How to Best Utilize This Site to Improve Your E-Mini S&P Trading?
By Lawrence
To best utilize this site to improve your E-Mini S&P trading, it can be done based on your trading goals in mind. I will break down the subject into several parts with links to all the relevant pages so you will not need to look for them everywhere in the site. Let’s get started.
Daily Review
A review of the charts after market close and before market open is important. The analysis of the charts will give you a context of what has happened and what to look for in the coming trading session. The goal here is formulating a plan to deal with the possible scenarios.
During my end of day market review, I consult the daily reports on the S&P Signals page for clues about the market biases for the next trading day. It gives me a quick check on things that I may have missed from just viewing the charts. The original research articles are linked to on the signal page. Hence it is easy to review them in case you have forgotten what the specific market biases entail.
I also browse through the Daily Cheatsheets for all 3 Emini index futures. You can access these daily reports from the S&P Signals page under the Daily Cheatsheets tab.
The intraday cycle projections in these reports will tell me potential turning points at specific time of the day that I should be aware of in case the real-time development of the market is matching closely to the projections. It also gives me the projected magnitude of the moves so that I can plan my exits with better precisions.
An example of the intraday cycle projection below.
The 3-Day Pattern Odds Analysis gives me a handle if the context so far is a normal setup or something rare. If the number of matches from historical data is significantly below the usual, I know I have to be careful and be prepared for the unexpected. The statistics reported can be used as a guideline to see if the day is following the norm (everything happening are the high prob. events) or if it is one of the exceptions (the rare events are triggered).
The weekly cycle projections often produce good forecasts of the magnitude for which the indices would move from previous week close / current week open. I use that as my extra price level considerations.
Real Time Engagement
During real-time trading, I keep the Real-Time Price Levels Tools and the Emini Real Time Trading Assistant open all the time.
You can open the Emini S&P and Emini Nasdaq Real-Time Price Levels tools and the Emini S&P Real-Time Trading Assistant from within the S&P Signals page under the Real-Time Tools tab.
Since I trade both Emini S&P (ES) and Emini Nasdaq (NQ), I need both Real-Time Price Levels Tool up for quick price level references. Many traders draw their pivots and other support / resistance price levels on their charts. For those experienced traders they always keep several higher timeframe charts handy with the respective support / resistance lines plotted on them too. I used to do that too but not any more. The Real-Time Price Levels tool replaced all these higher timeframe charts for me with much better clarity and reduce the distraction from the primary chart.
The price level names are designed to be consistent across all timeframes so that it is easy to spot the important cross timeframe price zones easily. You can find a short summary in Real-Time Price Levels Explained.
The Emini Real Time Trading Assistant serves a different but more important purpose. It is my check and balance against my ego and opinion biases. The fact that certain market biases showing up in real-time in the Trading Assistant warn me to pay attention to the possibilities of the likely trading scenarios that I may not be aware of.
An example screenshot of the Emini S&P Real-Time Trading Assistant below.
The trading setups are fully documented with their historical performance and other interesting usages. You can find the list in Emini S&P Patterns Library.
Real-Time Commentaries
Whenever I have time for trading, I post my take on the current situation in real-time. They are like my mental notes and analysis of these markets in real-time. For those people who are just starting out or struggling with day trading, I was told my comments helped many traders learning how to day trade more quickly.
I do not consider myself a very good educator in terms of giving instructional materials to teach people how to trade. Instead of teaching, it is much easier for me to do what I do while I am trading which is writing down my mental notes. Seeing my thought process in real-time is much more useful than asking me for trading tips.
To access the real-time commentaries, you can launch either the one within the website or a breakaway window to save screen space.
For those who like to speed up the learning process, you can utilize the transcript function to review the past commentaries. As all the comments are time stamped, it is easy to refer to them on your chart. A copy of the intraday chart is retrieved along side the past comments to make it easier to use.
Weekly Market Review
I post my weekly review of the 3 major indices and the forex majors over the weekend. The comments are my mental notes to recap what happened and expectations what is more likely going forward. Do not under estimate this routine review process. It is something very useful in putting yourself in the proper perspectives about the markets you are trading from the bird’s-eye view.
Brush Up Your Trading Knowledge
I spent a lot of time doing research on trading. Specifically, I try to find ways to be more profitable and more consistent all the time. Although I now have to split my time between writing about my research results and doing research, I am still spending significant amount of time to develop new trading techniques and trading models.
If you do not know how to do research on creating your own trading models, read my articles on them here. Test them out yourself on your trading platform. Twist the logic here and there to see if you can learn more about them. There are enough material on this site to fill up at least several graduate courses on the topic of trading models. I am not even talking about the market biases I explained in the other articles.
The articles that focus on S&P related research is available in the S&P Research Central. Browse them through, read the ones that interest you. You will probably learn something useful along the way. Better yet, if you have questions about the articles, ask them using the comment section below the articles. It is the discussion of the subject that helps to further the knowledge we are sharing here.
If you are not familiar with basic chart patterns, I would also recommend you to read my online ebook Art of Chart Reading. It will help you build a solid chart reading foundation quickly so that you have a better handle in dealing with the Emini charts.
Ask Questions When You Need Help
One thing many beginner traders do is just browsing around but never ask questions when they need help. The goal here is to help you. If you do not tell us what your problem is, we cannot offer any advice to you. Asking question is just one click away.
As Alternative to Trading Course
Depending on your need and overall experience in trading, you can tailor the way you utilize the site the way you see fit. For example, you may not be comfortable taking swing trades at all and prefer day trading only. In that case, you can ignore the swing trading signals and focus on the day trading market biases reported by the Emini S&P Real-Time Trading Assistant. There is no need to follow the trading models like a robot. They are there to help you to think more objectively so that you can perform better.
The goal I have in mind is to allow the tools I have created to assist you to trade more consistently by reducing the dependency on certain personality traits often required to overcome the stressful day trading environment. Day trading and real-time price analysis is no longer the wild west era back in the 1960s or even the Internet bubble era in early 2000s. It is now more like a science where technology can help a reasonably logical person to achieve day trading success without the difficult training like the old times.
Think of the services and tools offered by this website as an alternative or complementary service to your trading education. Through positive reinforcement, you will learn to trade and day trade Emini with better discipline and insights overtime.
For those who have not tried out our real-time trading tools, sign up now and experience the difference.
Hello Mr. Chan. I just begun to follow the commentaries, using the trading assistant, and price level. My question is what mind frame should I be in in utilizing these models. I’m assuming they are there to keep us mindful of the current market, and indicate possibilities(warnings and guide) I may not have considered. Trying to get a grasp. I’m still learning, I have most of the concepts and understandings down, but trying to start tying them all together until I’m able to purchase the other books. Just a little advise I feel will give me a little better handle. Thanks!
As a beginner, the main issue is always your personal biases working against you. Study the past intraday charts day by day over the past 10 years as a minimum. It helps one to ground your beliefs. Try to focus on the longer duration trades like Morning high / low FBO. Every idea you have about the market, walk it through the historical data at least once. Your pattern recognition skills will then build on good foundation.
Thanks! I started today with the Monday/ Tuesday being high of week, and Thursday/Friday being low of the week, visa verse, gained some valuable insight on market when these dynamics are in play. Got to study those principles again. One question; in 3 odd ball what does “HOC” stands for? Thanks again for responding.