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My friend is encouraging me to get into futures trading, but before I do I want to understand something.

Is having a better spot predictor than everybody else sufficient to make money in futures?

For instance, if I can predict spot direction correctly X% of the time, and the movement is nontrivial, does it follow that X% of my futures trades will win?

I suspect not, which is why I'm asking. But I'm trying to understand what I'm missing.

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    Standard reminder that the past is no guarantee of the future, and a model which seems to work may stop working at any time unless it has deep reasons for why it works and is watching out for those preconditions to change.
    – keshlam
    Sep 13 at 18:24

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I can predict spot direction correctly X% of the time, and the movement is nontrivial, does it follow that X% of my futures trades will win?

The futures market is essentially a spot predictor also, so the question is if your spot predictor is better on average than the futures market? Directionality isn't enough - you have to be able to predict the amount of change correctly (or at least predict that it will move more than the futures market predicts). The futures price for equities is generally higher than the spot price just because of the time value of money; for commodities it's more complicated, since futures markets take into account future supply and demand, and, to a lesser extent, the cost to store and transport commodities.

So I would not just look at the success of your spot predictor directionally, but compare it to actual futures prices at the time.

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