The Complete Guide to Spread Trading – Keith Schap

Spread trading, a low-risk, high-profit technique, involves buying a contract in one market while selling a different contract in another market to profit from the imbalance between those markets. The Complete Guide to Spread Trading covers the step-by-step mechanics for successfully executing more than 25 calendar, intermarket, interest rate, volatility, and stock index spreads. It explains both basic and advanced spread techniques and strategies, revealing market situations where spreads are most appropriate as well as clarifying what it means to buy or sell a spread, and more.

All you need to know about the predictable, profitable technique used by millions of professional investors
Professional traders use spread trading strategies to increase their odds of success. The Complete Guide to Spread Trading reveals these traders’ secrets, covering the step-by-step mechanics of more than 25 spread trades and showing you how to implement a low-risk spread strategy in virtually any market worldwide.
Veteran industry analyst Keith Schap draws on his in-depth knowledge of spread trading along with years of conversations with top futures and options trading pros to explain:

• The nuts and bolts of spread trading, with examples of trades and explanations of which markets offer the best opportunities
• Guidelines for choosing and structuring the most appropriate spread strategy for a specific market environment
• Explanations of calendar, intermarket, interest rate, volatility, commodity, and stock index spreads, each with its own chapter or section and with accompanying spreadsheets and charts.

Traders looking for additional opportunities to be on the right side of a trade are familiar with the benefits of spread trading. The Complete Guide to Spread Trading will tell you what you need to know about these remarkable trading tools, and how you can use them to improve your performance in virtually any market situation.

“The guy who spreads and makes a little every day is the one who walks away with the big money.”
–A veteran trader, quoted in Futures
The Complete Guide to Spread Trading outlines the many profitable advantages of spread trading, along with explanations and illustrations of how you can expect spreads to perform in the heat of trading. Self-contained chapters introduce more than two dozen representative spread strategies, discussing the market background and driving economic factors of each strategy, showing how to structure the spread, and reviewing how such spread trades have historically performed in various market environments.
Keith Schap, a long-time author of options and futures training material, explains how to set up and manage spreads of every type in every market as he provides you with:

• Explorations of numerous spread trading techniques from basic to advanced
• Instructions for structuring a spread trade and analyzing its results
• A fundamental discussion of spread logic, and what exactly it means to buy or sell the spread
• How using option spreads can dramatically reduce the downside risk of virtually any market in which you trade
• A detailed look at specific yield curve spreads, and what changes in these spreads can tell you about the overall economy
• Strategies for using straddles and strangles to generate profits in static, sideways markets
• Chapter-ending “A Word of Caution” sections that outline potential perils of chosen strategies, and proven techniques for avoiding or repairing them

Because spread trades have a basis in the economics of the markets involved and employ a structure designed to respond to those economic drivers, they have become popular with professional traders of all types. The Complete Guide to Spread Trading introduces you to the profitable benefits of spreads and walks you through play-by-play descriptions of actual trades in numerous markets, giving you the knowledge and confidence you need to make spread trading a high-percentage, lower-risk component of your overall investing and trading strategy.