Thu AM Briefing Preparing For Our Emini Trading Room 08/29/2024
Preparing ES & NQ Traders
For Our Emini and Micros Futures Trading Room
RESOURCES:For Our Emini and Micros Futures Trading Room
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome, ES MES Futures Traders!
Good morning, everybody. Good morning and welcome to Thursday, August 29th, the day after Nvidia earnings. All right, let’s start with today’s quote. Now, one of the things I’m going to do at the end of this video is recount a story from my life that relates to this verse. So, if you’d like to hear that story, I will try my best to remember to share it at the end.
Quote: "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." I love that, and I promise you there is a story from my own life that I want to share at the end of this. So, let’s just get into it.
Welcome to the AM Briefing number 250—a nice round number. Together, we trade.
Tip of the Day: The tip of the day today has to do with a change, a pivot that I’m going to be making in my trading, my AM briefings, and just the overall leadership of the group. The quote is: "Successful trading is about elimination, not addition." It’s about removing things and becoming more laser-targeted on exactly what is working for you.
One of the gifts of aging is you learn that it is very powerful to use the word "no." No, I’m not doing that. No, I’m not going there. No, I’m not participating in that. And it doesn’t hurt your heart at all. You realize "no" is powerful, and telling yourself "no" is critical to being a successful trader.
For me, it’s going to be the elimination of looking at the NQ chart during the day and even doing NQ updates in the AM Briefing. I’m not going to do it, and I’m not going to do it on the weekends either. I’m going to just focus on ES. I’m an ES trader; the system is for the ES. The nuances are designed for the ES, and I have tried to spread myself too thin by including NQ, and it’s just not working for me. I am going to stick with ES.
Why do I choose ES? Because our system works the most perfectly with ES. I went into my Tradovate account and said, “You can only trade one contract, and that is the MES contract.” I removed MNQ to remove even the temptation, putting a little bit of a brick wall.
Successful trading, and I think successfully leading my trading group, is a pivot I need to make. I pushed myself too thin, and I know I have. Now, I’ve got to pull that back and go, "You know what? Keep the main thing your main thing."
Why did I choose ES over everything else? When I was first putting the system together, I charted everything—oil, gold, silver, you name it. And ES performed the best. I didn’t pick ES for any other reason than that it performed the best, often to the tick. It is really fantastic. All you have to do is one freaking thing to be successful—and Scott will back me up on this, he’ll put it in the comments—you have to be patient. That’s all. All you have to do is wait for your level. No level, no trade. Period. End of story. If you do that, this works amazingly.
All right, enough of that. Let’s get on to news drivers today.
Well, Nvidia reported last night, and today, before the market opens, we will watch those red folders. Then we’ll get on to our "Trading in the Zone" book. Red folder day tomorrow, obviously—PCE—and then a long weekend, so we will not be here on Monday.
Second thing I want to tell you is the Tuesday YouTubes are done. Once again, success is about elimination, but I have reduced the price of the Zoom passes. If you want to join us on a day pass or a week pass and check us out, go to microtrader.com and grab your Zoom pass. I’ve actually reduced those prices.
Level 10 trading day, in my opinion, today. We had a big vomit overnight, and we have retraced it. Today, I would have said the risk of short covering is high, but it appears that maybe it has already done that in the overnight session. Monday is a holiday—take your three-day weekend, don’t even worry about weekend homework. Remove yourself completely from the chart, shut it down, and move on.
Now, if you’re just joining my system, use those three days to deep dive into boot camp and earn those badges, because I will give you feedback. So, check us out at microtrader.com and consider becoming a member if you want to trade the ES.
Yesterday Review: All right, so we’re going to review yesterday. First thing is, yesterday I gave you this level: the bull bear line, 2425. So, let’s throw on that bull bear line and remove this. Next, I gave you this level here, 7825, as the warning shot to bulls. Let’s throw that level on the chart as well.
When we got on Zoom, this is what the chart kind of looked like. When we go down, here are my next two strong levels. So, I gave you this warning shot to bulls. I gave you my next strong level below, whether you knew it or not. I wanted to give you a level that, if we went down there, was probably going to be heavily defended.
We came on with these on here—the bull bear line. I told the group, "If we get underneath my strong range, I’m going to be looking to get short, but I can’t get short here because I’m against this high time frame trend line. I’m looking for it to bounce off there, come back up, let’s go long, and then we’re still above the bull bear line. It’s real difficult. I can’t short till we get under the bull bear line, targeting this level here." That happened, but I wasn’t in that short. I made a trader error.
I think part of that trader error honestly has to do with me trying to squeeze in the NQ charts and going a little too fast, so I did not have a proper pre-flight. I had the RTH low here—that’s not the previous day’s RTH low. Let’s scroll over here. This is the previous day’s RTH low, and this was the previous previous day’s—Monday—and that’s the level I had on my chart. I had Monday’s low setting right here. So, when the price got underneath here, I didn’t feel I had enough room to try to make this short. Why? There’s just not enough room there, although I was expecting it to come here, but this is the next major level for the liquidity grab. But this was incorrect. This was the proper RTH low.
Because I didn’t have my chart set up as properly as I should have, I missed that. So, let’s go and look at what happened.
All right, let’s push back here. Let me get rid of the volume profile; we don’t need that for this. All right, so here was the bull bear line. Price got under it, retouched it to the tick—I mean, would you look at that? Let me zoom in here. Look at this. I was not in that short because I had that level mismarked right here. I just didn’t feel there was enough room to really try to make the trade, and that cost me a trade. Plus, while this was happening, I was on the NQ chart talking about NQ instead of focusing on the main thing, which should be my main thing, which will be my main thing from here on out.
Okay, so it did come there. It came to this next strong level here, played with it, tried to get up, and then vomited down and came down to the level I gave you—that 78.2 here, and that was the level. So, a couple of things. Another tip of the day: One of my traders said I should make this the tip of the day. One of my traders was short perfectly here with three contracts, but did not keep a contract back, not holding his risk-free runner. He would have captured a 30-pointer—he would have captured a 30-pointer but didn’t because he didn’t keep a risk-free runner back.
Then we had that once again—one of my traders, they love to trade my strong levels, and I don’t blame them. Went long here, and in this mess, got out of the contracts. Versus, if they would have kept one risk-free runner back—30 points on the way back. So, guys, if you trade more than one contract, keep that risk-free runner back.
And then yesterday, right here at 1:54, I’m going to go to the one-minute chart here because I want to point out when that happened. I outlined to the guys what I was looking for to go long. So, 1:54—where’s 1:54? Right here, right at this candle. I said, "Don’t short this, I wouldn’t be shorting this," and I outlined to them that I wanted to be long at 90 or 96, and this never pulled back even a tiny bit to get me in. I have rules—I don’t just jump in a trade. So, I just watched that happen, and it did everything I said was going to happen.
So, if you’re in my group, go back tomorrow to 1:54 and watch this move and my comments. But the main thing is I kept you safe here—I wouldn’t be shorting this. And it took off, and I missed it, and I was bummed. But once again, these levels were right, and the direction was right. It’s just you’ve got to have your setup, or you miss the trade, and you’ve got to just be patient and wait for it.
Today’s Levels: All right, so today, here’s the bull bear line for today, and here’s the warning shot. So, 45 and 68 today.
All right, let me give you your levels. Today, 4525—let’s mark that off first. That is my bull bear line today. So, we’ve got 45.25 as my bull bear line, 68 is my warning shot to bulls, and this is what the chart looks like today. Let’s remove some of these old levels.
We’ve got a huge drop here, a huge move up, and then we’ve kind of consolidated back in. This is obviously an important level right here at 62.50, so that’s going to be kind of the line in the sand to bulls. If they lose that level, it’s probably going to drop to 45.25, and if it loses 45.25, we’ve got this huge gap here that’s got to get filled.
Below that, we’ve got 4302.5, so watch out for that level if we drop today.
Now, above that, if we can break above 68 and stay above that, I’m looking at 78.25 again, and above that, 84, then 93.25. So, those are my levels for today.
One thing I want to point out—I told the group that I wouldn’t be shorting this as long as we were above 90, and here’s that level, and it did hold as support today in the pre-market session. So, I’m looking at this 90 level as kind of a line in the sand for shorts. If we stay above 90, I’m not looking to short this; I’m looking for a pullback to get long.
Book of the Day: Let’s talk about "Trading in the Zone." If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it. It’s all about the psychology of trading, and it’s one of those books that I think every trader should read at least once a year. It talks about the importance of having a trading plan, the importance of sticking to that plan, and the importance of understanding that the market doesn’t owe you anything. You’ve got to have that plan, and you’ve got to stick to it.
All right, let’s wrap this up with my story related to today’s verse. The verse talks about the power of two or three people working together, and it reminded me of a time in my life when I was going through a really tough period. I had just lost my job, and I was feeling really down. But I had two friends who were there for me, and they helped me get through it. They were my support system, my cord of three strands, and I couldn’t have made it through that time without them. So, if you’re going through something tough, remember that you don’t have to go through it alone. Reach out to someone; let them be your support system.
Thanks for watching today’s AM Briefing. Remember, together we trade!
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