When I first started trading futures over 25 years ago, the conventional wisdom was that you should trade each market with the exact same strategy.
In fact, this wisdom continues to be in play today, among traders who trade in multiple markets.
Based on my own research and testing over the years, I believe this is not a good idea.
Just basic testing of simple strategies such as breakouts and moving averages demonstrated that this is the case.
The reason for this is that different sectors work with different supply and demand factors.
For instance, the stock market tends to move in longer term trends that may last up to several years. These trends are driven by longer term economic cycles.
The same holds true for interest rate markets, and to a lesser degree, currency markets.
However, agricultural markets tend to have shorter term cycles. This because prices will impact how much of a commodity a farmer will plant from one year to the next.
When prices are high, a farmer will plant more of a crop, and vice versa when prices are low.
Therefore, a trend toward higher prices may last for only a season, unless the issue that is driving prices higher persists, such as a multi-year drought.
With this in mind, where it may be a good idea to employ a strategy using longer term moving averages in the stock market, this strategy will usually not work very well in the grain markets.
This is why it is also a good idea to not just blindly trade with a technically based trading strategy.
Looking at other factors, such as news, fundamentals, sentiment and chart structure can help filter out some of the noise.
Ultimately, if you want to do better than mediocre returns, and you are not some sort of a rocket scientist capable of analyzing data beyond the normal trader, then you are going to need to learn to be better than your core trading system.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE PERFORMANCE. THE RISK OF LOSS IN TRADING FUTURES CONTRACTS OR COMMODITY OPTIONS CAN BE SUBSTANTIAL, AND THEREFORE INVESTORS SHOULD UNDERSTAND THE RISKS INVOLVED IN TAKING LEVERAGED POSITIONS AND MUST ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH SUCH INVESTMENTS AND FOR THEIR RESULTS.
TRADE RECOMMENDATIONS AND PROFIT/LOSS CALCULATIONS MAY NOT INCLUDE COMMISSIONS AND FEES. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR BROKER FOR DETAILS BASED ON YOUR TRADING ARRANGEMENT AND COMMISSION SETUP.
YOU SHOULD CAREFULLY CONSIDER WHETHER SUCH TRADING IS SUITABLE FOR YOU IN LIGHT OF YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES AND FINANCIAL RESOURCES.