Results of Thursday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Shorting 4581.00 stopped out. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4572.50 stop 4569.00. Short 4628.50 stop 4632.75.

The World Index: (+100/-100) gains from -50 to +7 in a world of mixed sentiment and low volatility. 

Catalysts: Employment Report @ 8:30. UofM Preliminary Consumer Sentiment & Inflation Expectations. 

Quick Tip: Insider Buying Works

Your trading toolbox probably includes tools for the analysis of technical, fundamental, and sentiment data. All good. 

Significant research by Wall Street and academia has proven that Insider buying is predictive of positive future stock price performance. Of course, WHEN that abnormal positive move happens varies widely and understanding that is key to successfully using Insider buying data. 

If you’re...

Results of Tuesday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: The short at 4598.50 missed filling by 6 ticks. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4551.00 stop 4546.25. Short 4598.50 stop 4604.25. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) jumps from -14 to +50 with all major world markets Bullish. 

Catalysts: Core PCE Price Index (primary Fed inflation measure), Jobless Claims & Personal Income/Spending @ 8:30. FOMC Williams @ 9:15. Chicago PMI @ 9:45. Pending Home Sales @ 10:00. OPEC meeting all day. 

Quick Tip: Find Your Filters 

Are there market conditions that your strategy performs better or worse in? Probably so. Price is either trending or not and volatile or not. These are very different conditions and knowing with evidence how your strategy performs in each of them is important. 

Why? Because you’ll be able to...

Results of Tuesday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Neither trade triggered. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4521.00 stop 4517.00. Short 4598.50 stop 4604.25. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) rises from -29 to -14 with Asia Bearish and the west Bullish. 

Catalysts: GDP @ 8:30. Crude Oil Inventories @ 10:30. Beige Book @ 14:00. 

Quick Tip: UOA

Unusual Options Activity (UOA) is a great leading indicator of price. There are different ways to interpret exactly what qualifies an option to be “unusual” and how to utilize them in your trade selection. 

The foundation is an extreme volume spike relative to small open interest (existing contracts not yet closed out). 

Technical analysts generally agree that volume leads price, so this basis makes sense. If a stock is trading at $30 and massive volume occurs today in the $40...

Results of Wednesday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: No trades triggered. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4551.00 stop 4546.25. Short 4598.50 stop 4604.25. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) drops from +7 to -43 with most major world markets mildly Bearish. 

Catalysts: New Home Sales @ 10:00. 

Quick Tip: Lead or Lag?

The never-ending challenge in trading is forecasting future price direction using lagging information from technical indicators. Better than nothing but not good enough!

Significant research has proven that there are two superb Leading Indicators of stock price. Insider buying and Unusual Options Activity. 

Combining the two is the perfect addition to your stock/options trading plan. Learn how in this free training session. Click here. 

No disappointments!

...

Results of Monday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Neither trade triggered. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4547.50 stop 4543.25. Short 4598.50 stop 4604.25. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) drops from +7 to -29 with the major world markets flat or modestly Bearish on low volatility. 

Catalysts: Existing Home Sales @ 10:00. FOMC Meeting Minutes @ 14:00. NVDA earnings after the close. 

Quick Tip: Be Different

“If you set out to be successful at something and you don’t know how to do it, look around at what everybody else is doing, and don’t do that…” Earl Nightingale

This advice is especially true with trading. If everyone traded the same way there would be no counter parties. We need plenty of different styles and opposing viewpoints for the markets to exist. 

If you’re still struggling...

Results of Friday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Buying 4517.00 caught the bottom of the day and offered 17.50 maximum before closing the session +11.00 points.

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4521.00 stop 4517.00. Short 4598.50 stop 4604.25. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) eases from +14 to +7 in a world of mixed sentiment and low volatility.   

Catalysts: Nothing important on the economic calendar. 

Quick Tip: Insider Buying? 

Back on May 3rd of this year I blogged about how effective using Insider Buying is for future stock performance. On that day there was widespread Insider buying in the banking industry during the plunge from a few bank failures. 

Here’s how those trades worked out: 

TCBI +38% before settling +17% now.

LKFN +18% now. 

ZION +62% before...

Results of Tuesday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: In a relatively narrow, choppy session, neither level triggered and remain on the chart. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4336.25 stop 4332.50. Short 4433.25 stop 4436.75. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) jumps from -57 to -14 in a world of mixed sentiment and low volatility. 

Catalysts: Fed Speakers @ 9:15 (Powell), 13:40, and 14:00. 10-year Bond Auction @ 13:01. 

Quick Tip: Hot Lists

Stock traders and investors have a challenge that futures and Forex traders don’t have. How to winnow down your trading candidates from around 9500 stocks. 

There are some common filters that are easy to implement like price and volume. Picking stocks that are between $10 and $50 reduces the selection to 4500. Add in average volume over 1 million daily and you’re down to 710. 

You can...

Results of Friday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Shorting 4367.75 stopped out. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4336.25 stop 4332.50. Short 4433.25 stop 4436.75. 

The World Index: (+100/-100) lifts from +25 to +33 with Asia very Bullish and the west mixed. 

Catalysts: Nothing on the economic calendar. The Middle East war is set to expand. Musk’s X/AI launches (along with other AI news). The UK is nearing a recession. 

Quick Tip: Your Ideal Timeframe

Establishing your trading timeframe before entry is critical. The shorter your timeframe the more frequent your trades are likely to be. This relates directly to how much time you want to devote to your trading. 

Our swing trading strategy for equities utilizes a key catalyst for stock selection: Large Insider buying. Why? Because Insiders know best about the...

Results of Tuesday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Neither trade triggered. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (FOMC Filter applies from 14:00 to 15:00, no entries): 

Buy 4096.75 stop 4092.00. Short 4270.75 stop 4276.50.

The World Index: (+100/-100) eases from +14 to zero with Tokyo soaring and all other major world markets relatively flat. 

Catalysts: ADP Payroll @ 8:15. Final MFG PMI @ 9:45. ISM MFG PMI & JOLTS @ 10:00. Crude Oil Inventories @ 10:30. FOMC Statement @ 14:00 & Press Conference @ 14:30. 

Quick Tip: Trend or Reversal?

You might be thinking that trading trends sounds safer than picking a turning point. Many strategies focus on trading in the direction of a larger time frame trend. This makes sense and it works. 

But it’s not necessarily “safer.”  Your initial priority is making sure your trade plan rule set has “edge,” meaning over time...

Results of Friday’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points: Shorting 4402.25 only ran for 8.25 points. 

Today’s Best S&P Futures Turning Points (consider wider stops and less size in fast moving markets): 

Buy 4285.75 stop 4280.00. Short 4415.00 stop 4419.50.

The World Index: (+100/-100) eases up from -64 to -36 with most major world markets Bearish. 

Catalysts: Empire State MFG Index @ 8:30. Fed-speak @ 10:30. Israeli war updates.

Quick Tip: “Almost” Trades

Your control of trading is limited. You can control entry, exit, risk, and reward. You have no control over where the price goes. 

Friday’s short was planned well. Price rallied to a key volume level where shorting had edge, then reversed and went 8.25 points in your favor. Hopefully you found some profit in the move and tightened your stop loss. 

The second touch went a few ticks beyond the original stop printing the high of the...