A research desk that shows its work.

Futures Playbook is the membership site; FP Terminal is the research desk members use. The desk covers index, energy, metals, treasury, FX and agricultural futures in three sessions a day — what is moving, why, and what is scheduled — and publishes its research in the open, including the studies that fail. The pre-registrations, results and code are on the research page.

Who operates it

Futures Playbook and FP Terminal are operated by The Futures Playbook LLC, a Florida limited liability company (Florida, United States). The desk was founded and built by Dr. Alex Djahankhah, DBA, a computer-science professor and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, who writes the research rules, pre-registers the desk's studies and runs the grading. His background is at alexdjahankhah.com.

Views are my own and do not represent the Department of Defense or the U.S. Marine Corps.

The Futures Playbook provides general research, not personal account management or brokerage services. Research does not assess your financial circumstances or suitability. No regulatory approval, endorsement or exemption is represented by these disclosures. The desk does not manage accounts, hold client funds or place trades for anyone. Every member receives the same research.

What is graded

The desk does not name trades. Until October 4, 2026, every session edition crowned a pick with a direction and levels, and every pick was graded whether it won or lost. Walked on the tape, the picks showed no edge, so the desk retired them: the editions are now session briefs that describe the market.

• No longer sent to members: the options desk's morning ideas and the desk alerts sent through TradingView. Since October 8, 2026 both are kept as internal research, graded privately, and are not published.
• The pick archive (through October 3, 2026) keeps every result as graded. A pick was walked on the tape: entry only on a confirmed 5-minute close through the trigger, filled at the next 1-minute open; the stop was the published invalidation; the target 1.5 times the risk measured from the fill; a bar that touched both counted as the stop; anything still open when its window closed was marked at the last print. No model was involved in that replay.
• Picks published without captured levels (older editions and watchlist ideas) were graded by a scorecard model reading that session's tape and reported separately, because the two graders disagreed; where the tape graded a pick, its result is the one of record.

Results are stated in R, multiples of the risk taken, and are hypothetical: simulated fills, gross of commissions, fees and slippage.

What is commentary

Almost everything the desk publishes explains the market rather than calling a trade. None of this is graded, and none of it is a recommendation:

• The session briefs — London, New York and Asia, pre-open and midday: what is moving, why, what matters inside the window and the event risk.
• Market-context and geopolitics briefs, and the arbitrage briefs that compare the headlines with what price is doing.
• Economic-calendar previews, release recaps and the plain-English notes on what each release measures.
• The catalyst wire, flow and positioning notes, and the dealer-gamma level maps for index futures.
• The Symbol Select board, which ranks the whole universe each session; it is a shortlist, not a trade.
• Ask the Desk answers, education posts, and posts on Instagram and other social channels.

Questions

Write to customerservice@futuresplaybook.com or use the contact form. The risk disclosure covers hypothetical performance, data limitations and the limits of model research in full.