Power Emini Commentary – Notes – Education – Examples
This is the Power Emini “Notes” section. Below you’ll find ongoing commentary, trade examples, charts and general short-form random posts. This page gets updated every few days, so check back soon.
Serious Momentum
1/29/2026
Yesterday was Fed Day and as I mentioned in the previous post, I didn’t expect it to be a good trading day. And that’s pretty much how it turned out. The system gave two alerts prior to the announcement and the first one hit the Stop and the second one hit Target 1 and then got knocked-out. It was kind of choppy and the early ATR’s were small but the strangest thing was the muted reaction right around the announcement. Back in the good old days the market would make huge moves and gyrate all over the place. I guess everything was already “priced in”.
But today turned out to be a stellar day for the ES / MES Momentum System. Both Targets got hit within the first 30-minutes of the session and the net point gain “by the system numbers” was +36.25 points.
The way things played out in the first half-hour makes for a good example of “how and why” the system’s Entry strategy works.
So I marked up this 1-minute chart to show all the details. At exactly 9:37:20 the system gave a Short Alert. That was the moment that green candle just to the right of the words “short alert” poked below the prior candle low with about 6-minutes of downside momentum after the cash session opened.
The Red dashed line was the Trade Price Barrier / Alert Price as you can see in the “Alert Banner” at the top left of the chart. That was the “price to beat” line in the sand. So once the Alert fired, as you know the very next 1-minute candle that CLOSES at least 1-tick or more PAST the Barrier triggers-in the trade. That’s when the system gives the “Entry Confirmation”.
So after the Alert there were 4 more 1-minute candles that never closed past the Barrier. I marked those with white arrows where it says “no trigger yet”. Then finally the 9:43 candle closed (quite a bit) past the barrier and the Entry was confirmed. The Entry was 5.75 points below the Barrier, which seems like a lot, but that’s fine. That happens frequently on volatile days with a lot of “momentum” and long-range candles.
Whether the Alert gets filled a tick past the barrier or a few points really doesn’t matter over a long series of trades. And you know the Targets are based off the Entry level and not the Alert price.
One minute and 20 seconds later price hit Target 1 for a respectable 8.25 points. And depending on “reaction time” there was even a few extra points available due to potential slippage in our favor. The next 3-minutes saw price continue down to just over halfway to Target 2. The Trailing Stop tightened a couple times and you can see that Target 2 got hit right about 30-minutes into the session. Specifically it was hit at 9:59:12 because the software counts and updates in “seconds” as we see in the Time Stamps below.
Once Target 2 got hit a 2 Contract trader was “done for the day” however the system continued to tighten the Trailing Stop as price continued lower. The low of the day was another 69.25 points below Target 2. I zoomed back in time to take that chart screenshot but notice the “Traction Meter” just above the Trade Price Barrier in the Alert Banner shows +102.50. That’s the “maximum price excursion” past the Alert price. There was no negative traction after the Alert triggered-in so that shows 0.00. The Traction Meter is useful in helping score the effectiveness of the Alerts irrespective of where the Entry, Stops and Targets are.
Since today was such a good example of how the system takes the Entry based off a 1-minute close, I thought it would be a good idea to point out a feature that most new users don’t pick up on right away. And that’s the “timer” built into the Alert Software. Using this feature while monitoring the 1-minute chart you’ll know exactly when an Alert is likely to trigger-in.
I have the Timer marked in the bottom right-hand corner of the Alert Software screenshot from this morning.
That timer is counting the seconds and when it gets to xx:xx:59 and you see the price PAST the Barrier, you know that the trade is going to “confirm the entry” in 1-second. Keep in mind that in fast markets seconds count. You can see the Time Stamps in the System Notes reflect everything in seconds too.
I think the timer is a useful feature for knowing when to anticipate a 1-minute close might trigger an Entry. Most trading platforms also have a “bar close” countdown timer you can put on your chart which can be helpful.
But remember, once an Alert fills you want to switch to a 5-minute chart to follow along from there. Generally speaking you might not even see the Target levels on a 1-minute chart due to the scaling of the chart unless you squish it down. 1-minute charts are too “hectic” to follow price action and when you’re shooting for big points, like the system was today with T2 at 28.00 points, there’s no reason to sweat every tick on a 1-minute chart. The Momentum System isn’t really using any specific time frame but the 5-minute chart seems to best reflect the “current primary trend” and that’s why most of the charts I post here are 5-minutes.
The System takes the Entry off the 1-minute because we both know that price can move a LOT in just 1-minute. That’s why the fill today was so far from the Alert.
Tomorrow is the last trading day of January and it’s been a good month for the system. We’ve rolled out the update to v4.8 to everyone and that lays the foundation for an “upgrade” we’re working on. The new user interface is super cool and the next version has a lot of new features. The Alerts themselves will stay the same but we’re working on tweaking and improving the Trailing Stops as I’ve mentioned in prior posts.
Honestly when price gets past Target 2 and you’re still hanging on to any Contracts I think it’s appropriate to use your own discretion as to where you want to have your Trailing Stop. Days like today there was a lot of meat left on the bone and honestly as I say quite frequently, at any time you can use a different stop / trailing stop than the system.
The system has to be “universal” and able to deal with any type of market session or volatility regime, but sometimes the chart provides a better perspective on where the stop should be at any given time. Personally I think the stop should be a little tighter when price makes it in between T1 and T2 and that’s what we’re testing for the tweaks in the next version.
Tomorrow is Fed Day – Today Was A Scratch
1/27/2026
Before I talk about today’s Alerts I want to remind you that tomorrow is Fed Day. Over the years we’ve recommended avoiding trading the Momentum system on Fed Day. More specifically, over the Fed Announcement and subsequent press conference. I’m torn whether to suggest avoiding morning Alerts or not because in the past there have been plenty of times the system did well prior to the announcement.
But over the years I’ve seen plenty of times where the market is dull or choppy or trading sideways in the morning “waiting on the Fed”. I’ve also seen times where both Targets get hit in the morning and the system is done for the day prior to the announcement. So it’s up to you, but I’ve explained at length in the Help and here in the Notes why it’s best to “be flat” going into the decision. Basically because the market reaction is a crap-shoot and if the system is in an open trade it’s likely to hit the Stop or the Targets immediately. And then there’s the times where price goes crazy when the news hits the wires and the system gives an Alert based on the market “going haywire”.
I think it’s best to just watch. We considered the idea of taking the system offline early on Fed days, but it’s actually fun to watch and see how the software reacts when and if the market gets wild. In the old days (prior to the past couple years) it seems like the market reaction was more pronounced than lately. Over the years we’ve seen everything. But there’s just no edge immediately following the Fed Decision.
Today was fairly typical but also unusual in a way.
By typical I mean there were 2 Alerts and the first one hit the Stop and the second one hit both Targets. I mention somewhere in the documentation when that happens it’s basically a “scratch”. And that’s exactly how today turned out. Assuming we traded 2 Contracts and got fills that matched the system exactly, the net result was -4.00 points which I consider a breakeven day. In other words an average winning session where both Targets get hit on the first Alert typically nets 30-40 points. And there are days where it takes full stop outs in that same neighborhood.
Which brings me to why today was also a bit unusual.
The opening 5-minute range was a measly 5.00 points. That’s unusual and the smallest all year. The subsequent two 5-minute candles both traversed the entire range and then some. There was a strong impulse move down initially and the System got filled at the exact low on a Short. Price immediately reversed and hit the Stop which was 1-tick on the opposite side of the Range. Then it gave a Long Alert that hit Both Targets within 4-minutes.
I took a screenshot of the 1-minute chart, but decided to post this 5-minute chart instead to show what happened after both Targets and the Trailing Stop got hit. At this point the system was “done for the day”.
If you were to look at the price action further back in pre-market trading you’d see that the Short was entirely viable because price had broken below quite a bit of support at 6994 and the system gave the Alert at 6990. But it turned to be a “fake-out” move and those do happen. It’s just part of trading and comes with the territory. I hate it when the market doesn’t respect the laws of technical analysis.
But the Long Alert turned out well even though the numbers were the smallest they’ve been so far this year. Today Target 2 was 8.50 points. Yesterday Target 1 was 8.50 points. Also unusual, but goes back to what I mentioned a few posts back about the “price scale” of the charts. Notice that chart is only in 2-point increments.
There was quite a bit of “additional traction” past Target 2 and in theory one could have done better than the system numbers today. The Long triggered-in and hit Target 1 so fast that the reaction time mattered and manually selling at T1 likely resulted in some favorable slippage, maybe a couple points. And two minutes later price hit T2 so it’s highly unlikely fills would have matched the software numbers trading manually.
It was a “fast market” this morning and price was fast and loose in the first hour even though most of it was sideways chop after the Targets got hit.
All in all today was a little strange, but then again tomorrow is Fed Day. As I mentioned, it’s not uncommon to have a session like this where the first Alert hits the Stop and the second hits the Targets. There are so many possible combinations of how a session turns out, eventually you’ll see all of them. And you’ll realize that a “scratch” day isn’t a big deal at all.
It’s all about the systems “edge” that plays out over the longer series of trades.
Thoughts On Today’s Sideways Price Action
1/26/2026
Today’s session was fairly unusual and I thought it might be a good idea to comment on a few things. What made it unusual was that the price traded essentially sideways for much of the session after the initial “impulse move” in the first hour of trading.
There was a lot of “momentum” right off the open and the system gave a Long Alert. Once Target 1 got hit the market gyrated in a large sideways range between the Entry and T1. Right around Noon (eastern) the price broke above the previous highs and looked like it might do something, but then settled back into a boring sideways trading range. It did the same thing again about 1:30.
But the thing I wanted to point out was how the Trailing Stop kept tightening and eventually made it above Target 1. As I’ve mentioned, the Trailing Stop is both a function of price and time.
Target 1 was +8.50 points and the Trailing Stop ended up +11.25 points over the Entry before it finally got hit. So it turned out to be a pretty good day even though price just barely made it halfway to T2.
Trading 2 Contracts and selling one at T1 and holding the other with the Trailing Stop resulted in a +19.75 point gain even though Target 2 was never hit. So there’s that.
Sideways price action is the worst. I was actually thinking around lunch time that it would be entirely feasible to just go flat at T1 and call it a day. That’s always an option. But that was basically just my opinion at the time and for all I knew there could have been an afternoon rally that hit T2, which was 28.75 points past the Entry.
In hindsight sitting in front of the screen all afternoon probably wasn’t worth the extra few points. But that’s just my opinion too.
Tomorrow I’ll remind you that Wednesday is Fed Announcement Day and explain again why we don’t recommend trading it.
Some Interesting Observations and Other Random Stuff
1/23/2026
The past two sessions were kind of choppy but the week turned out well. There were a total of 7 Alerts this week (only 4 trading days) and 6 of them hit Target 1. 2 hit Target 2. Remember, we as traders are sort of beholden to market conditions and we have to trade what the market serves up day to day. Not every day is a stellar trending session but the system handled things quite well.
Yesterday the first Alert of the session came with 1-tick of hitting Target 2 and I want to talk about that.
But first, there were a few interesting things I want to point out about today’s session that should be helpful to new users. These “notes and commentary” I post here every few days are geared toward helping new users understand some of the nuances of the system. It’s not meant to be a daily recap, but more along the lines of explaining how the system reacted to certain price action and why. I think if a new user read all the posts on this page they’d have a better understanding of the system and pick up a few tips for trading it.
For example, today there were 2 Long Alerts that got filled at different levels. So I wanted to point out how the system adjusted the Targets to different levels to compensate for that. Also I wanted to show how the Short Alert that never triggered-in lined up so well with the support levels in pre-market and early trading.
So first, check out the Red and Green dashed lines on the chart. Those were the Short and Long “Trade Price Barriers” which are also the levels the system gave for Alerts – the “Alert prices”. Notice how both were outside the highs and lows of all that range-bound choppiness both in pre-market and early trading. Pretty uncanny really.
Think of it this way. IF the market was going to head down today (which it didn’t) it would have broken below all that support where the red dashed line was. That’s why the system gave a Short Alert at what seems like a pretty ideal location. It’s called the Trade Price Barrier because it’s kind of a line in the sand that the market would have had to push through IF it was headed down. And based on our Entry strategy that Short never triggered.
The Long Alert level seemed pretty accurate too since it was above all those prior highs. In theory IF the market was headed higher it would have had to break through that zone of resistance and that’s exactly what happened. The alert prices don’t always line up so cleanly with support and resistance levels, but it was interesting how they did today.
On the chart we see that the two Long Alerts that both triggered-in got filled at different levels (based on the Entry Confirmation rules) and I marked the levels for T1 and T2 on each so you can see how the Targets were based on the “fill” and not the Alert price.
The first Long Alert made it about half-way to Target 2 and the Trailing Stop had tightened several times to just above the Entry. The second Alert hit Target 1 and the Trailing Stop never got hit before the cash session closed. All in all we can see it was a fairly choppy session and the fact that both filled alerts hit Target 1 is considered a win.
So I’ve mentioned a few times that we’re working on some “tweaks” to the Trailing Stop because I think we can improve the method in which it “protects profits” when price gets in between T1 and T2. In other words I think the Trailing Stop should be tighter when price gets say 1/3 to 1/2 to 2/3 of the way to Target 2.
But this is trickier than you think. The Trailing Stop is not linear. It’s a function of both price and time. The “approach” to T2 makes a difference. And you’ve probably seen how the Trailing Stop gets more aggressive later in the session. So as I mentioned, we’re working on an upgrade to the system and that’s where we will be working on improving the Trailing stop moves. Basically it’s just going to be a few little tweaks but there’s a lot of testing involved.
Let me show you why I think we want to tweak it based on how yesterday’s session unfolded.
Basically, the price came within 1-tick of Target 2 which was 19.00 points away from the Entry.
As I’ve mentioned here before, when price gets really close to Target 2 we recommend either saying “close enough” or setting a tighter stop than the system. You can see where the Trailing stop was at the time (the thick yellow line). In real-life trading I don’t think it makes sense to give that much back. While it’s a bit subjective and really based on the chart at the time, I think it makes sense to “protect more of the profits”.
So I could make up a rule that says something like “If the price gets 3/4 of the way to Target 2 then set your stop at Target 1. Or half-way between T1 and T2. Or I could say “If price gets half-way to Target 2 and it’s more than 15 points from the Entry, protect 10 points of profit. I could go on with several more scenarios but the idea here is that I really don’t want to make up rules that aren’t reflected in the software.
So the solution is that we will be “tweaking” the Trailing Stop down the road so that it won’t let too many points of profits slip away. That’s in the works. The tweaks we’re working on will basically have the stop tighten more aggressively when price is between T1 and T2.
The Alert you see on the chart if traded “by the exact numbers” in the software (with 2 Contracts) would have only netted +3.50 points. In real-life you could have done a lot better than that by using a little common sense discretion. I recommend doing that in certain situations until we can get it programmed into the logic.
We designed the system so that it could be traded “purely mechanically” and while we provide lots of different discretionary tactics, I think this is something we want to tweak. We’ve seen this same thing before only more extreme than yesterday. In volatile markets we’ve seen Target 2 over 25+ points away from the Entry and it got missed by a couple points. So for now, it makes sense to use a little judgement and protect a good portion of your profits when that happens.
I don’t want to get too far into the weeds on this topic but it gets complicated because when the ATR’s and ranges are small it’s a different story. If T1 was 3 points and T2 was only 10 points then we probably want to keep the Trailing Stop as-is.
Here’s a tip for new users: At any point in time you are free to use whatever stop makes more sense than the system stop. That’s actually the #1 discretionary tactic and about the only case where it makes sense to use a little judgement here and there.
But here’s an important point to keep in mind: The tighter the stop the more likely it is to get hit. I’ve talked a lot about this in the past but won’t get into all that now. This post is long enough for today.
Anyway I hope these examples provide a little insight into how the system reacts to various price behavior. Every session is different and when we’re trading in real-time we never know what price will do next. It’s easy to look at a chart in hindsight and assume we would have traded it in a certain way, but in reality it’s not that easy.
The system does a great job of getting us into good impulse moves and then it’s up to the market how much follow-through “momentum” it gives us. If you’re new here I suggest reading all the rest of the posts on this page and you’ll see what I mean by “every session is different” and probably pick up some good insight into how the system works.
Have a great weekend and I’ll see you back here next week!
A Really Wild Day
1/21/2026
I wasn’t going to post today since I did one yesterday, but decided to go ahead since there are a couple things about today’s session that might be helpful to new users.
Today was pretty crazy since the price action was reacting to “news” all day. Today was Trump’s speech at the WEF in Davos. Price was all over the map by the end of the session but the system took advantage of the early “impulse move” higher.
Yesterday I said “the volatility is back” and today I wanted to point out the ATR’s in early trading just to show what that means. You can see I marked the distance from low to high (ATR’s) on the 5-minute candles in early trading.
Let me clarify something. I use the word volatility sometimes but what I really mean is “range expansion”. Those ATR’s are quite a bit larger than what I would consider normal, so the “ranges” of the 5-minute candles are “expanded”.
It’s important to take that into consideration when you look at a chart. We could have a chart that looks exactly the same but the ATR’s might be half of what they were today. Also notice that the “scale” of the chart over on the right is showing 5.00 point increments. That’s significant too and we want to take that into account to have the proper perspective.
Notice how right around the cash session open there was a lot of congestion and price was swinging up and down over 20 points until it finally escaped that congestion to the upside. The system gave a Long Alert that got filled 6.25 points above the top of the Trigger Range and then it was another 6.75 points to Target 1.
The candle that hit Target 1 had an ATR of 11.75 points and price basically blew through the Target (I talked about that a few posts back).
So consider this: The ES / MES Momentum System has a “fixed max stop” of 18.00 points. That’s important to know for new users. While there can be weeks or months where the max stop is never actually “in play” when the ATR’s are elevated the initial stop can be the 18 point max stop. We did a lot of testing to come up with that value and I’ve talked about that before, but just keep in mind that it’s all relative.
If price is swinging up and down in a 24+ point range every 5-minutes, the max stop can actually be pretty conservative
Another thing about today’s session was that the system was “done for the day” at 11:40 Eastern time when that Trailing Stop got hit. One of the “rules” built into the system logic is that once an Alert hits both Targets and then hits the Trailing Stop, it goes offline for the rest of the session.
Any Alert that hits both Targets is considered a “big win” so there’s no reason to stick around and risk giving anything back. Usually once both Targets get hit the price is so far away from the Trigger range that it’s unlikely there would be another Alert anyway, but today was unusual.
As you probably know, after I took that screenshot of the chart, price went all the way back below the bottom of the Range and then rallied again. Price was all over the map as I said and it was completely news driven. It was just a wild day.
As I mentioned yesterday, once we start seeing “range expansion” it tends to continue for a while until things settle down. The system tends to do well when there’s a “medium amount” of volatility but if the ATR’s get much bigger than today then things get a little more dicey. That max stop comes into play and both the risk and reward expand too. So just keep that in mind.
The system will adapt to whatever the current market conditions are, but we want to make sure we have the proper mental perspective.
In other words, a day like today 10 MES points is nothing – just normal price fluctuation.
Volatility is Back
1/20/2026
At least it was today. But days like this usually signify the start of a higher-volatility regime which is good for the system. As I’ve mentioned here before, there’s nothing worse than dull, listless, low volume choppy sideways market conditions. Those are tough to trade no matter what approach you’re using. We want ACTION. And trending action. Lot’s of directional price movement. And that’s what we got today.
Before I get into the post-mortem of how the system reacted to today’s price action I wanted to welcome all the new users. And for all the users that have been around for a while, I wanted to remind you that we released an update to both the software and the indicator, so be sure to update to the new version 4.8. Email me if you need the instructions.
So there’s a lot to say about what transpired in today’s session. Besides how the Alerts turned out at first glance, the price action provided some good examples of “nuances” built into the Momentum System. This should be useful information for new users so I’ll try to cover more than usual.
For instance this morning in the first hour of trading there were multiple Alerts that didn’t fill. They didn’t trigger-in based on our Entry rules. That’s something I discussed in Friday’s post but we got to see a session where it took at full hour into the cash session for an Alert to get an actual Entry. That’s kind of unusual.
There were 2 Alerts today. The first one was a Long after price broke out of the Trigger range to the upside and that one hit Target 1. The interesting thing was the Alert Level (Trade price Barrier) on that Long. You can see on the chart below how the price was sort of “all over the map” in the first hour and how the Alert Price level was just above all the “noise”.
Same with the Short Alert that triggered-in mid-day. Take a look at the price action to the left side of the chart and notice how both Alert Levels (the red and green dashed lines) fell outside all that congestion both in the pre-market and early in the cash session.
The screenshot is from about a half-hour before the market closed and you can see where the Trailing Stop (yellow line) was at the time. The Trailing Stop tightened a bunch of times on that Short Alert but never got hit before the market closed. We also got to see the Aggressive Protection Level and even the Parabolic Stop today. I won’t get into a discussion on those here but if you’re new they are explained in detail in the Help. Basically they are tighter discretionary stop levels for anyone trading additional Contracts and not just “selling 1 at T1 and 1 at T2”.
The scaling possibilities based on the number of Contracts traded are practically infinite. The system is very flexible but we strongly recommend new users start at the basic level of trading 2 MES Contracts and shooting for the 2 Targets – looking to sell one at each Target.
So you can see how the system uses the Trigger Range as kind of a visual reference point. Without that reference you’d be sitting there and all of a sudden you’d get an Alert out of the blue. And on a day like today you’d be getting Long and Short Alerts back and forth without having any frame of reference. So the idea is that the system is looking for “directional moves” that break out of the Trigger Range and then it starts looking for an optimal Entry level and sets the Trade Price Barrier (Alert Price). When price is able to close past that “barrier” on the 1-minute chart, the system takes an Entry. The 1-minute “close past” helps confirm there’s forward momentum.
Then the idea is that all we need is enough forward momentum (inertia) for price to get to Target 1 which is calibrated to be a relatively easy to hit Target. The distance to the Targets are based on the current ATR’s in the market. On the Long Alert today the distance to T1 was 7.75 points. On the Short Alert the distance to T1 was 7.5 points. Those are a bit larger than normal but the market was more volatile than usual early-on.
Conceptually, when Target 1 gets hit the Trailing Stop has tightened enough to put the trade right around “breakeven” if you’re selling a Contract at T1 and hanging onto a Contract for T2. Generally speaking when T1 gets hit the trade is a couple points or so on either side of breakeven. But that’s a function of the “fill” the system got on the 1-minute close. Today the Entry occurred 3.75 points past the Alert Price and that’s why the trade didn’t end up at exact breakeven.
Sometimes Alerts will get filled a tick or two past the Alert Price and other times (in volatile markets) it can be several points or more. No big deal. It all evens out over a large series of trades.
So the real goal is for price to make an extended trend move and get all the way to Target 2. That’s where the big points are scored. On the Short Alert today the distance to T2 was 25.75 points which is fairly significant. Every session is different and the system adjusts everything based on market conditions and the current ATR’s. In other words when the price action is volatile like today, the distances to the Targets will be large. When the market is more tame (or normal) the distance to the Targets will be smaller.
That’s part of the beauty of the system. It adapts to various market conditions and adjusts to an ever-changing environment. It can handle dull narrow-range markets and it can really take advantage of extremely volatile markets. In April of 2025 when the market was going haywire because of “tariff concerns” there was a session where the distance to T1 was 21.00 points and the distance to T2 was 70.50 points. Both got hit but the prior Alert that session hit the full 18.00 point “max stop”. That’s just an example of “extreme market conditions”.
In “normal” market conditions (if there is such a thing) you can expect the distance to T1 to be in the 4-6 point range and the distance to T2 to be in the 15-20 point range. Just so you have an idea of what to expect. Over the years we’ve seen everything in between. We all know the market goes through phases. Every session is different and the system reacts to the price action differently.
I say this a lot but it’s important to know that the system doesn’t try to predict anything – it “reacts” to what price is doing in real-time. So like this morning when price broke out of the top of the range and started a directional move higher the system gave a Long Alert because the market could have continued to rally from there. At any point in time we never know what price will do next. The system gives the Alerts in the direction of the current price movement assuming there will be enough forward momentum to get to T1.
Every alert that hits Target 1 is considered a winner. That’s because at bare minimum the trade is at (or close to) breakeven. Some users just shoot for Target 1 and that’s actually a viable strategy as long as they’re using a tighter initial (discretionary) stop. That’s kind of an advanced strategy and I don’t want to get into that now, but it’s something we’re working on. In a future version of the software or maybe even just a specific strategy we can nail down, using the Momentum System as more of a “scalper” just shooting for Target 1 is something we want to introduce.
Target 1 has an extremely high hit rate averaging 75% over the past 3-years. That’s a large sample size.
I feel like I’m getting into the weeds here and I could keep going. I kind of got sidetracked thinking this would be a good introduction for the new users. But I don’t want to throw too much information into just this one post because a month from now it will be buried and it’s unlikely anyone will go back and read it.
So if you’re new here the best approach is to take your time and keep an open mind. Work with the system for a week or two and experience how it reacts to various market sessions. You’ll have it mastered in no time.
The system tends to do well in volatile markets where there’s lots of price movement and trending action. There will be stop-outs, rotten sessions, breakeven trades, and Alerts that hit both Targets before lunch. And everything in between. The longer you work with the system the more you will come to appreciate it. The larger the sample size of Alerts the better.
And be sure to check back to this page every few days as I’ll be posting more good stuff when there’s something to talk about. New users might want to peruse prior posts to help get a feel for how everything works. I’ve been posting these “notes” for over a year now and I think it’s a good way to communicate.
Hopefully you picked up some good information from today’s post.
Update to the Alert Software
1/17/2026
The market is closed Monday for MLK Day and it’s a 3-day weekend. So it’s the perfect time to update your Alert Software to the newest version – released today. I’ve been using the new version all week and it’s rock-solid. Basically we just modified, enhanced and beefed-up the back-end “connection protocol” the software uses to connect to our server and there are no changes to the actual Alerts. This “update” lays the foundation for an upcoming “upgrade” we’re working on. The reaction time of the software is milliseconds now.
Here’s a screenshot from yesterday that shows the new version number.
All current users will need to update to this new version 4.8 by the end of the month. (New users will install the newest version when they download).
Here’s the good news: It takes about 1-2 minutes to run the update and that’s it – you’re good to go. Click the link, save the file, click open and run through the install and that’s it. Honestly it takes me about 30-seconds.
Current Users: Please do me a big favor and run the update now if you’re reading this. That will save me some time. Please shoot me an email and let me know you got it updated ok.
Here is the link to update your Alert Software https://poweremini.com/alert-software-update/
Moving on…
Yesterday was a good way to end the week. Thursday was kind of unusual because the market was extremely dull for some reason. Price just kind of drifted around and there was no real “action” at all. Only 2 out of the 3 Alerts hit T1.
But yesterday there was plenty of action early-on and some good “momentum”. Take a look at the chart and notice the way the price just “blew through Target 1”.
You might have heard me mention it here before, but this is a good example of where sometimes the price will just rip through one of the Targets and it’s possible to get a better fill than the system does. In other words, in fast markets by the time you click to “sell a Contract at T1” the price might already be a couple points (or more) past the Target.
Same thing with the fill on an Alert. Chances are that when you click to enter a trade you’ll get a slightly different fill that the system Entry Confirmation (no big deal). That’s what we call “slippage”. Over a long series of trades it will all even out. Whether you got a couple ticks better or worse fill than the system is not an issue over the long run. But again, in “fast markets” the slippage could be a couple points. It’s just something to be aware of and same with the fills at the Targets.
Since the software “reacts in real-time” there will be times where us humans just can’t react quickly enough to match up with the exact numbers in the software. You can see in the time stamps how the software registers it “to the second” when a Target gets hit.
Rather than get into a lengthy discussion on whether it’s better to trade the Alerts manually or set up an ATM, I’ll save that for another post. There’s no right way and there are benefits and drawbacks to each method. I’ll talk more about that here in the future.
For now, have a great long weekend and make sure to update your software to the new version. Now that we’re a couple weeks past the Holidays I think the action in the market should really start to pick up.
That’s perfect for the system.
Not Every Alert Triggers-In
1/13/2026
This post is for the benefit of new users and I’ve mentioned it before here. But today’s session provided a perfect example.
Yesterday I was helping a brand-new user get all set up and I talked a lot. I threw a lot of information at her in a short amount of time and it made me realize that while I always say the system is incredibly “simple to use”, there are some really important things everyone needs to know right off the bat. It’s impossible to trade the system properly without knowing and understanding the following information up-front. And like I said, today provided an excellent example so I wanted to document it.
Basically the system gave a Long Alert this morning and it never triggered-in or “filled” based on our Entry rules. There was no “1-minute closing candle at least 1-tick or more past the Alert level / Trade Price Barrier.
Here’s how it looked in the Alert Software. I marked up the System Note that shows how the Long never triggered and then there was a Short Alert right after that that did trigger-in.
I think these pictures are better than writing 1,000 words. But all this is explained pretty well in the Help.
Here’s the 1-minute chart that shows why the Long Alert never filled even though the high hit the Alert Level / Trade Price Barrier to the tick.
As we see, there was no close past the barrier on that Long Alert at the top of the chart. I won’t get into the long explanation here since it’s covered in other places, but basically that Entry strategy helps confirm forward momentum. Plus it gives us a little time to react instead of trying to place a trade the exact second we get an alert. That should make sense.
It’s not always perfect. There are times where an alert triggers-in and price reverses but that goes with the territory. We’ve seen alerts like that where the price pokes or spikes up over and over but never closes past the Barrier. We’ve seen it all. There are times where multiple candles will exceed the Barrier but never close past it and then price goes in the other direction.
An Alert can fill on the very next 1-minute closing candle or it can take 5-15+ minutes to trigger. Or it can not trigger at all. It’s up to the price action.
The chart also shows how the system gave the subsequent Short Alert a few minutes later and shows how that one did indeed fill. Looking at the chart it’s pretty obvious that the primary trend early-on was down and we see how the Short worked out.
The early ATR’s this morning were a lot smaller than yesterday so the distance to the Targets was quite a bit less than yesterday. And that’s a pretty good example of how the system adapts to the market behavior of each session. But that’s a topic for another time.
Today I just wanted to provide this example of how not every Alert gets filled so that there isn’t any confusion. Some months back I did a similar post and mentioned that over the years there have been a couple cases where a brand-new user though that getting an Alert meant you pull the trigger on a trade. Hopefully this explains it well, but I’m always here if you have any questions. Basically this is why we recommend that new users spend some time working with the system and observing its behavior as they go through the documentation and experience various market sessions.
I’m guessing most new users will have it mastered in about a week. There’s quite a bit to take in initially, but once you understand a few key points it really is simple to trade the system Alerts.
Best Session of the Year – So Far
1/12/2026
Ok, that headline is meant to be humorous. Even though it’s the 12th there have only been 7 trading days so far this year so we’re just getting started. And last week being the first full week of 2026 turned out to be pretty choppy. I was going to post Friday but got tied up with family stuff over the weekend but Friday was a pretty wild session in early trading.
The thing I wanted to point out was that the first alert of the day hit Target 1 to the tick on MES but missed it by a tick on ES. And it’s extremely rare that 1-tick makes a difference like it did that time. It’s actually not uncommon for MES and ES to differ by a tick here and there, but it usually doesn’t affect the system because it typically doesn’t happen at an exact level where a Stop or Target happens to be located.
The software is programmed so that if price hits an exact number, the software considers that a “hit” on that number. That should make sense. But in real life trading, IF that exact number turns out to be the EXACT high or low of a move, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll get a fill on our order (assuming we have a GTC order placed). So that’s just something to consider. As you know the software uses ES data even though we (most of us) are trading MES. So over the course of say a year, there might be a couple / few times where a stop or target may or may not get hit “to the tick” or may not register in the software depending on which instrument you’re trading.
Everything happened so fast Friday morning. The second alert fired off and hit T1 so quickly there was barely time to react. That happens too. The third and final Alert Friday also hit Target 1 but a deep counter-trend move knocked out the trade at the tightened Trailing Stop. Then the market proceeded to do exactly what we wanted and rallied back up way past T2 after the trade was already closed. It was just a weird session.
Today was more like what we want. Nice trending action and a clear directional move early on. We know the market isn’t going to trend every session and conceptually the system handles that by setting Target 1 as a (fairly) easy to hit target so that on choppy days we have a good chance of getting trades to breakeven. Then days like today it can take full advantage of a trending market session.
I took that screenshot shortly before the close and you can see how the market just took off out of the gate this morning right after the cash session opened. The Long Alert fired off just 3-minutes after the system came online and the Alert triggered-in a minute later. And as we’ve discussed before Target 1 got hit very quickly. That’s a function of how much forward “momentum” there is in the market and a good majority of Alerts that work out have a tendency to hit T1 pretty quick.
After hitting T1 that’s right about where the momentum stalled out and the market proceeded to trade in a sideways range for the next hour before it took another leg up. Then it proceeded to consolidate sideways again for another hour before eventually working its way up to Target 2.
Every session is different
The Trailing Stop tightened 12 times after Target 1 got hit before price hit Target 2. That’s highly unusual and the result of all that sideways price action. Normally (if there is such a thing) we’d see 2-3 Trailing stop moves between T1 and T2. Keep in mind that the Trailing stop moves are both a function of price and time. And you may have noticed a couple times today where the Trailing Stop tucked itself right under the lows of a few of those little dips. It’s actually amazing to see the Trailing Stop ratchet itself just a couple ticks away from a pivot level after a counter-trend move. Today wasn’t the best example of that but if you’ve been working with the system long enough you know what I mean.
So the Trailing stop never got hit during the cash session. The distance to Target 1 was 8.00 points and the distance to Target 2 was 26.75 points.
Honestly when the price stalled out around T1 and started grinding sideways it was impossible to tell what was going to happen next. I’m sure we all considered the possibility that the move was over and that price would reverse and head back down. But that’s the great thing about a system like this. It looks at everything objectively. It doesn’t have any bias and just takes the price data and does what it’s programmed to do. And it’s up to the subsequent price action in the market to determine how things eventually turn out.
One of the hardest things to do in trading is hang onto a position for a huge move like the +26.75 points to Target 2. Sometimes I look at the chart and think “there’s no way price is going all the way up there”. But the system doesn’t think that way. It doesn’t second guess anything. It just analyzes the price action and calculates the levels. One of the big benefits of trading a system like this is that it helps eliminate the emotions and trying to make decisions on the fly. If you’re trading it “by the numbers” and it says Target 2 is 26.75 points away from the Entry, that’s what it is.
Of course it doesn’t always work out this well, but again, that’s a function of the market. We know for a fact there will be huge trending days and we have a pretty good shot at capturing big points by trusting the system and the levels. Sometimes (like Friday) the price action thwarts the trade but that just goes along with the territory. The important thing to realize is that it takes a large sample size for the systems “edge” to reveal itself.
We don’t want to get over confident when the system goes on a winning streak and we don’t want to get discouraged when it hits a rough patch. Over the years we’ve seen streaks of 10-12 Alerts in a row that hit Target 1. The record is 18 in a row. And then we see rough patches where there’s a several stop-outs in a row and it seems like none of the alerts are getting any forward traction. In both cases it’s typically a function of the price action in the market itself and that tends to go through cycles. It goes without saying that the system and we as traders have no control over how the price action manifests on any given day, so we just work with that the market serves up.
Today is a good example of the market serving up a nice trending day and you saw how the system worked with that. Trading 2 Contracts selling one at each of the Targets would have netted a +34.75 point gain. That’s fairly respectable.
Off to A Good Start
1/6/2026
Today is Tuesday and I’m not sure what day it actually feels like. The past couple weeks have been odd with the Holidays and weekends and shortened market sessions. It’s like this is the first real week of trading and we’re only a couple days into the new year.
So there have actually only been 3 trading days so far in 2026 including last Friday even though today is the 6th. The ES / MES Momentum System has given just one Alert each day and all three have hit Target 1. Today the market served up a nice impulse move early on that hit both Targets. Yesterday was one of those “repricing days” where the main move came in the pre-market and once Target 1 got hit the market basically traded sideways most of the rest of the session.
I wanted to do something a little different to change things up so I marked up today’s chart in Think or Swim instead of NinjaTrader.
I decided to do this because I wanted to show how to mark up the charts on any platform for non Ninja users. It’s easy to trade along with the Alert Software on any platform and you really only need to plot the Trigger Range. (That’s because when you place orders the Stop and Targets will get marked on the chart automatically.) But I like to plot all the pertinent levels with horizontal lines so it’s easy to go back and review how the alerts turned out.
If you’re using Think or Swim (or any other platform) once you plot the levels you can simply move them to the right to the new levels the following day. So you really only need to plot them once. We have a good article about Trading the System and marking up charts on Think or Swim here.
That’s a 1-minute chart and is really only for illustration purposes. I wanted to show how precise Target 2 turned out to be today but normally after we take an entry off the 1-minute chart it’s best to switch over to a 5-minute chart to follow along with the trades. The 1-minute charts are just too hectic and nerve racking. Since the system is shooting for big points the Targets aren’t always visible on a 1-minute chart anyway.
At the bottom of the chart you see where I plotted the Trigger Range with a Red line at the Range Low and a Green line at the Range High as shown in the Alert Software. That’s really just for a visual reference so we know when we might expect to get an Alert. As you know when the price starts escaping the Range the system starts looking for an optimal entry point. Sometimes it’s close to the Range and sometimes it’s further away. It all depends on how the price action is unfolding.
Same with the actual Entry Level. Sometimes (like yesterday) the “fill” was just 1-tick past the Alert level but today it was 2.25 points above the Alert price. That’s a function of the 1-minute closing price of the trigger candle which you can read more about in the Help section on how the system takes an Entry. Remember not all Alerts get filled.
So the chart is pretty self-explanatory. Price started breaking out of the upside of the Range about 15-minutes into the cash session and at 9:47 the system gave a Long Alert. Three minutes later there was a 1-minute candle close past the Alert level and that triggered the Entry. Target 1 got hit pretty quickly but it took almost an hour into the session for price to hit Target 2.
Notice how precise Target 2 was as the price just barely moved above it for a couple minutes before it reversed. Sometimes price gets really close to T2 but doesn’t quite make it. Sometimes price goes way past target 2 and sometimes (like today) it hits it and that’s it for the move. Interestingly enough after what you see on the chart above, price went all the way back into the Trigger Range and then rallied higher again and went way above T2.
I should mention that once an Alert hits Target 2 and then the (tightened) Trailing Stop gets hit the system goes offline for the rest of the session. We have a detailed explanation of why it’s programmed that way in the Help. Basically an Alert that hits T2 is considered a big win and there’s no reason to stick around and risk giving anything back. And typically once price moves enough distance to hit T2 it usually doesn’t revisit the Range and offer another trade anyway. Today was an exception.
Speaking of how easy it is to trade along with the Alert Software on any platform I guess I should show what the Alert Software looked like this morning.
Read the System Notes from the bottom up. As each “event” occurs a new line gets added in real-time and you can see how simple it is to trade the Alerts with just the Desktop software. We designed it to be platform independent so anyone could trade the Alerts on their existing platform with their existing broker.
In the post below I mentioned how the Alert Software is a superior delivery method for trading alerts as opposed to a trading room and yesterday was a prime example. There was a decent impulse move higher in the first hour of trading that hit Target 1 and then the market proceeded to trade sideways for the next 4-hours. The price action isn’t always super exciting and the market doesn’t always trend. There’s nothing worse than sideways price action and that’s part of the reason the Momentum System trades typically play out in the early part of the session. But not always, it just depends on how the price action manifests.
The system doesn’t try to predict anything. It just reacts to what price is doing in real-time each day. And every session is different.
I’ll be discussing more about the inner workings of the system logic and some of the nuances in future posts. In 2026 I plan to update these “Notes” pages every couple / few days with more insight, commentary and examples so check back frequently.
Welcome to 2026 – Happy New Year
1/1/2026
Last year was another great year for the Momentum System. It’s officially been 10-years since we started this project. The current version of the software doesn’t even resemble the early versions of the software but the concept is the same.
About a decade ago Jeffrey ran a trading room and after a couple years of that he decided there had to be a better way. So we came up with the idea of delivering “trade alerts” using a totally new paradigm – through software. We designed the Alert Software as an alternative to trading rooms.
There are so many downsides to trading rooms I could write paragraphs about it, but the Alert software provides exact levels and numbers and there’s no ambiguity. There’s no sitting around waiting for something to happen listening to someone talk incessantly when there’s nothing really to say. The market spends a lot of time doing nothing or just drifting and trading sideways. A trading room might seem appealing at first but once you’ve listened to the moderator explain his strategy or methods it gets tedious hearing him repeat the same thing. Eventually you get tired of hearing his voice. Or worse yet the moderator plays music you don’t like during down time. And I won’t even get into the pitfalls of trying to replicate someone calling out trades.
The market typically serves up a couple or a few decent trading opportunities in a session and sitting around in a chat room all day just doesn’t seem like an optimal delivery method. Software that generates real-time specific trade alerts is a much better alternative in our opinion.
So we’ve come a long way over the years with both the system and the software.
Here’s a look at some of the first versions of the Power Emini Alert Software.
Fast-forward to today… Here’s a screenshot of the current version on the last trading day of 2025.
