The NY Board of Trade is now a subsidiary of ICE (Intercontinental Exchange). As a result, investment professionals refer to the NY Board of Trade as ICE. Although you can trade commodities, such as sugar and coffee, on the New York City Board of Trade, you also can trade futures and options on other products, such as foreign currencies.

The exchange may not be as well known as the NYSE or NASDAQ, but the New York City Board of Trade is a force with which to be reckoned. In order to be a successful trader, you need to become familiar with this exchange. These three areas will help you become familiar with NYBOT:

1. NYBOT options information on the New York Board of Trade

2. Price quotes on NYBOT futures that trade on the New York Board of Trade

3. ETFs (exchange traded funds) for NYBOT trading

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Get options information on the New York Board of Trade

Various sites online provide information about the NYBOT, particularly options or contracts. You can purchase options on products such as cocoa, orange juice, or coffee. If you're into energy or crude oil, you can also purchase these contracts on the NYBOT.

I recommend: Before looking at other websites, go to ICE. It will list all of its options, including energy, agricultural commodities, and currencies. Reuters is another website that offers comprehensive information about the New York Board of Trade.

Obtain price quotes on NYBOT futures that trade on the New York Board of Trade

It's important to keep up on the price quotes of NYBOT futures. You'll need to decide whether you want real-time or delayed price quotes. Most websites should give you the ability to customize your price quotes. For example, you might want to look at prices of NYBOT futures from a month ago, or perhaps you might want to focus only on the open or close prices.

I recommend: INO.com Exchanges offers close and open price quotes on foreign currencies as well as other commodities, such as cocoa or sugar. The company also provides charts on options and futures so you can time your buy or sell decisions. Xignite also will show price quotes on futures from the New York City Board of Trade. You’ll find this website valuable because you can incorporate the price quotes into your applications, such as Microsoft Excel.

Use ETFs to trade indexes on NY BOT

If you're ready to start trading on the New York City Board of Trade, start by using ETFs (exchange traded funds) to trade indexes. ETFs are like mutual funds in that you trade a particular index, but you trade it like a stock. NYBOT has several indexes.

I recommend: iShares is one of the most popular ETFs on the market; iShares is owned by Barclays. One of its indexes, the Russell 2000, is on NY BOT. RydexShares is also popular. Like iShares, RydexShares also has its own index fund of the Russell 2000.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Make sure you not only have a profit objective when trading securities on the NY Board of Trade, but an exit strategy if you have a losing position.