Emini Day Trading Lessons: +4.5 Points – The Day Before Non-Farm Employment
There's only one day left in the week and its been great so far. It wasn't a big day with only 4.5 points banked but when it comes to trading well the number of points made shouldn't be the main focus.
It's far more important to be as consistent as possible by simply aiming for a positive bottom line every day.
Whether it's 2 points a day or 10, as long as you are positive and keeping the equity curve sloping steadily upwards you can achieve anything in this business. It's definitely possible to get to this level of consistency as long as you are willing to put in the effort. With a good system and some mental discipline you can reach the results you desire in a surprisingly quick period of time.
Tomorrow is Non-Farm Payroll which is a huge event in the markets so typically we don't see a lot of movement the day before as the market eagerly awaits the data release. Using the analysis of our system prior to market open we were able to identify some keys areas in our projected range and they ended up being excellent for helping us plan our trades throughout the day.
Once again we can see today how important it was to know when not to take a trade. We use our rules and our ability to read the market to filter out the low percentage trades so we can focus on the good ones. Some days this means missing out on a point or two as some of those trades we passed on may be winners, but in the long-run it is a huge benefit to overall consistency.
If it doesn't fit your rules or your confidence in the setup is low, just wait for the next one!
We did start with a loss which is never the way you want to get the day rolling but managed to catch a couple points on the way down. Unfortunately I didn't get filled on a couple of trades so I wasn't able to capture as much of the move as I would have liked, but that's just the way trading works sometimes.
I did well to manage my trade on the intraday trend turn by properly reading the price action and from there it was long, long, long! Ok, so maybe only two long because I hesitated on one and missed it, but you get the idea.
Finally to end the day we saw clear signs that it was time to stop taking longs and price proceeded to collapse a few points. I was done at this time but our trading methodology did provide a couple more good opportunities to make some points for the afternoon traders out there. All in all a slow start to the day that ended up working out just fine in the end.
- Strike While The Iron is Hot - March 1, 2021
- The Path to Becoming a Full Time Trader - February 22, 2021
- Looking to 2021 and Beyond - January 20, 2021