Well, Unemployment Claims were boring, boring today.  We had two announcements come in at once, UC along with Non-Farm Productivity.  The initial move wicked up quickly a split second before the announcement and the top part of my MMT Tool did not fill because the market was already past my order.  So, instead of staying out (duh), I glanced at my MMT New Server and saw red (usually means fewer initial claims, so that is normally good) and manually put in a long order, right at a Prediction Point.  Then the market started to consolidate on the news, which was actually pretty flat.  Then I waited 4 minutes to get out a tick to the downside of my filled position only to have the market go UP a point and a quarter!  LOL!  Again, a lesson learned that wasn’t very painful for my bottom line. 

Unemployment Claims; 09.02.2010

Then, the second trade.  Pending Home Sales actually came out EARLY by about 5 seconds and the market didn’t really react.  I actually said out loud, “I’m not getting in…” and then I got in anyway.  I have to learn to control this competitive side of me and walk away if I get that feeling I should stay out.  I have been pretty good at that in the past, but I think my recent relatively big wins have puffed up my ego to the point I am not listening to myself! Bad girl!

Pending Home Sales; 09.02.2010

It’s all a process and I am still feeling pretty good about the last two weeks…I am up $900 on one $500 contract.  I know what I need to do and by golly, I am going to get ‘er done.

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O. M. G. 

So, this was such a pretty day for trading.  Two main announcements.  Let’s just get right to it, shall we?

ADP Nonfarm Payroll Change; 09.01.2010

So, on ADP change, my MMT Tools filled me at 1059.25, exactly what I had ordered based on where the market was when I placed my order.  I was moving my stop loss manually to get me out of the trade, but the market didn’t move nearly as much as had been forecast.  Consequently, I didn’t maximize my profits on the first candle simply because I thought the market would move further down.  Still, .5 point is $25 in the case of one $500 contract!  I’ll take it!  Then I went back to bed <grin>.

I got back up with 10 minutes to the second announcement.  It was totally worth getting back up!

ISM Manufacturing PMI; 09.01.2010

This is pretty self-explanatory.  My order went in at 1066.25, and I was filled at 1068.00, which is what I had set on my MMT Tools.  This announcement was moving SO flippin’ fast, part of my entry strategy didn’t show up because the market was already past it; which ended up working to my advantage.  Once I was filled, the candle wicked back down PAST my stop loss (again, fortuitous for me) and then back up past my fill (this is good now) and I got out with 4.25 points of profit.  That’s 42.5% on my one $500 contract, or $212.50.  That puts me up $237.50 on the day.  Where else can I make 43% on my money in less than 5 minutes?

See ya tomorrow!

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So, coming into the FOMC minutes trade, I was feeling cocky.  I had won 2.5 points and by gum, I was going to trade the FOMC minutes.  Even though I have very little experience with this news announcement.  Dumb, dumb.

FOMC Minutes; 08.31.2010

I made two trades.  For the first, I put a buy (long) order in at the Prediction Point @ 1051.25, thinking we were on a surge up.  Instead, the market went south, getting me out at my stop loss, which was set at 1.5 points, or 6 ticks.  Goodbye, $75!

That was a little bit of bad luck and a small mistake.  My mistake was I should have put the buy order a tick ABOVE the PP.  So, here’s where dumb came in.  Instead of staying out, I  jumped back in, thinking we were going down (as the fundamentals suggested), and I SOLD at 1048.50.  Argh!  As you can see on the chart, the market went UP!  Whoopsie!

I ended up surfing my stop loss all the way up to past 1053, which would have had me losing 4.5 points, or $225.  I finally got smart and paid attention to my fundamentals, and stayed patient (even though everything in me wanted out, and out now, even if I lost!!) and surfed it back down to 1048.75, losing one tick, or 12.50.  Then I gave in and got out, though I could have stayed in and made a little.

I learned many lessons today.  Thankfully those lessons were breakeven and I was left still up well over $600 for the month on only a week and a half of live trading.  New month tomorrow and new lessons under my belt.  Whew!  I gotta admit that I had a lot of fun today, too. 

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…and to my brokers, Craig Ross & Jeff Kaprelian @ Infinity Futures.  While it only took me one trade (and one broker commission) to make those 2.5 points, I made 6 other dinky trades (4 of which were technically chasing).  Thankfully the dinky trades in of themselves left me at even.  So up $125 so far for the day, minus my broker commissions for each trade (mine are on the low side, but I am not telling y’all what I pay).  Looking forward to FOMC minutes at noon my time.

Consumer Confidence (CB); 08.31.2010

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It’s been a fairly slow news week compared to last week, but it was a very successful week for me nonetheless.  I traded 5 times this week and won all 5 for a total of 6.75 points, or 66.75% on my money.  That translates into a profit of $437.50 for me this week.  Once I move up to more contracts on a regular basis, that amount will go up.  I missed two trades; on Tuesday I didn’t get filled and on the Wednesday 6:30 am trade, I stayed in bed! 

So, let’s get down to breaking down today’s trades!  First was GDP:

Prelim GDP; 8-27-10

I was up $150 at one point on this trade, but I was manually following the market price with my stop loss and the movement was wicky.  The market jumped down and hit my stop loss, getting me out with .75 point of profit.  This was some strange wicky movement and it seemed to come out early.  Look at the movement in the 6:29 candle!  So I chose to stay out of a correction trade.  The market felt odd to me, so I didn’t get into another trade.

University of Michigan Revised Consumer Sentiment was even weirder today, but weird movement on U0fM is nothing new.

U of M Revised Consumer Sentiment; 8-27-10

I used MMT Tools for my entry strategy for this trade; but the market wasn’t moving, so I canceled my orders.  U of M Consumer Sentiment isn’t released the way other news announcements are, so you can’t count on movement when the announcement is supposed to be released.  When the market started getting some volume, I jumped in on the (small) correction trade in the 7:59 candle by using MMT’s proprietary Prediction Points and I added another 1.75 points to my daily total!

What a GREAT week!  See you on Monday!

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I am talking the talk in this post, but please understand that if I would have read this earlier than a month or two after getting into Market Mover Trading, I would have wondered if it was written in some kind of “Traderese” dialect from h-e-double hockey sticks.  However, once you start learning, this stuff is NOT rocket science.  You, too, can learn to understand the talk and be empowered to take control of your financial future!

So, today was a great day to trade, but it emphasized for me that my new favorite exit (the trailing stop) has a very narrow definition of successful use.  If I had left my usual simple bracket with the trades I made, I would have tripled my profit – at least!  The trailing stop can maximize your profit and minimize your losses on huge movers, but if the movement is at all wicky, then you can really lose profit as well.  If I use a regular bracket and put my profit target as far out as the forecast, then I can manually move my stop loss to protect profits and minimize my losses.  Hey…I don’t put in a trade and leave, so I am here anyway, right?

So, here are my trades:

New Home Sales; 8-25-10

I used MMT Tools to put a stop order in short at 1041.5 and but I got filled at 1039.25.  I have mostly been using stop limits set to zero ticks of slippage, but I haven’t been getting filled on fast movers.  I may go back to stop limits and put in ticks of slippage tailored to how quickly I think the announcement will move the market.  So, once I was filled and my stop loss reached 6 ticks, the trailing stop jumped in and trailed at 5 ticks.  The market got all the way down to 1037.25, but then it wicked back up and got me out at my trailing stop 5 ticks back at 1038.50.  That’s a profit of +.75 point, or $37.50, on a $500 contract.  I skipped the correction because I missed the beginning and then it went above baseline.  However, I was hoping to catch the similar move.  I placed a short order at a Prediction Point at 1043.  That ended up being a good call and I was filled short.  HOWEVER, dumb me hadn’t changed back to a simple bracket for my exit strategy…I was still on the trailing stop!  LOL!  But hey, I snagged another point by buying out at 1042 and ended the day up 1.75 points, or $87.50 on my $500 contract – all in 4.5 seconds!

Every day is a learning experience.  I did skip the first announcement because, well, I was sleeping.  See y’all tomorrow for unemployment claims!

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This is about as pretty as it gets…7.5 points of movement:

Existing Home Sales 8-24-10

Unfortunately, the movement was so swift, both Jody and I didn’t get filled.  By the time we placed our straddles, the market had already moved past the sell side of our straddle.  I tried to put an order in long at 1045 and it missed me again.  So I decided to stay out!  I can take a hint.    Tomorrow is another day!

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This week has been a slow one for me.  There hasn’t been a ton of news announcements outside Tuesday and today.  Tuesday we were playing with new technology and I’ll tell you all about that later.

So, I traded live today for the first trade (Unemployment Claims) and sim to try out a trailing stop for the second trade (CB Leading Index & Philly Fed).  Let’s get down to biz, shall we?

Unemployment Claims, 8-19-10

So, as you can see, I sold short at 1093 and my profit target, set at 3.75 points, got me out of the single contract trade, netting me $187.50 in literally 5 seconds.  Do I hear a “WOO-HOO”?

Okay, on to the second trade – CB Leading Index & Philly Fed.  For this one, I decided to simulate.  I wanted to practice a trailing stop, which doesn’t require a profit target at Infinity!  If I had used a trailing stop on the first trade today, I would have been able to maximize my profits and leave very little on the table.  Trailing stops aren’t good for every trade, but for trades where the news is usually dramatic and runs one way or the other quickly and unhesitating, they are perfect.  Trade these announcements long enough and you will know which is which.  So, while these announcements didn’t drop quite like a rock (like unemployment claims), they were good enough to practice a trailing stop.  I’ll show you a few stills from my video, once my MMT strategy was filled.  Click on the individual pix to enlarge.  Enjoy!

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I have learned to get out of trades (hello, “Cancel All”!) if I am not sure about what’s going on or if something seems off.  When I entered my straddle this morning for Unemployment Claims, only half of the straddle showed up on my live dome.  So I quickly hit “Cancel All” and got out.  So, no trade, no screenshot.  Turns out we have an issue with our internet connection.  Working on it!

One thing that Sean and Jason have stressed with us is to take as much of the emotion out of trading as possible.  We learn what we do, we practice it until we know it forwards and backwards and trade like machines.  So far, this advice has served me well.

There is NO way I could pay $2000 anywhere else and get the trading education I have with Market Mover Trading.  Thanks to Sean and Jason.  I don’t know where Jody and I would be without them.

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Our SDTC!

Jody here!  We all realize that good trading tools are essential if you want to make money consistently in the trading world. Market Mover Trading has great trading tools like proprietary Prediction Points, the Real Time News Server and semi automated trading tools that precisely place your order just before an announcement is released. However, for those tools to work properly, it is essential to also have the right computer with the speed and processing capability to handle MMT’s time-based, precise trades. Last week, while I was making a few trades, my trading dome and charts showed the S&P e-mini market was trading at 1114.50 and I had an short order sitting at 1115.50. After checking the news server and realizing that the fundamentals were going to push the market higher, I attempted to move my order up to the next prediction point. Before I could execute the move, my order was filled at 1115.50 even though the market and charts appeared to be at 1114.50!

My broker, Craig Ross at Infinity Futures, suggested that I keep any processes on my computer closed unless they were absolutely necessary. I tried this and it only slightly helped the lagtime on my 2.5 year old computer. Seconds can literally equal hundreds of dollars or more with this type of trading, so I really needed to find a solution to my issue.

After speaking with a colleague, Zach Huyge, he told me about the guys at Contact PC in Highlands Ranch. Contact PC built Zach a reasonably priced computer that is used exclusively for trading. Dawn, Zach and I went into Contact PC earlier this week to have a Super-Duper Trading Computer (SDTC) built to our specs. Chip, Russ and James were extremely knowledgeable when it came to what Dawn and I wanted this computer to do. So here is what we bought…

• ATX Midtower Case w/ a 600w/20 pin w/120mm Fan Power Supply
• 1366 Atx P6x58D Motherboard
• Intel 1366 i7-930 Quad Core Processor
• 12 gigs of RAM
• 1GB PCI-E Gaming Video Card
• 10/100/1000 PCI Network Adapter

and a lot of other stuff that I know nothing about (Dawn knows) that makes this computer the fastest, baddest trading computer I could afford. If your trading is suffering because your computer is old, slow & tired, I highly recommend you contact the guys at Contact PC and have them build your trading computer for you. We had ours in less than a day. The only thing this computer will be used for is trading. Contact PC even had a switch that allows us to move from one computer to the other at the touch of a button (we kept our old computer) to check emails, surf the net, etc.

We will keep you posted on how our trading goes over the next few weeks with our SDTC….

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