Futures Trade Reports
Focused on 10 futures markets (including indices)
cATEGORIES
Comparing Volatility in 10 Futures Markets Post-Selloff
We’ll use the Volatility Box models as a structure, to easily rank the markets.
Nasdaq Futures (NQ) Trade Walkthrough
In this video, we will do a step by step walkthrough of the 4 major index markets, spending extra time on the Nasdaq futures (/NQ).
We had trade setups that triggered on the Nasdaq and Russell futures, both of which were fairly nice winners. The Nasdaq hit both its first and second targets, while the Russell hit its first target only.
With the S&P and the DOW futures, we did not have any triggers that met our Volatility Box Trade Plan rules. The S&P (/ES) breached our Volatility Box entry li
Scalp Setup on S&P 500 Futures
By 7 AM PT, the Volatility Box allowed us to get a quick measure of ranking of volatility within the 4 major indices markets.
Today, that ranking was the following (in order from least to most volatile):
1. ES
2. NQ and YM
3. RTY
The S&P 500 was the least volatile market, still respecting our Scalper Volatility Box. Meanwhile, the DOW and Nasdaq had both broken outside of the scalping models, suggesting more volatility than its peer.
The Russell 2000 was the most volatile, having breached ou
Post-Election Volatility Trading
With the election being a close race, we had a good deal of uncertainty that translated into volatility for our 4 major index markets.
During the after hours activity as the election results were slowly trickling out, we saw the S&P, Nasdaq, DOW and Russell futures all moving wildly (with the NQ up 3.5%+ in after hours). This same volatility continued into the market place today.
As a result of this volatility, we had a variety of different trading opportunities set up, which we’ll discuss in
Pre-Election Volatility in the S&P 500
With the election tomorrow night, we’re starting to see some of the “funkiness” that we would expect from pre-election night volatility in the S&P 500.
Specifically today, we had the market internals suggest to us to expect more buying pressure as the day progressed. We also saw a steady rise in the Cumulative TICK indicator, suggesting more buying than selling pressure.
However, when you contrast that with what price action actually did, we’ll see a much different story. Instead of price go
Pre-Election Volatility in Index Markets
With the election right around the corner, we’ve had a good amount of volatility enter our 4 major index markets.
In today’s video, we’ll break down the trade setups that we had in the S&P, Nasdaq, DOW and Russell futures markets. If you don’t trade the full size futures, you can also use the micro-futures equivalents, or even the ETF options.
With today’s chop, we had the S&P and DOW really chopping back and forth in between our Futures Volatility Box entry lines.
We triggered both long an
Hourly and Daily Volatility Levels – SPY, QQQ, DIA, IWM
As volatility traders, the 2020 election has led to an increase in not only volatility, but also trade opportunities in many of the major markets.
In today’s video, we’ll contrast our Hourly Volatility Box levels with the Daily Volatility Box levels in the 4 major indices. We’ll take a look at ES vs. SPY, NQ vs. QQQ, DIA vs. YM, and IWM vs. RTY.
We’ll also highlight the “Likely Trending Down” heads up that we received with the Cumulative TICK Pro indicator, and how to trade using market inte
Stimulus Volatility – Futures and Stock Trades
We had stimulus volatility act as a catalyst, leading to some nice trade setups in both futures and stocks.
In today’s video, we’ll cover trades in the 4 major index market futures, along with some stock setups in Pinterest (PINS), FarFetch (FTCH), Baidu (BIDU) and DOW Inc. (DOW).
The first half of the video will focus on the indices trades, where similar to this week, we had 3 winners and 1 loser. We had some nice gains in the /ES, /YM and /RTY futures, while the /NQ was a loser.
With sto
Buying the Dip in ES, YM and NQ Futures
The election volatility in the S&P 500, DOW, Nasdaq and Russell markets continue, with day trading opportunities setting up.
Today, we had an opportunity to buy the dip in the ES, YM and NQ futures. Similar to yesterday, there were 2 winners and 1 loser.
P/L (2 contracts):
1. S&P 500 (/ES) Futures: +24 points, +$1,200
2. Nasdaq (/NQ) Futures: -50 points, -$1,000
3. DOW (/YM) Futures: +190 points, +$950
Well discuss all 3 trades that setup today, including the winners and losers.
For those
Day Trading Futures Volatility – ES, NQ, YM, RTY
We had two different trade setups trigger today, in our 4 major indices markets. With elections coming closer, volatility has been creeping back into the index markets.
Our first setup was based on the market internals, specifically the Cumulative TICK. We had our Cumulative TICK Pro indicator alert us that we should expect a trending up market by 7am PT, 30 minutes after the market open.
Using that information, the SPY 345 Call was worth $2.00 at the point of entry, and close to ~$3.19 at it
Day Trading Nasdaq, DOW and Russell Volatility
The “First Hour Test” with our Futures Volatility Box typically gives us clues around what to expect for the day, especially with regards to volatility.
Using today as an example, the S&P 500 (/ES) broke outside of our Volatility Box clouds, while the DOW (/YM), Nasdaq (/NQ) and Russell (/RTY) were all contained. This was our first clue, to expect volatility in the other 3 indices to start to increase as the day progressed.
While we did not have any trade opportunities in the S&P, we did have
2 Ways to Identify Trending Markets
We have two easy ways to discover likely trending markets, using data-driven tools that we’ve created. In today’s video, we’ll discuss both of those methods and break them down with some examples.
Our first method of identify trending markets is built inside of the Volatility Box. We’ve used data here to identify specific price action clues in the first few hours of the market being open, to determine whether the market is likely to trend.
Today, we had Copper give us the indication that we sh
Stimulus Update Volatility – Futures & Stock Trade Setups
In today’s video we’re going to talk about the volatility we saw in the markets, as a result of Trump’s tweets, stating that stimulus negotiations were going to be pushed till post-election.
This was something the market did not expect, and we saw that reflected in the price action. Across the board, the S&P 500, Nasdaq, DOW, Russell, 30-YR Bond, Energies, you name it — almost all major markets saw a volatile reaction to this news.
This ended up becoming our catalyst for both futures and stoc
S&P 500 (/ES) – Buy the Dip Futures Setup
We had several “Buy the Dip” setup opportunities in our futures markets, towards the final few hours of the close.
Our first setup which we’ll discuss in today’s video was in the /ES (S&P 500) futures. We had an opportunity to buy the dip, and go long the /ES futures markets. This trade was good for 10.25 points in the /ES futures, which resulted in a gain of $512.50/contract.
Our second setup was in the RTY futures (Russell 2K), which was similar, but fell short of our target by 0.4 ticks. Ul
RTY Futures Day Trade Walkthrough
We’ll walk through a “picture perfect” setup in the Russell Futures (RTY), which set up today in the 9-10am PT hour.
During the middle of the east coast lunch time, we had the Russell hit our dashboard, when price action reached our Volatility Box entry lines. This gave us an opportunity to get short, once we had the Edge Signal confirmation.
In today’s case, we had several different components which supported the short:
1. We had multiple Edge Signal confirmations (our oversold / overbought c