The last trading days and first trading days of month/ quarter have some unique characteristics in my opinion. Tomorrow is the first trading day of October/4th quarter and today was the last trading day for September/ 3rd quarter. I noticed that sometimes the last and first trading days of the month will have larger than normal moves. my guess is that: 1.large funds are positioning themselves or "squaring off books" for accounting purposes. 2.Longer term traders have the full picture of the monthly chart Either way, always good to do some homework, go back in your charts and see if you are able to notice any patterns etc.
What a tweet can do..... "I use mental stops...." I heard that before and while a very small percentage of traders can do so on a consistent, disciplined manner - I am a fan of placing HARD stops. For me, I usually like to have stops in the system, working on the exchange. Today was a great example. I went to the bathroom, for literally 3 minutes. I was long with a trading system both the MNQ and the ES. While I was washing my hand per COVID protocol, President trump came up with the following tweet: SP dropped over 60 points in matter of minutes..... NQ dropped from 11524 to 11290 in matter of 15 minutes or so. That is over 200 points!! or if you are trading the NQ it is $4000 per contract or -$4000 if you are in the wrong way or are long with out a stop..... I am thankful I used hard trailing stop in this case. See 1 MINUTE chart of the NQ below for your review, under the tweets - 8 minutes move..... Levels for Oct. 7th
HEADS up: Crude inventories are tomorrow at 11 Am EST ( instead of the normal release today at 10:30 AM). Natural gas is tomorrow at 10:30 AM EST
Our weekly newsletter with a quick article on tight stops versus wide stops as well as levels for Monday, corn review and reports for next week is LIVE. DAILY numbers for Monday: WEEKLY Numbers for Monday -Friday:
When markets are moving SO FAST like the NQ/ ES and others have recently, I like using automated stops and limits. One can do so using brackets or even built in strategies where you specify different limits, stops, when to move your stop as a trailing stop and much more. This past week I have seen the NQ make 50-100 points moves in matter of seconds based on a tweet or news etc. I know my stomach feels much better when I have stops and limits working in the system working....( also maybe use MICROS for the same reason?) Here is a good video on how to use the strategy builder with our free software, E-Futures Int'l, which you can demo in real time for 14 days.