About Imperial Futures

Frank La Placa is the President of Imperial Futures commodity brokerage in Chicago, Illinois. Frank has spent his entire professional life in the grain futures industry, starting on the floor of the CBOT in 2000 as a runner and working all the way up to the position of broker in the soybean futures pit. When the markets turned electronic, he started working directly with customers at two major Illinois Agricultural Firms.  Along the way, Frank continued to invest in his knowledge of the grain and futures industry.  He recently received a Master of Options designation from The Chicago School of Trading and a Basis Trading Administration designation from White Commercial Corporation through the University of Arkansas.  In 2015, Frank established Imperial Futures to realize his vision of providing superior customer service and sound trading and risk management advice to a variety of agricultural clients.  Imperial Futures specializes in agricultural marketing and speculating through futures and options. The company focuses on a client base that includes row crop producers, cattle and hog operations, soybean crushing facilities, physical grain buyers and speculators.  Drawing on the experience gained in Frank’s diverse background in the industry, Imperial Futures uses the spread market, technical analysis, fundamental analysis and the options market to give customers an edge in the cash market, risk management and speculative endeavors. 

Frank uses Elliot wave theory as his primary forecasting tool when it comes to technical analysis, Frank has found that Elliott Wave gives him an edge in finding when a market may turn and when a market will continue to trend. You will never hear Frank talk about overbought/oversold, moving averages, or market derived technical indicators.  Those are all lagging the true market indicator: price.  For shorter term or swing trades, Frank utilizes Market Profile to look inside the auction process and find pivot levels that the market may need to revisit.  This gives his traders short term targets and ideas of how to position. When speculating, risk management is the primary concern, and all participants view risk differently.  Frank provides risk parameters for multiple time frames, always keeping an eye toward the most efficient strategies to manage said risk. Used in conjunction with futures, options provide a way to maximize leverage for all speculative strategies. Through his education at The Chicago School of Trading and his own experience trading options, Frank knows that more goes into options than buying or selling.  Volatility is the most important variable when it comes to option trading.  Understanding how volatility affects an option before a major report or how puts and call are priced in conjunction with each other provides a great deal of insight in structuring all option trades. Utilizing volatility as the major input in all option trading decisions provides an edge beyond the obvious ownership or writing of options.

This material has been prepared by a sales or trading employee or agent of Imperial Futures, Inc. and is, or is in the nature of, a solicitation. There is a significant risk of loss when trading futures and options contracts. Please read our full disclaimer.

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