Tuesday’s Results: The suggested short at 4118.50 stopped out. 

Quick Tip: Why Review

Years ago, I was urged to get in the habit of daily review and documentation. All the trades my strategies teed up, not just the trades I took. It has paid off big time. The database I mine for edge now is over 12,000 trade setups taken in all market conditions. It’s easy to pick a date range where certain market conditions prevailed and analyze it. 

Take the trade mentioned above that stopped out. That was a reversal trade that triggered at 10:52 ET. Historical evidence shows that reversals at that time are poor performers. Filter them out. 

When you start using filters based on evidence, your attention may focus on the trades you filtered out that were nice winners. You’ll likely double guess the filter. Keep in mind the sample size your filter emerged from. Don’t get mislead by occasional events. Re-focus on...

Monday’s Results: The suggested short @ 4147.00 caught the high of the day, only had one tick adverse move, and ran for 40+ points.  

Quick Tip: Never Wrong? 

Yup. There are people that are never wrong. It’s easy to accomplish if that’s your goal. Just never make decisions. You can’t be wrong if you don’t decide. 

Successful people, great traders, they all know that one important quality is decisiveness. They also know that they’ll be wrong much of the time. But that’s OK. They also know how to change course and overcome barriers and roadblocks. 

Looking at yesterday’s short trade (see chart) you’ll notice that price was approaching the turning point FAST. This seems like the wrong timing to pick a reversal. Historical evidence suggests otherwise. It turns, for this strategy at least, the slow entries tend to keep moving in the same...

Friday's results: No trades triggered.

Quick Tip: Focus on This

Novice traders focus on how much they are winning and losing. Every entry, hoping for a winner. Every stopped exit, wishing it didn’t happen. This is incredibly destructive behavior. You’re teasing your emotions, begging them to overrule your common sense. 

Here’s how to stop: 

1. Get a rule-based trade plan.

2. Document every trade opportunity including the trades you didn’t take. 

3. Create a rich database of evidence with hundreds of trades, maybe thousands.

4. Calculate the win/loss percentage of your strategy. 

5. Calculate the average winning and losing trade in dollars. 

6. Calculate the net gain and divide by the total number of trades. 

Now you know the amount of money you make every time you click to enter regardless of outcome. That is what your mind should be focused on when a trade setup triggers....

Thursday’s Results: No trades triggered.  

Quick Tip: Being Adaptable

One trait of successful traders is being adaptable to changing conditions. It’s a golden quality but not an easy one to master. The reason is that like many things, adaptability is not a black or white issue. There are all those shades of gray!

Think about your view on the market. Are you Bullish or Bearish? My answer would be “In what timeframe?” The last few days have turned me Bullish in the near term, but my view months out is still Bearish.

Being right or wrong is not the issue. We need to decide for trade direction’s sake where the momentum is leading us and trade with that edge, in the appropriate timeframe. Being adaptable will help.

Today’s Best S&P Turning Points (in fast moving markets consider a wider stop and less size):

Sell 4147.00 stop 4152.75.

Buy 4076.00 stop 4070.25.

Trade Fearlessly,

Mike Siewruk    

Wednesday’s Results: The suggested short @ 3994.50 offered 8.25 points, but you shouldn’t have taken it. 

Quick Tip: Filters

Your trading approach and basic strategy rules should have a positive expectation. We call it “edge.” Like a casino, you’ll lose plenty of trades but in the end you have a profit.  

Here’s the power in review and documentation. Once you’ve captured all kinds of data about your trades you can look for filters. 

The obvious filter yesterday was the FOMC announcement. You didn’t need review and documentation for that one. When the market gets too volatile you simply back off and wait for it to settle down. 

Other common filters are time of day, day of week, even day of month. Try some technical indicators, too. You’ll find benefit with RSI, Bollinger Bands, ATR, and others. 

Keep in mind, these are NOT predictive. They are...

Monday’s Results: Price chopped sideways in a very narrow range for recent volatility. The suggested buy @ 3962.75 stopped out. 

Quick Tip: Time to Change?

All traders experience losing streaks and drawdowns in their trading account. Market conditions change. Some strategies stop working and others start working. It’s all very cyclical.

Handling this is tricky. One voice in your head says, “stay the course, it’ll come back.” The other voice says, “dump this strategy and find one that is working.” 

But it doesn’t have to be a black or white decision. You can reduce your position size to the bare minimum or trade in simulation. Examining your equity curve for clues on how much prior down cycles lasted might help.

The BEST solution is not reactive, though. It’s proactive. Design your trade plan with multiple strategies. Even if you’re not trading them all at once, monitor their...

Friday’s Results: The suggested short picked the top of the market and ran for 26.25 points to the next volume level. 

Quick Tip: Trust or Fear? 

Friday was a brilliant day for our Volume Profile strategy. Four solid winners, one small loser. Looking at the chart above, price was fast approaching our suggested short level, which originated on June 9th. Would you trust it or be fearful? 

Ten minutes later, where we have our final profit target, the plan says… go long! Would you trust your plan or be fearful of losing some of that awesome gain? 

To trust your plan, you need to have a complete, personalized, and evidence-based plan (8 major components). It should be in harmony with a broader trading philosophy. 

If you want to learn more, our FREE “Ultimate Personalized Trade Plan” class has been updated with PAID^tm methodology (Plan/Abundance/Investigate/...

Wednesday’s Results: Neither suggested level triggered.

Quick Tip: Get PAID^tm

Trade plans are essential. But they are one piece of the puzzle. Aside from all the common components your trade plan needs an overriding structure, method, philosophy. We created the PAID^tm method of trading to accomplish this.

PAID^tm is an acronym for Plan/Abundance/Investigate/Decide. Simply said, we trade multiple strategies for an abundance of opportunities which we investigate for best probability then decide which trade to enter.

Abundance is critical. If you’re not getting plenty of quality trade setups you might be tempted to enter trades that you shouldn’t take. When you have choices, then you can be picky without any FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

With choices comes the responsibility of investigation. You need hard evidence pointing to the best probability of success to ultimately...

Tuesday’s Results: The suggested short @ 3891.50 stopped out. 

Quick Tip: Reframe Losing

Our morning Live Trading Room is open for two hours. It’s recorded and posted to the website immediately afterward. There is a “cover” on each recording with a headline that summarizes the session (see above). 

Yesterday was one of those days when every trade I personally took failed. There were winning trades teed up by the multiple strategies we follow. In fact, our trend-following strategy killed it with the S&P. Not my trade selection, though.

Afterward, a team member texted me this: “The trading Gods simply wouldn’t give you a break today, and you still maintained your posture and calm demeanor throughout.” 

The fact is I didn’t feel badly yesterday. Losing happens. My daily cash risk is within my personal risk tolerance.

Winning and losing cycles. Sometimes those “streaks” are...