165 Ticks Today, 750 ticks this week day trading and swing trading futures contracts

Did you know that we’ve earned an average of 136 ticks each day over the past 3 weeks of trading?

Summertime trading is always a little more difficult because fewer traders are in the market, but we have been doing a fantastic job of taking the trades that show up, following our rules, and never being afraid to look at different timeframes for better day trading patterns.

Today we earned 165 ticks and took 10 trades, to finish off a HUGE week in our trade room.

We have a lot of very profitable members right now, so keep working hard, and if you’re a new member, make sure you check out our ‘Fast Track Program’ which is posted in the Advanced Course download section.

– Crude Oil futures are trading slowly this morning

o We notice pace of tape indicator is < 50 right now, which is VERY slow, so use caution
o Coming off its highs from last night
o We called a nice BIG winning 2-step short last night on the blog and this trade was a 100 tick winner!
o Now crude trades around 75.00 so we have to wait for price to get a little further from the big round number.

o We looked for a breaker at the new lows today, and we see very sloppy price action around these lows, so we will look to take the 2-step reversal instead.

 We took the reversal off the low of day and earned 17 ticks or $170usd
 We had to wait for the BIG MONEY BUYERS to enter the market, and then we took the trade according to our rules!

915am EST

– We took our 3rd trade of the day on gold futures, and I chose to let the trade run, instead of tightening my stop
o Saw a BIG batch of BIG MONEY BUYERS on the tape, which makes me think we may see a HUGE move
o We already had 40 ticks of profit today, so I had some room to ‘breathe’
o The market has already shown us its potential to move today
 Remember yesterday? Remember how the market did NOT want to move yesterday?

• I would NOT want to do this in yesterday’s price action b/c the market told me differently.

1000am

– Im watching a reversal pattern on the 21-range chart of the Russell Futures

o Trading at the highs of the day today, and yesterday

o We have a swing low that’s been made off the highs

o Look for the short below 17.6

o Take ½ my profit @ 16.0, just above the current low of day

o Take ¼ off at the open of the day from yesterday @ 13.0

o Take final ¼ off at the Lows from yesterday @ 09.5

o We just saw the 1 tick higher-high and we saw big sellers at those highs, so the sentiment appears to be in our favor for the short side today.

1100am EST

– We have now broken 100 ticks again for the 10th day of the last 14 trading days

– We filled all 3 profit targets on the last gold trade for a $400 winner!

– We looked for the 2step short on the crude oil, but we lost 1 tick on a reversal, price slowing down and my early exit

– And then we chose to avoid the next 2step because we saw the momentum on the 13-range was getting ready to curl up, or against my trade

• Does it matter if we take a 2 step short or a breaker short INTO the trigger line?

o Yes! We need make sure the trigger line is NOT in our way

• How the range chart can be compared with (x)minutes chart

o Range charts have three very important factors:

 They don’t move with time, they only move with trading RANGE, which helps keep the cleaner, cleaner patterns, less sideways chop, I like the way the charts LOOK

 Easier to identify risk in your trading b/c the range of each candle is the exact same

 Make the patterns all look the exact same, which makes learning the patterns much easier

o Minute chart

 Charts look sloppy, sideways markets don’t show up as easily as they do on range charts

 More difficult to identify the patterns because even though they are all similar, they don’t look the EXACT same like they do with range charts.

o Tick Charts

 Have the same basic problems as time charts

 The only difference is that time is not the variable, which is better, but tick charts don’t solve the problem.

• They don’t help with risk

• They don’t all look the same

• They don’t identify a sideways market the same way a range chart does.

• Do we avoid the Crude Oil and the Gold, Currencies open like we avoid the US market open?

o No, we don’t need to avoid the other market opens

o We avoid the US market open b/c of all the impulsive trading that covers all markets at that time.

 Simply put, I noticed the majority of my losses were coming from 915-935am EST, so I simply decided to stop trading and that’s all it took.

• Filtered time & sales window is set to 5 contracts

o Unfiltered time & sales has NO min, it shows all the orders.

• 21range method

o There is no set stop and targets,

o Watch the video in the advanced course for members training on 06-30-2010

o Watch the video on the 21-range method

• When does overnight margin actually apply?

o It only applies to the time when the market is close.

o Exchange website will tell you when the market is closed.

Crude is closed for 1 hour per day, 6pm EST to 7pm EST its closed, then electronic opens again an hour later.