Monday, May 28 is Memorial Day. Markets like the E-mini S&P 500 will observe different hours, so be sure to check the official CME calendar. On Memorial Day, the E-mini will halt at 1 p.m. ET and reopen the same day at 6 p.m. ET. Essentially, the E-mini shuts down for about five hours. The market halt also applies to the CME’s equity, interest rate, FX, NYMEX & COMEX products (markets). If you’re not in US/Eastern time, remember to convert these US/Eastern time hours to your time zone’s equivalent.
After Memorial Day, the next major trading holiday is Independence Day (July 4, 2018). We will post those details closer to that date.
Watch out for potentially slower than usual markets on Friday, May 25. Often times, we see slower activity on the Friday before three day weekends. And yes, you should still be trading the ES 06-18 contract until the rollover date in June 2018.
A new Group Private Mentorship class begins June 18, 2018. Eight weeks of live training with John Paul will teach you everything you need to know to successfully trade futures and currencies. All courses and software are included with full, non-expiring licenses. This new session has classes twice each week.
We expect this new session to fill up quickly. It’s a good idea to reserve your seat as soon as possible.
Click here to submit your $500 deposit. This deposit secures your seat and provides you with the first week’s materials ahead of time. You’ll be able to receive the ATO 2 course and software for NinjaTrader right away!
What’s included?
• Live coaching with Day Trade to Win founder John Paul
• Atlas Line® software
• Roadmap method
• Blueprint method (as taught in Power Price Action)
• X-5 method (as taught in the Floor Trader Secrets Manual)
• At the Open 2 (ATO 2) Course
• Trade Scalper Course
• Price Action Scalping Course
• ABC Pattern
• How to Filter Trades
• How to Trade the News
• How to Set Up Your Charts
• How Manipulation Works
Will the markets be closed for Good Friday, March 30? Yes, the CME calendar indicates the E-mini S&P and other popular equity products will be closed in observance.
Here’s how it will work:
• Markets close at the regular time on Thursday, March 29
• Markets remain closed for March 30 (Good Friday)
• Markets re-open at the regular time on Sunday, April 1
Aside from equity products, FX, Bitcoin, Energy, Metals, and other markets are also closed on March 30. Again, check the link to the CME calendar above.
Be more careful trading on March 29, as the day before a three-day weekend can have slower activity. However, with the fast E-mini S&P market lately, that may be a good thing!
Our support team is still encountering a number of traders who are still using the old ES 03-18 contract. Please roll your contracts over to ES 06-18. The 03-18 expired earlier in March and you may no longer see live price activity in NinjaTrader.
It’s just about roll over time! The official roll date for E-mini futures is March 8, 2018. This means that the E-mini and other popular index futures will switch to a new contract period. In this case, the E-mini will use the June contract. In NinjaTrader, this means that you’re switching from ES 03-18 to ES 06-18. Fortunately, rolling over contracts is a straightforward process.
Be sure to follow these instructions on March 8, 2018 or soon after. The market volume is in the process of shifting to this new contract. Some traders prefer to wait until the majority of the volume is in the new contract before trading it. You can compare the volumes on this page. As of writing this on March 7, 2018, the volume of “MAR 18” is 1,433,648, compared to “JUN 18” at 127,304.
How to roll over:
1. Firstly, go to NinjaTrader’s Control Center > Tools > Database Management.
2. Next, if you are following these steps on March 8, 2018 or after, you should see the ES in the futures instruments list. Click the Rollover button and NinjaTrader will magically roll over your contracts.
3. Close out of the Database Management window and go to your charts. You should see that your E-mini chart is now ES 06-18. If not, you should be able to select it from the drop-down.
Remember that futures contracts expire on a quarterly cycle. The next time you’ll need to roll over is June 7, 2018. Click here for future dates. At that time, you’ll roll over to ES 09-18. What happens if you trade a contract after the roll over? Well, eventually, you’re going to see many dojis and erratic looking price activity. This is a sign you need to roll over as soon as possible. It’s best to check with your broker if you placed trades after having missed the rollover date by a few days.
Here’s our latest video for the January Effect in 2018. Markets are down, but will they recover? Watch the video to see a prediction.
On January 22, 2018, CNN Money published a story about the big S&P, basically remarking how calm the market has been. The article states, “Whether it’s the brief government shutdown, turmoil in the White House or North Korea nuclear jitters, nothing seems to faze this stock market.”
Boy, were they wrong!
Furthermore, CNN posted this graphic on January 29:
Within about two weeks, the market radically changed. January 29, 2018 was a unique day. As confirmed using an E-mini S&P 500 chart, it was both the highest point the market reached (2877) as well as the start of one of the biggest price falls in recent history. Just eight days later on February 6, price had reached to 2529. This was a 348-point drop in nearly one week. For the Dow, in terms of points, February 5 was the biggest intraday drop in history.
Look what happened soon after (E-mini S&P daily chart):
…The market was fazed. What happened?
Firstly, there’s a reason why we look at the E-mini as an indicator of U.S. economic health. Remember, the E-mini S&P is a miniaturized futures version of the big S&P 500 stock market index. The big S&P is composed of 500+ U.S. stocks traded on American stock exchanges. In terms of capital, the big S&P covers about 80% of the American equity market. The E-mini’s daily average implied of over $100 billion exceeds the combined traded dollar volume of the big S&P’s 500+ stocks. The E-mini is the most popular equity index futures contract in the world. Therefore, the E-mini’s significant “losses” as of late are indicative of overall U.S. economic performance.
Let’s get back to what caused the collapse. According to reports, there was no smoking gun event that caused the markets to capsize.
There are competing causation theories:
• Worries about inflation, high interest rates, and rising bond yields (causing a selling/climate mentality, with the Fed largely blamed)
• High-frequency trading algorithms were somehow responsible
• The market was on the rise since election time in November 2016. The market was due to come back down or regulate itself at some point, and this was it.
Taking these points into consideration as a whole, we can now determine the cause with some confidence. As a small, retail trader, there is not much you can do. Understand that your position is reactive – you can only control your own money – where it is placed and how it is traded with the best information that is available to you at a given time. That said, if you lost money due to the recent crash, do not be too hard on yourself. Trading involves great risk and dealing with the unforeseeable.
On the positive side, financial analysts are basically saying that these things happen. Buying when price is low and holding for some time until price is high is still considered to be one of the best ways to make money over the long haul, even with the market the way it is. Analysts are also saying this is not a recession and the market is just recalibrating itself, like a temporary pullback.
As for our DayTradeToWin.com trading methods, our indicators have provided many good signals despite the wild activity. As you may know, we use the ATR (Average True Range) to assess volatility. If the ATR is within one to four points, the volatility is considered normal. When the ATR is outside these values, the market is too slow or too volatile. You may want to stay out of the market until the ATR reaches normal levels.
If you’re new to our approach, you will need to set your ATR period to a value of four in order to see the ATR the same way. Many trading platforms include an ATR tool or indicator. By default, NinjaTrader uses a period value of 14, which may be too large to get an accurate picture of what’s happened in the last 20 minutes or so. By using a period of 4, the last 4 bars (20 minutes on a five-minute chart) are used, giving us a more recent picture of volatility, and in effect, tradability. Learn more about our unique trading methods here.
Here’s the E-mini S&P 03-18 (March contract) being traded with the Atlas Line software. Monday, January 29, 2018 – the market has been all over the place recently, but the Atlas Line and our other tools have been finding some great entry opportunities. Here’s a short signal. This video shows an Atlas Line short signal at about 10:00 a.m. EST. The short signal was produced at the close of the candle with a price of 2869. When placing orders, don’t chase the market! Each order type has its place. This order was close to the entry price (within a tick). Notice how the ATR was at 2.56. This indicates a potential profit of about +10 ticks (+2.5 points). That’s a healthy amount without being too volatile. The profit targets and stop losses we use are generally respective to current market conditions.
• Staying in a trade for multiple hours is a bad idea. It’s usually best to exit and wait for another opportunity. With the Atlas Line, the maximum amount to hold onto a trade is 20 minutes. This is taught in the live training.
• Before placing a trade, it’s a good idea to look for upcoming news events. Staying out is often a good idea during these planned events.
• Use multiple stop strategies and stick to the rules. If your profit target is not hit, get out at the next best opportunity, which can be a smaller profit, breakeven, or smaller loss than the maximum stop you should have in place.
• Towards the end of the video, you can see how trading with 5 contracts may have netted over $600 in just a few minutes. This is not always the case. Remember to trade with money set aside for high-risk investments (not your rent or food money).
Remember that the next Mentorship class begins January 31, 2018. We want to help traders who are really interested in seeing a difference in their performance every day. For details, click here for the Mentorship page. Alternatively, you can email us via the contact page or phone us at 1-888-607-0008.
Today, January 9, 2018, the ATO 2 software produced a short signal at 9:55 a.m. EST (New York time, GMT-5) when the market was at 2750.50. All of our ATO 2 clients should have received the exact same signal. With every trade, John Paul uses a profit target and stop loss. If you trade without them, you’re subjecting yourself to increased risk. In the included training, he will teach you the recommended values for this strategy. For this particular trade, current market conditions (as assessed by the ATR) determined a profit target of two points. Slower markets = smaller target, smaller stop. Faster, volatile markets = larger target, larger stop. If the market is simply too fast or too slow, stay out.
John Paul believes it’s a good thing when multiple unrelated ideas (indicators or strategies) confirm the direction you should be trading. The Atlas Line short signal at 10:00 a.m. confirms the ATO 2 signal. If the Atlas Line produced a long signal, the ATO 2 trade would have less confidence.
If you like to learn how to trade at your own pace, remember each live Mentorship lesson is recorded. After each class, you can log in and play back the video recordings.
At the beginning of every year, you can look for a pattern in the E-mini S&P market. This day trading strategy is called the January Effect. If January 2018 closes higher (on January 31, 2018) than its opening price (2675) on the first trading day of the year (January 2, 2018), then the January Effect says 2018, overall, will be bullish (trend up). If that’s true, you can wait for retracements throughout the year and potentially ride them up into profit territory. This was one of the many day trading strategies John Paul used in 2017 that he expects to continue working here in the new year. It’s possible this strategy will work in other markets, so look at previous years and try it out.
How do you find entries for the January Effect? Jump to about 7:00 minutes into the video. Remember, you’re looking for a few days where the market retraces. You’ll want to look for a minimum of three or four consecutive days where price falls. When price begins to move back up (retrace), look for the entry. Markets seem to “like” revisiting prices they’ve previously reached. This is why you’ll want to use the Fibonacci tool to aid your January Effect entries. Follow the steps in the video to apply the 0%, 50%, and 100% levels so you know when price breaks through the 50% level as it heads up to test prior highs. Remember, this strategy is only meant to be used when January closes higher than the open.
Want to see signals from the ATO 2 and Atlas Line trading strategies? Jump ahead to about 22:40. Both strategies produced long signals. They were in agreement that the market would go higher. These signals plotted live. It’s likely that many of the webinar attendees took these trades along with our clients who received the same signals on their platforms. Because the webinar was conducted in real-time, you can watch as the market slowly climbs up into profit territory. If John Paul placed trades instead of conducting the webinar, he likely would have been profitable because of the signals. In most cases, you will take whatever signal comes first.
In the eight-week Mentorship Program, you have quite a few signals to pick from and rules for filtering out potential losing trades. The goal of the program is to help you trade any activity you may encounter in real-time conditions.
If you’re using NinjaTrader, you will need to know how to place trades. This video is a quick guide that will teach you how to use NinjaTrader 8’s SuperDOM to place trades. Think of the SuperDOM as a remote control that is used to place your trades and interact with the market. There are a number of different order types that you can use. Your strategy and/or market conditions will likely dictate the one that you should be using.
• Market orders – one of the most common, enter at the current market price, small amount of slippage usually involved
• Limit orders – get me in at this price or better, less slippage than market orders, sell at or above current price, buy at or below current price
• Stop orders (stop limit) – buy or sell at a particular price, sell when below, buy when above
• MIT (market if touched) orders – essentially, a limit order that becomes a market order when a specific price is reached
Our next Group Mentorship class begins Jan. 31, 2018. All courses and software are included with lifetime licenses. Click here to enroll today and receive the first week’s course and software (ATO 2).
We now have a whole new year before us. We expect many opportunities because of increases in volatility we tend to see in January. We also look forward to the end of January in order to determine whether 2018 will be an “up year” according to the January Effect. Take a look at this real-time trading video John Paul captured before the end of 2017.
The Mentorship Program is the best way to learn everything we have to offer and ensure you are ready to trade in 2018. The next class starts soon.
On December 28, 2017, the ATO 2 and Atlas Line software running in NinjaTrader 8 both produced short signals for the E-mini S&P market. The first signal (ATO 2) occurred around 9:50 a.m. US/Eastern when the price reached 2685.75. The second signal (Atlas Line) appeared soon after around 10 a.m. US/Eastern when price reached 2685.25. In both instances, the bearish price movement was correctly predicted ahead of time. John Paul applied NinjaTrader’s Chart Trader feature so that you can see the entries. He believes that when using our software, you shouldn’t pick and choose the trades – take what comes first.
In this case, with two short trades, take the first signal (ATO 2 here). After taking the trade, it’s important to keep following the rules. Trade management is important because you can potentially limit your risk and increase profit by using specific profit target and stop loss rules. Generally, our approach to trading is dynamic, meaning we base our decisions on what we think the market can reasonably “do” at a given point in time. As seen in the video, the ATR value was around 1.25 points, which is rather slow for E-mini in the first hour of the trading day. Typically during the last week of the year, the price action is slower. To gauge volatility, we use an ATR with a Period value of four points.
With the purchase of the Atlas Line, ATO 2, Trade Scalper, or Mentorship, we provide you with multiple videos that fully demonstrate how to use our strategies. Remote support is also available on request (at no additional cost) to help with installation and configuration of our software and the trading platform (NinjaTrader).
All trades should be considered hypothetical. No guarantees or claims of performance are offered. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Day trading is risky and may cause substantial financial loss. Individual performance may vary, as trading subjects your finances to new, unexpected market conditions. You are responsible for executing trades. Before trading, consult with a licensed broker and a financial expert see if day trading is suitable for you.
Monday, May 28 is Memorial Day. Markets like the E-mini S&P 500 will observe different hours, so be sure to check the official CME calendar. On Memorial Day, the E-mini will halt at 1 p.m. ET and reopen the same day at 6 p.m. ET. Essentially, the E-mini shuts down for about five hours. The market halt also applies to the CME’s equity, interest rate, FX, NYMEX & COMEX products (markets). If you’re not in US/Eastern time, remember to convert these US/Eastern time hours to your time zone’s equivalent. 
