Concerning the derivatives market Warren Buffet has called it the most dangerous economic time bomb in existence, actually his words were: "financial weapons of mass destruction" Like I said, usually in a futures contract you have a "Zero Sum Game" and at the end of the day the books are cleared on each contract that matures on a given day, but like Warren Buffet said about derivatives "I will guarantee you, if you add up the marks on both side, they don't add up to zero". That is a very, very dangerous position to be in on such financial instruments, then add the complexities of some of the more arcane instruments like SSPs and MBSs and it can get hairy.
One of the things that drew me into Futures Trading was the power of leverage, as you said Futures and Derivatives are leverage instruments, it was amazing and, if you used your head instead of your heart, you could see a massive return on your risk. I was always careful to use "stop-loss" orders, butterfly spreads and options to hedge my risk in the futures markets.
