies I've used for years), and how to construct synthetic futures positions with options limited risk yet still allowing for the profit potential of outright options.

I've been doing this for a living for 12 years and made all my employees read this book after I read it in one sitting.  All claimed to have learned something new, although, unlike me, they might have been kissing up.  And anyone who read the book would say the same things.  Good or bad, the fact that I finished it in one sitting should say something good since most trading books are notoriously boring. strategies I've used for years) and how to construct synthetic futures...

I've been doing this for a living for 12 years, and made all my employees read this book after I read it in one sitting. All claimed to have learned something new, although, unlike me, they might have been kissing up."