Today is Monday March 15th and the market pulled up in the last hour for a nice come back.
The S&P 500 futures rallied 10 points off the low of the day and closed basically flat on the session. That was a nice move and I am sure took the bears by surprise. It was a steady climb, which was backed up by a lot of short covering.
Tomorrow is the F.O.M.C meeting, which stands for federal open market committee, “the Fed”. They are going to make an announcement on interest rates tomorrow and that may be what the market is waiting for. The Index’s did not want to give up any ground until they know the outcome of tomorrows meeting. New positions will be placed and we should see a significant amount of volume just before 11:15 and certainly at and after 11:15 tomorrow.
I word of caution, be careful around these announcements, the price swings can get pretty wild. I would not take any trades 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after these announcements for sure. The volume will be OK in the very early morning, for say the first 60 to 90 minutes, but after that, it is going to grind to a snails pace, it always does, until after the fed announcement.
Today I took a few more trades than I usually do, but it all turned out pretty good. Only a few ticks of loss and plenty of gains to more than reach my daily goal. A chart below to show you the trades.
I have one trading indicator above the screen and one below the screen. I don’t explain what they are or much about them, other than that it helps to identify the momentum swings through out the day. This is in my “Scalp Trading Screen” T-1, which is different than my second trading screen. The first one, T-1 is set up to scalp 2,3,4 ticks at a minimum and often times 2 or 3 points from the trade and is what is shown below, although I have pulled other things out of the chart, you are seeing a striped down version, but one that can make sense. 
Today’s trades are not earth shattering, they are just small scalp trades except one trade for 3 points. I did see the potential for a runner late in the day and could have easily sold most of my position at a point or so as I did, but elect to hold one contract back to let run. I decided not to and just closed it up. Tomorrow will present itself with new setups and opportunities.
I will show a screen shot of my T-2 screen with something similar for tomorrows session. The settings are different for this trade screen. It is used for when we I see a trending market or the possibilities. It does not have to be trending all day, but an early morning move or any things in-between that has legs to it, (more than one move back to back) will work just fine. These move are generally for several points and usually start out at what I call my “Turning Points”.
Many traders follow indicators and for good reason. But trading indicators are a reflection of the price. Don’t lose sight of that. Traders need to be able to see and read good bull setups and good bearish setups. Many have a problem seeing the bearish setups. It just does not seem natural to sell something that you don’t have. In addition, it is more difficult to just see the patterns. Our brains do not make it easy to spot these setups at times, but the trading patterns are there and you can usually make more $ when prices go down. Sell-offs tend to move bigger and faster than a rising market, its just that way. So, if you have a constant bullish bent, try little by little to look at things in reverse as you interpret the price action.
There are two sides to every market and the traders we are trading against constantly work there influence to blind as many as they can to this fact, giving themselves the advantage. This is one area where trading indicators can help. They can help you see what is already on the trading screen, but your eyes are not yet trained well enough to see it with confidence. You first need to know what you are looking for, the trading indicators will basically highlight those area’s of interest. Your job at that point is to see if that area it is highlighting constitutes as a method setup. If it does not, just let it go. Resist the temptation to take the trade anyway for fear of loss, as in opportunity. This happens every day and is a big problem for many traders. I have to remind myself of this fact as well. If you miss the bus, another one is coming in just a few minutes. The problem is, we don’t want to wait.
Do you remember back in the day, when you had to take the bus, well, for many it could be a long time ago, but the point is, we don’t like to wait. It is what our culture has grown accustom to and often stands as one of the reasons that many traders do not make it.
This is one reason why I have tailored my trading program “Sniper Day Trading” in such a way as I have. It is designed to provide enough trades in a fairly short amount of time to reach a preset daily goal 2 to 4 S&P points. That is $100 to $200 per contract traded. Trading a modest 3 contracts is $300 to $600 per day, while trading 5 contracts is $500 to $1,000 per day.
Day trading has its rewards, it may seem simple, but it is rarely easy. Having the right day trading indicators can help, but every trader should ask the question, “why is the indicator giving a buy or sell, then and only then will we know, what to do & when.
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