Yesterday’s results: Shorting 5869.00 stopped out. The long suggestion didn’t trigger.  

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5939.00 stop 5834.25. Short 5895.00 stop 5998.25. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) rises from -14 to +7 with the East bearish and the West bullish. 

Catalysts: Jobless Claims @ 8:30. Fed’s Hammack @ 8:45. S&P MFG/Service PMI Flash @ 9:45. New Home Sales @ 10:00. 

Quick Tip: Update Your Plan

Your trade plan probably started out simple. You had rules for entry, exit, risk, position size, candidate selection, and some filters for changing market conditions. The historical performance was positive. Great start. 

Once you started trading real money you likely encountered trade setups that didn’t make sense at the time. What to do? Grit your teeth and follow the rules? Pass on the trade? 

You felt compelled to be a rule-based trader, but your growing experience and skill level is telling you not to take the trade or maybe even take a trade that comes close...

Yesterday’s results: The suggested trade didn’t trigger. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5908.75 stop 5903.75 if price retraces back from above. Short 5869.00 stop 5873.00 if price retraces back from below.  

The World Index: (+100/-100) eases from -29 to -14 with most of the world mildly Bearish on lower volatility. 

Catalysts: Fed’s Bowman @ 9:00, Barkin @ 12:00. Existing Home Sales @ 10:00. Crude Oil Inventories @ 10:30. Fed’s Beige Book @ 14:00. TSLA earnings after the close. 

Quick Tip: Short Interest

Short interest is a great “off-the-price-chart” indicator you can add to your research for stock and option trades. It’s the number of shares of a particular stock that have been sold short but have not yet been bought back (closed). 

If short interest is high, it suggests bearish sentiment and an unusually low short interest suggests bullish sentiment.

Here are two popular metrics that you can analyze for edge: 

Short Interest Ratio (SIR) or Days to Cover - Tot...

Yesterday’s results: Buying 5867.75 picked the bottom of the session and ran for 29.75 points at the close. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5908.75 stop 5903.75 if price retraces back from above. No short suggestion today. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) eases from -36 to -29 with most of the world mildly Bearish on lower volatility. 

Catalysts: Richmond MFG Index & Fed’s Harker @ 10:00. BRICS Summit starts, IMF day 2. 

Quick Tip: Fear Not

Looking at the chart above how price was approaching the buy level you might feel like you were stepping in front of a freight train. Confidence in your strategy is required. 

Of course, since you knew the entry well beforehand a set/forget order would have been a good solution to any fear you might have watching price approach live. 

The stats should help with your fear as well. This strategy has a history over 5000 trades, stopping out only 32% of the time. 

The winners will require open trade management skills to eke the most o...

Friday’s results: Buying 5908.50 on the breakout was only good for a 4-point scalp. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5867.75 stop 5864.00. Short 5864.75 stop 5868.50 if price retraces up from below. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) plummets from +43 to -36 with most of the world mildly Bearish on lower volatility. 

Catalysts: FOMC Speakers; Logan @ 8:55, Kashkari @ 13:00. IMF Meeting starts. 

Quick Tip: Belief #1

Success at trading, at anything, is formulaic. No one stays successful at anything without a proven formula to follow. What’s yours? 

You may think it’s your trade plan. You may think you need the hottest strategies, the best broker, more risk capital, and better sources of information. All that surely helps but the foundation for your success starts within you. It’s your belief. 

Do you honestly believe you can become a top-notch trader? Or are you thinking of giving it a try? Trying isn’t enough to overcome the challenges of anything worthwhile. It’s a negat...

Yesterday’s results: Buying 5888.50 picked the bottom of the session and ran for 25 points. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5908.50 stop 5904.25 if price retraces down from above. Short 5864.75 stop 5868.50 if price retraces up from below. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) jumps from zero to +43 with most of the world Bullish. Asia up strong. 

Catalysts: Building Permits & Housing Starts @ 8:30. Fed’s Waller @ 12:10. 

Quick Tip: Dividend Plays? Really? 

As traders we’re usually focused on capital gains, not holding stocks over the long term and collecting dividends. However, having a dividend producing portfolio is a fabulous way to balance your wealth growth relative to the ups and downs of active trading. 

John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group, said “Over the long run, it is dividends, and dividends alone, that account for the lion’s share of stock market returns." 

Warren Buffett was a huge fan as well: "The best investment you can make is in a business that has a d...

Yesterday’s results: Neither trade idea triggered. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5888.50 stop 5884.50. Short 5885.25 stop 5889.25 if price retraces from below. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) jumps from -36 to zero with mixed sentiment, the east is Bearish, the west is Bullish on increasing volatility. 

Catalysts: Retail Sales, Jobless Claims, Philly Fed MFG Index @ 8:30. Industrial Production @ 9:15. Business Inventories, Housing Market Index @ 10:00. Crude Oil Inventories @ 11:00. Fed’s Goolsbee @ 11:00. Janet Yellen (tentative). 

Quick Tip: Easy Options

Having a small account shouldn’t prevent you from swing trading stocks. Your solution is to substitute options. With over 700 stocks that have liquid options you have an abundance of choice. 

Plenty of new traders shy away from options. Their perception is they’re complex and hard to learn. They can be complex, and they can be made simple as well. 

Our swing trading team uses a stock-picking strategy that finds w...

Yesterday’s results: Buying 5861.25 offered a 4-point scalp. Shorting 5859.00 offered a 6.75-point scalp. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5823.25 stop 5820.00. Short 5908.50 stop 5912.25.

The World Index: (+100/-100) slides from -29 to -36 with most major world markets Bearish on modest volatility. 

Catalysts: Import/Export Prices @ 8:30. Earnings continue (individual stocks can have a big market impact, consider ASML/NVDA yesterday). 

Quick Tip: Invisible Demand

All markets are influenced by the forces of supply and demand. More demand than supply will push the markets higher. This natural law works on every tradable asset. 

But is all demand visible on a price chart? For indexes, currencies, and commodities, I would argue yes. They are mostly institutional markets, and the footprints large traders leave can be found. Our team trades a chart-based Supply/Demand strategy that has a real edge. 

For individual stocks I would argue yes, but not always. While instituti...

Yesterday’s results: No trades triggered.

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5861.25 stop 5858.25. Short 5859.00 stop 5862.00 if price retraces up from below.  

The World Index: (+100/-100) falls from +21 to -29 with mixed sentiment, China/HK down firmly. 

Catalysts: Empire State MFG Index @ 8:30. Fed’s Daly @ 11:30, Kugler @ 13:00. Contrarian Alert: VIX near 20 is unusual at new highs. 

Quick Tip: VIX Explained 

Have you ever heard of the stock market's “fear gauge”? That’s a nickname for the VIX, or Volatility Index. The VIX helps us understand how much uncertainty or risk there is in the market at any given time. 

It measures how volatile the stock market is expected to be over the next 30 days. In other words, it shows how much the prices of stocks might swing up or down. The more the market is expected to move, the higher the VIX goes. 

It's often called the "fear gauge" because when investors are nervous—like when there’s bad economic news, political uncertainty,...

Friday’s results: No trades triggered.

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5823.25 stop 5820.00. Short 5820.75 stop 5824.00 if price retraces up from below.  

The World Index: (+100/-100) rises from zero to +21 with mixed sentiment on lower volatility. 

Catalysts: Fed’s Kashkari @ 9:00, Waller @ 15:00. 

Quick Tip: Performance Dips

Dedicated traders devote plenty of attention to reviewing their performance, just like professional athletes do. Sometimes we’ll see a dip in our results. Our equity curve will be flattening. We’ll ask ourselves “Is it the market or me?” 

In his excellent book Atomic Habits author James Clear named chapter 20 The Downside of Creating Good Habits. Darn good title! 

Here’s the gist of it: once we practice something enough to become skilled and automatic we become less aware of improving it. We stop looking for the mistakes. After all, once it’s a habit we’re not thinking about it that much. 

Think about how well this applies to our trading. We ...

Yesterday’s results: No trades triggered; the levels remain on the chart. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buy 5789.50 stop 5786.25. Short 5787.00 stop 5790.25 if price retraces back up from below. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) drops from +21 to zero with mixed sentiment. 

Catalysts: PPI @ 8:30. Fed’s Goolsbee @ 9:45, Logan @ 10:45, Bowman @ 13:10. UofM Consumer Sentiment & Inflation Expectations @ 10:00. 

Quick Tip: Market vs. Limit Orders

Market orders all get filled. Limit orders may not get filled. Which is best? 

For stop loss orders market is better. You may experience some slippage in a fast market but that is preferable to seeing big slippage because your limit didn’t fill, and the market ran away. No big losses. 

For entries this is more of a style question. 

If your trade setups are planned like our volume-at-price and supply/demand strategies, you can set a limit order and presumably get your fill. But you may not. Market orders will get filled, but frequent...