I think its because the Whitehouse (President) puts a lot more pressure on the FED than any other prior president that the press release has become important for the FED to explain its decisions to counter the opinions out of the Whitehouse. He (the president) may be the only President in openly (publicly) attack the FED...its done via tweets too. Using twitter as a communication tool or intimidation tool could be setting a standard in governing. wrbtrader
I would specify to Uncle Ben. They would ask him the same question 2-3 different ways, and ask him to parse a FED Statement 2-3 different times, and when things lined up, you felt more comfortable to act. Dammit Janet shocked them all with plainer speak that they did not trust. They freaked. The news conference became The Thing. And by the time they got to know her? She wuz gone. Poor Jerome's Almanac allows him to carry the "This ain't no bullshit" message with more clarity, AND allows him to field "You gonna quit yet?!?" questions to satisfactorily ease the market mind. Yeah: The announcement is not The THING anymore by a long shot. I remember those days! But you know what? The reaction is not spread/staged/stair-stepped over 30-45 minutes, instead of the single massive trade-button-mashing that it used to be. I think that (stability) is A Good Thing.
A trap indeed. I trade intraday SPY based on many, many-factored analysis of MIN30 bars, analysis that will usually permit 1 to 3 good trades a day, w/ 80% win probability for 1-3Rs when my trading implementation of the analysis is correct. When the MIN30s configure into a good trading context, or if there is a long period when they do not, I start looking at Lower TFs (LTFs), in the former case for more granular context & trade dimensioning, in the latter case looking to see if there's something tradable that's not apparent on MIN30. More than half the time, I regret the descent to LTFs -- I end up glued there, miss updates to the MIN30 context, and make bad decisions strictly on the LTFs. I just seem to forget the MIN30 context, or the need to update it. So the conundrum is to use the LTFs for enhanced context w/o getting glued to them. Ideal I suppose would be several monitors, so I could see all TFs at the same time. I could try 2 windows on the 27" imac, but I add so much annotation to the MIN30 chart that it would likely be too much of an eyeful w/ LTFs on same screen. Open to suggestions ... (why this post here -- intended to exit w/ 1R win just before FED-time, but was looking at LTF and did not...)
Either trade spreads or use weekly options for protection but if you try to trade FOMC with "normal stops"....good luck!