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.
Best July Ever For The MES Momentum System
7/31/2026
I wanted to do something a little different to wrap up the month. So this morning I recorded the Alert Software from the opening bell to about 30-minutes into the session. This is a good way to see the software “in action”. Click the Play button in the lower left-hand corner.
As you know, these trades can take some time to play out but fortunately today everything basically happened in the first 30-minutes. I cut out about 5-minutes near the beginning of the session where the system was waiting to fire off the Alert.
Here are the Time Stamps for the video so you can skip ahead to the “events” if you like.
0:00-5:10 Assessing Market Structure after the open (best part to skip ahead)
5:55 – Short Alert fires off
6:34 – Short Alert Triggers-In (after which the Proximity Meters display the progress towards the Targets)
11:52 – Target 1 hit – Trailing Stop tightens to breakeven
11:53-27:32 – Price Works its way closer to Target 2 (notice the Traction Indicator)
27:33 – Trailing Stop tightens again
27:57 – Trailing Stop tightens to “protect the gains at Target 1”
30:23 – Target 2 hit
30:24 to the end shows the “additional Traction” past Target 2
I thought about clipping this video down to just a few minutes of “events”. But I wanted it to show how the Proximity Meters work and how the Traction Indicator updates as price moves.
The last 5 or so minutes pay attention to the Traction Indicator that shows the “maximum positive excursion” price made from the Entry.
This Alert was the perfect way to cap off the best July ever for the system. Amazingly enough 80% of the Alerts in July at least hit Target 1. And as you know “every Alert that hits Target 1 is a winner”.
If you’ve been reading my posts the past few months you know that “just shooting for Target 1” is a viable strategy, but typically we recommend that for new users or in periods of extreme volatility.
And I would characterize the price action this past month as “extreme volatility”. The point moves we’ve been seeing intraday lately and the size of the ATR’s isn’t your typical “dull Summer” market conditions like the old days. The distance to Target 1 used to average 3-5 points in Summer and a 10.75 point day like today was an outlier. If you scroll down the page and check out the numbers from some of the previous sessions you’ll understand what I mean.
The good news is that the system adapts to any market environment and that’s what we’ve been seeing all month.
And like I said yesterday, the modifications we made to the software recently have had a huge positive impact. I’m looking for good things in August.
Even Better Than Expected
7/30/2026
So today there were 2 filled Alerts and the first one “just hit Target 1” for +7.25 points. But it came close enough to Target 2 for the Trailing Stop to “protect” Target 1 so the net result trading 2 Contracts was a +14.50 point gain. And the really cool thing about that was that it was the perfect place to lock-in profits as the market rolled over and ended going all the way back to where it started.
This is a perfect example of why the new “enhancement” to the system is a huge improvement.
Notice how wide the ATR’s were on many of those 5-minute candles early-on. The one just prior to the Trailing Stop getting tagged was as wide as the distance from Target 1 to Target 2.
So that first Alert worked out just fine and scored some respectable points.
Then the second Alert hit both Targets. Here’s the screenshot of the Alert Software on the 2nd Long Alert.
That Alert scored +7.25 at T1 and +22.75 at T2 for a combined +30.00 points.
Add that to the results of the first trade and you end up with a better session than if the 1st Alert had hit both Targets. That’s pretty interesting.
And we know the market continued quite a bit higher into the close. The Trailing Stop was never hit on that second Alert.
An interesting thing to note is how the Entries triggered-in at different levels and how the system handled that. The Entry on the first Long was 2.75 points higher than the Entry on the second Long.
Here’s how everything looked at the close.
So we see how the system compensates for the difference in Entry levels (fills). In other words the distance to Target 1 was 7.25 points and the distance to T2 was 22.75 on both Alerts because the system calculates those based on the Entry level (not the Alert level). It’s just something to be aware of since we see that the high of the first Alert actually touched the T2 line from the second Alert.
The big takeaway from today is that the new feature where the Trailing Stop protects Target 1 is turning out to be a huge improvement. This is an example of where a 2 Alert session scored more points than if the first Alert had hit both Targets.
There’s a “nuance” for you. I frequently mention that the system has a lot of little nuances and many of them only reveal themselves on certain days when the price action does something specific. Every session plays out differently.
So there’s one more trading day left in July and this is turning out to be the best July ever for the ES / MES Momentum System.
I attribute that to the tweaks and enhancements we made back in June.
More about all that after we see how tomorrow plays out.
Best Possible Scenario For A Fed Day
7/29/2026
If you’ve been reading these posts for the last year and a half you know we don’t recommend holding an open trade over the Fed announcement or trading an Alert that might fire off subsequently. The morning Alerts are fair game.
So the best possible way for things to play out is for the system to be “done for the day” ahead of the Fed interest rate announcement. That’s exactly what happened today.
And this morning there was a LOT of action. The character of the market has changed a bit over the years on Fed Days from my observations and I’ve talked about that here in the past.
Here’s the screenshot I took earlier in the day after both Targets got hit that shows the “max Traction”.
The nice thing about today is that we didn’t have to worry about what happens during and after the Fed announcement.
Target 1 got hit for +10.00 points and Target 2 got hit for +31.50 points in the first hour. Price continued lower and you can see the maximum traction was a whopping +63.75 points below the Entry.
About an hour later price eventually converged with the (tightened) Trailing Stop just above the T2 level. And that was it for the session.
As we saw by the end of the day, the market was all over the map and had huge point swings. The price action we saw from 2:00 to 4:00 is exactly why I say to avoid Fed Days in the afternoon.
Ahead Of The Fed
7/28/2026
Just a reminder that tomorrow is the Fed interest rate announcement and it should be an interesting one. I’ve talked extensively here about how to approach trading the system on Fed Days. I’ve posted about it the day before every Fed announcement since the beginning of last year.
Today turned out ok as far as a typical session in this crazy news driven environment. The first Alert hit the full stop and the second Alert hit both Targets. Basically a wash depending on how Contracts were scaled. The basic 2 Contract strategy would have had a small loss – basically a breakeven.
Here’s how things played out today.
That first Alert got really close to Target 1 but didn’t quite make it. It got 7.50 points of Traction but T1 was 9.00 points away. The second Alert almost made up for the full stop out and that’s how it’s supposed to work. Those of you that have been trading the system for a long time know there will be plenty of sessions that turn out as breakevens, which is fine.
As usual you can choose how to handle tomorrow morning but we don’t recommend holding an open trade over the Fed announcement (if there is one) or trading an Alert that fires off after the announcement or during the press conference. Some Fed Days the morning session turns out just fine and others are dull and choppy.
But anything after 2:00 eastern is typically just a crapshoot. We’ll see what happens.
Last Week of July – Should Be A Wild Week
7/27/2026
Before I get into today and this week I wanted to mention this past Friday real quick. It was one of those days that comes along every now and then where the market just chops up and down erratically all over the place in early trading. In the first hour there were 3 Alerts and one hit Target 1 and the other two got stopped-out. The market just didn’t serve up anything for the system to work with. No big deal. Some days the price action just isn’t conducive to trading and that’s why the system will only issue 3 (filled) Alerts in a session max.
Today was the opposite and practically ideal. There was a trend move lower and both Targets got hit within the first 40-minutes of the cash session. And the points were fairly significant totaling +30.50.
I took that screenshot shortly after Target 2 got hit but the market continued quite a bit lower. The max “Traction” at the low was 74.75 points below the Entry and the trailing Stop kept the trade open until about an hour before the close and finally got tagged at 7439.50.
The market made some big moves today and like I said in the title – this should be a wild week. That’s because Wednesday is Fed Day and also a bunch of the mega-cap stocks are reporting earnings. It’s hard to say what tomorrow might look like because typically the market tends to be dull ahead of the Fed. But there’s a lot going on and we’ve seen an unusually volatile July so far so who knows?
After tomorrow, between what the Fed decides to do with interest rates, and how the market reacts to the “bellwether earnings” it should make for some interesting trading the rest of the week to end out July.
Sometime back I characterized the environment as a “news driven market” and that seems like an appropriate description for this week.
We’ll see how things play out.
Before I wrap this up I wanted to point out a few interesting observations on the chart.
First, notice the thin green line up above the time stamp. That’s where the system gave that initial “potential Long” Alert that never triggered-in. Had the market decided to rip higher after those two big green candles near the open, the system was prepared. That level also lined up perfectly with a significant resistance / breakout level from pre-market.
Next, we know this trade had -9.00 points of negative Traction and I thought it would be good to visualize it on the 1-minute chart. That’s because it sounds like a big number but we can clearly see that it’s just basically normal price fluctuation and a small counter-trend bounce in the “buffer zone” before the downtrend from broken support resumed.
The “broken support” occurred exactly at the bottom of the Trigger Range as we can see by the lows of the three candles that touched it to the tick.
Look at the price action in between Target 1 and Target 2. The Trailing Stop tightened to “breakeven” immediately when T1 got hit and then quickly moved to protect the gain at T1 when price got close to T2. Even if the price never made it all the way to T2 the trade would have still scored +7.50 points at T1 x the number of Contracts traded.
Price consolidated and was sandwiched in between the Targets for 10-minutes before it took the next leg down and hit Target 2. It consolidated again right around T2 for another 10-minutes and then resumed the downtrend.
Compared to the +74.75 points price moved below the Entry, the -9.00 points of “heat” doesn’t seem like much. And that’s a valid comparison. The idea is that aside from the targets, the “entries” have been getting way more Traction in the direction of the trade than the negative price excursion incurred. It’s just a way of looking at the accuracy of the Entry strategy apart from everything else.
Huge Moves – Big Volatility – Wide ATR’s
7/23/2026
ES / MES opened down around 90 points and it was a crazy volatile day. There were lots of 5-minute candles with ranges of 10-20 points – wide ATR’s.
The system gave two Alerts and the first one hit the full stop. The second one hit Target 1 and then the tightened Trailing Stop. No big deal since the system has been on such a roll lately. These “wide and loose” sessions make for challenging conditions and the system actually handled it pretty well.
Sessions like this reveal some nuances of the system that don’t show up on more normal days.
For instance on that first Long Alert price made it a little more than half-way to Target 1 but the Trailing Stop didn’t get a chance to tighten because there was no 1-minute closing candle close enough. Price basically spiked up intra-candle and faded back down too fast for the system to tighten the stop. That Alert did get 7.50 points of positive Traction from the Entry but the impulse move ran out of steam and reversed quickly.
Notice the price scale on the chart is in 10-point increments. We’re looking at about a 110 point ES move here.
The yellow lines on the chart were the Trailing Stops. The upper one was the stop on the Long and the lower one was the stop on the Short (which only tightened once). The max stop was obviously in play since the ATR’s were running 12-20+ points every 5-minutes and that always means the risk of the stop getting hit is higher – just due to normal price fluctuation.
In volatile sessions 18 points is nothing but that’s where we draw the line for the max stop. The candle that hit the stop had an ATR of 18.75.
The distance to Target 1 on the Short Alert was 14.00 points and the Alert actually got 27.50 points of Traction. T1 got hit decisively so it potentially made up for some of the stop-out depending on the Contracts traded and scaling. When market conditions are this volatile a viable strategy to just trade 1 Contract and shoot for Target 1 if you’re risk-averse. That would have resulted in a meager -4.00 point loss for the session.
The Trailing stop on the Short did manage to tighten to well over breakeven for a 2 Contract trade and turned out +6.00 points to the good (shooting for both Targets). Trading 2 Contracts just shooting for Target 1 only ended the session -8.00 points, which ain’t bad considering.
Stop-outs are inevitable and just part of trading and you should never let one bother you. So far in July 84% of the Alerts have hit Target 1 including today and that’s above the long-term average.
We have a lot of material in the Help section with ideas for dealing with extreme volatility and the idea is that there are several different ways to play these sessions. One idea is maybe trade 1 Contract on the first Alert and see how it goes – then trade 2 Contracts if there’s a second Alert.
But here’s something to consider. I’ve been thinking about a new “rule” and am even considering adding it to the software logic. Basically the rule is “if the max stop is in play and it gets hit twice, call it a day”. Don’t risk taking a third Alert if there is one that session. Three Alert days happen fairly infrequently but there have been plenty of 3 Alert days that work out fine. But when the max stop is involved it’s a different ballgame.
Just something to think about.
Just One Alert Today – And The Reason Why
7/22/2026
There was one Long Alert this morning that hit Target 1. Price made it pretty close to Target 2 so the Trailing Stop tightened to protect the gains at Target 1. That turned out to be ideal since the subsequent move down turned out to be a full-blown reversal.
But the questions is “why didn’t the system give a second Long Alert when price reversed back up again?”
The simple answer is that price didn’t pull back “quite far enough” into the Range to “reset” things in order to take another trade in the same direction as the one we were just in. It came really close… but we know that over a long series of trades price is going to “come close” to stops and targets and not hit them on many occasions. That’s just the nature of price action.
Here’s a 1-minute chart that shows everything. The orange rectangle shows where the 2nd alert “would have been” had price dipped just a little further down on the pullback.
The premise is this: When we’re in a trade and the Trailing stop gets hit we don’t want to just jump right back into a trade in the same direction as the one we were just in.
That should make sense because otherwise it would have been better to avoid having the stop located where it would get hit only to jump right back into a trade in the same direction we just got stopped-out of. The chart today isn’t a great example of that but I think you get the idea.
There has to be some sort of a “reset” or “buffer” and the logic we have programmed into the system says that in order to get a new Alert in the same direction as the last one, price needs to have a 1-minute closing candle at least 3/4 of the way (or more) back into the opposite side of the Range.
I also want to mention that today was a rare occurrence. We could go weeks or even months without seeing a similar situation so I figured today was a good time to go over it. Look at the 10:33 big green candle that poked at the original Alert price. Suppose that candle closed a tick higher and we didn’t have this “buffer” in the logic. It would have triggered another Long and the trend was still clearly down at that point so it wouldn’t have been a good idea to just jump right back in there.
We’ve actually seen quite a few similar sessions where price did pull back far enough into the Range for the system to issue another alert in the same direction. But there are certain sessions where price chops all over the place and maybe the Range is really tight and it’s those situations that demand we have this “rule” in place.
If this buffer wasn’t in place there could be an instance where a Trailing Stop gets hit, price pokes half-way back into the Range and then spikes up and triggers in a new trade all within a 1-minute candle or maybe over just a couple minutes. We don’t want that.
The thing about “rules” in systematic trading is that there are always going to be one-off situations where a rule or filter keeps you out of a trade that may have worked. But the important thing is that the rule is there to prevent multiple trades that don’t provide the best overall results given a large data set. Trust me – this rule prevents the system from firing off Alerts that we wouldn’t want to trade.
Since every Alert that hits Target 1 is a winner, today was another winning day. Trading 2 Contracts and selling both at Target 1 scored +11.50 points. The market was “all over the map” subsequently and the close ended up right smack at the top of the Trigger Range.
Typical Summer Tuesday
7/21/2026
There’s really no such thing as a typical market session since price movement is unique every session. But what was typical about today was how price just drifted around sideways for 3-hours into the close today.
The morning was extremely erratic and choppy and the system did a great job of keeping us out of all that “noise”. It’s very unusual for it to take an hour and fifteen minutes before an Alert triggers-in, but hey, it’s Summer and I’ve been saying to expect some unusual market conditions.
The good news is that once the Long Alert finally filled it ran to Target 1 for +9.00 points – even though it took an hour to get there. Typically Target 1 gets hit much quicker than that but like I said, every session is different. The thing to note on the screenshot below is the Traction on this Alert. It only took -3 points of “heat” and got over 16 points of “positive excursion”.
But lo and behold as we see on the chart the price decided to just stall out around Target 1 and basically traded sideways the rest of the session. The 4:00 close was just 2-ticks below T1 so additional Contracts held after T1 got hit scored about 8.50 points depending on where one decided to close out.
It’s important to know “when NOT to trade”. And I think the shaded boxes I drew on the chart illustrate that point. Those boxes encompass some seriously erratic price action and it made perfect sense for the system to wait until price finally broke above all that “noise” to take the Long trade.
We can see in pre-market and early trading there was a support level and the software did issue a “potential Short” where I marked the Short Barrier. Had the market decided to sell-off today, price would have broken below that “barrier” and that Alert would have filled. We see a few pokes below it and that’s a good demonstration of how the Entry strategy works. The barrier is a “line in the sand” so to speak and only if it had been broken decisively to the downside would a Short come into play.
Once Target 1 got hit the Trailing Stop tightened a second time to put the trade at “breakeven” if one were trading 2 Contracts shooting for the 2 Targets. But price never got enough additional forward price movement past T1 for the Stop to tighten again. But those of you that are familiar with the nuances of the system know that if price had continued a bit higher the next Trailing Stop “ratchet” would have put it up around the Alert price.
Since the price action manifests differently every market session, the system reacts differently based on that sessions price movement. It has its own sort of “personality” and there are so many moving parts to the logic it takes a lot of exposure to fully appreciate it. For instance prior to T1 getting hit the Trailing stop was sitting at the exact low of that big green candle at 11:10 at the far right side of the shaded boxes. At the time I was thinking there couldn’t have been a better level for the stop given the range inside that box.
+9.00 points per Contract in early trading is nothing to sneeze at. It would have been perfectly fine to just close out at T1 and call it a day. Sitting in front of the screen and watching price grind sideways for 3-hours was the other option.
Like I said in the Title of the post a few down on this page “Summer Market Conditions Hit Different” and this afternoon was a perfect example.
Protecting Gains At Target 1 Works
7/20/2026
An important rule of trading is that once a trade is closed you can’t worry about what happened next. What I mean by that is suppose you took a Short trade this morning, scored respectable points and then got knocked-out by all the volatility only to watch the market close near the lows.
That’s basically how the MES Momentum System Alert played out today. Trading 2 MES Contracts (using the system numbers) scored +15.00 points this morning in the first hour of trading. That seems respectable to me.
The market is going to do what it’s going to do and if you worry about what “could have happened” you’ll drive yourself mad. Every single trade we take – after we close it out – the market is going to keep moving and we can’t second-guess what would or could have happened based on what price did subsequently. You can’t trade every wiggle on the chart.
Today turned out great in my opinion even though the Short Alert only scored the 7.50 points at Target 1.
The reason is that price made it “close enough” to Target 2 for the Trailing Stop to tighten to “protect the gains” at Target 1. If we didn’t have that logic programmed into the software now then we would have risked “giving it all back” after T1 got hit. Even though price “would have” hit Target 2. In trading there’s always a compromise.
I marked up the 1-minue chart so we can see exactly how things transpired.
So in a nutshell, after Target 1 got hit the Trailing Stop tightened for a second time (the yellow dashed line near the top) to 7527.75 exactly 2 points above the Short Entry. Then when price got fairly close to Target 2 the Trailing Stop tightened again to protect T1 and that’s where it got hit (marked on the chart).
The move higher after price got close to T2 was a substantial “counter-trend” move and the market could have just as easily continued higher. We never know what the market will do next and we’ve seen plenty of V-bottoms.
The Targets are there for a reason – levels to take profits.
The Trailing stop tightens for a reason – to reduce risk and protect gains.
Together they worked perfectly and as intended today. You can’t look back and wish the stop hadn’t tightened because in this particular case Target 2 did eventually get hit. Reducing risk and protecting gains is more important than… (whatever the opposite of that is).
Results of rules-based trades are all part of the system.
All wins, losses, streaks of either kind are necessary to form the edge.
When you accumulate enough rule-based trades, probability laws will work and the system’s edge will emerge.
This was another winning trade for the system and that’s the important thing. Whatever happens after we close a winning trade is of no consequence.
A Rare Type Of Market Session
7/17/2026
Crazy Summer market conditions persist. Yesterday the market was all over the map and there were 3 filled Alerts (which is the maximum for any one market session). The first two Alerts hit Target 1 before the market finally picked a primary direction. The 3rd and final alert of the day hit both Targets on a significant sell-off. The Trailing Stop tightened twice after Target 2 and was hit 27-seconds before the cash close. It was strange price action.
Today was strange too, but in a good way. ES / MES Futures opened down around 90 points, floundered around for 15-minutes then ripped higher in a straight line. Both Targets got hit for significant points in the first 40-minutes of the session.
But what was really unusual about today was the way that there were EIGHT 5-minute candles in a row with higher-highs and higher-lows. That’s quite an “impulse move” and you don’t see that very often. The system gave a “potential” Short Alert that never filled. That’s important because IF the market had decided to sell-off the system would have traded the move in that direction.
How do you make money trading? By entering a trade in the direction price is headed next.
Instead of guessing which direction price is headed the system waits for price to start moving in a certain direction and then hops on for the ride. The idea is that the “inertia” or “forward momentum” will persist enough to drive price to Target 1. And T1 is designed to be a “fairly easy to hit target” but it’s calibrated in such a way to maximize the points scored while still maintaining a high “hit rate”. Today Target 1 was +9.75 points which on a typical day doesn’t seem all that easy to hit because that’s a fairly big number all things considered. But the calibrations are based on the ATR’s and you can see the ATR’s were huge right around the open.
Speaking of calibrations, notice how price stalled out in the vicinity of Target 2. In the 20-minutes after I took that screenshot price went back down and hit the Trailing Stop – which had moved to the exact Target 1 level.
There are two important points I want to make about that.
First, the T2 level turned out to be pretty accurate today. I mean the idea is we want targets that “maximize” gains while still being attainable. The reason we set Targets in the first place is so we have specific levels to take profits. There was plenty of time to get out at T2 today before price turned back down.
The second point is that the Trailing Stop tightened to “protect Target 1” once price got close to Target 2. So even if price never quite made it the full +30.75 points past the Entry, the system would have still protected the +9.75 point gain at T1. In the past we’ve seen similar Alerts that come within a point or even 1-tick of T2 then reverse. That’s why we introduced this new feature last month. It’s a huge improvement.
Let’s talk about slippage for a moment while I’m thinking about it.
I had a user ask if they should adjust anything to account for “slippage” and that’s a great question. The answer is no. Here’s what I wrote back.
I would stick to the exact numbers in the software for the Stops and Targets even when you experience slippage.
The good news is that over time and a decent sample size of trades, you’ll get slippage in your favor and it will all even out in the long run. There are lots of times where the price will just blow through the Targets and if you’re trading manually you’ll score extra points. That happens a lot especially at Target 1.
Even if you’re setting limit orders at the Targets I think it’s best to stick to the numbers in the software because it’s calibrated in such a way that those numbers can be really close sometimes. I’ve seen the Targets get hit to within a couple ticks and then that’s it. That’s the extent of the move. The times you get a better fill than the system will make up for times when your entry is a couple ticks the other way.
What made me think about that was today when Target 1 got hit at 7510.50 the 1-minute candle that actually hit T1 closed at 7513.25 and the high of that 1-minute candle was 7513.75. So there was a “few” extra points possible there and that was exactly what I had in mind about “slippage” in our favor. 2-minutes later price was at 7522.00. So no matter if your fill is a few ticks or even a couple points on either side of the Entry the system got, don’t fret over that and stick to the exact Trailing Stop and Targets. It’ll even out over the long-run.
Remember, the “timer” in the bottom right-hand corner of the Alert Software lets you know exactly when a 1-minute candle is about to close. I did a post about that last year and it’s a useful feature – especially for knowing when an Alert is about to trigger-in.
We’re about half-way through July and the system has been doing great. Way down below on this page I mentioned that I thought the market would serve up decent “action” this July and while the price action has been a little hectic and flaky at times, things are going great for the system so far. I still expect dull periods and times where there’s boring sideways action, but so far so good.
Summer Market Conditions Hit Different
7/14/2026
If you read the previous post you know I was kind of shocked by the fact that an Alert could fire-off, trigger-in, and hit the Targets all in the span of a minute or two. I said that was a “once or twice a year event”. That was Friday and we just saw it happen again the past two days. It’s hard to imagine such erratic and unusual price action, but then again it’s “Summer trading”.
Someone makes an offhand comment and price suddenly spikes 20-30 MES points in one direction or the other. It’s not normal for that to happen except maybe once in a Blue Moon. It’s just so unusual to see back to back but then again “when Trump or Warsh speak – people listen”. Comments by those two trump technical analysis. It just seems borderline ridiculous a casual comment can move the market so much.
Those of you that have been around for a while with years of experience know that market conditions in July and August tend to be a little different than normal and I’ve talked a lot about this over the years.
Common Characteristics of Summer Market Conditions
We know every session is different and quite frankly the system tends to do just fine in the Summer months. But it’s important to realize that July-August tend to be a little different.
Most of the action occurs early in the session.
We’ve seen this off and on for a couple weeks now. Basically the price action is fairly normal or active right after the cash open and then by lunchtime everything slows down. That’s actually a benefit of the Momentum System because it almost always gives Alerts shortly after the open and a fair amount of sessions it’s “done for the day” early – many times before lunch. It’s important to know when the system is “likely to not issue any more Alerts for the day” and that’s something I’ll talk about in another post.
Volume and participation is lower than normal much of the time in Summer months.
People go on vacation with their family and do other things like take a 3 Martini lunch or go golfing during the summer. I walk down to the beach sometimes. The institutions put their junior teams on the Desk. So keep an eye on the Volume Indicator in the Alert Software.
The Volume indicator in the software displays the “average number of Contracts traded per minute – averaged over the last 3-minutes”. Basically it’s showing the level of participation and changes quickly and drastically throughout the session. Anything under 2,000 Contracts is considered “low volume” and the numbers are white. Anything over 2,000 the numbers turn blue and that means there’s “reasonable volume”.
I don’t want to get to far into it because it doesn’t affect the Momentum Alerts but it’s very useful for providing insight on “current participation”. Anything under 2k is extremely dull conditions. Today it spent a LOT of time under 1k. even 2k-3k is fairly dull and when the market is active you’ll see it spike to 8-9k.
The market has periods where it can trade basically sideways for hours.
We’re starting to see this more. There’s nothing worse and more boring than sideways price action and there are plenty of summer sessions where the market goes into “sideways mode” after lunch or in the late afternoon. Not every day but you’ll see what I mean if you haven’t noticed already. Some days it’s not worth even sitting in front of the screens in the afternoon because there’s “nothing happening”.
I can easily spot when the market is trading like it’s “stuck in molasses” and the longer you’ve been trading the more you know what I mean by that. Over the years you develop an intuition for market conditions just by watching the price action.
Dull sideways markets with low volume and participation are tougher to trade. Price action slows down, volumes drop off, overall market movement becomes extremely choppy, strong trending action becomes more rare and trade setups of all types experience a higher failure rate. Basically there is a decrease in conviction and an increase in randomness throwing everything out of whack.
The lack of liquidity often leads to exaggerated price moves, seemingly at random and out of nowhere at times. Then the market frequently goes into a sideways chop and churn, where you can take a 2-hour lunch and come back and the price is in about the same place as when you left. The market doesn’t always behave like we want it to.
But don’t take this the wrong way and assume I’m maiking an excuse for anything. The MES Momentum has honestly been doing fantastic lately.
Prior to today the last 18 out of 20 Alerts at least hit Target 1. Today made it 19 out of 22 assuming one could have caught the 1-minute trade that hit T1 again.
It’s not a big deal that market conditions are different in Summer – it’s just that we want to take it into consideration.
A Lot Can Happen In A Minute
7/10/2026
Before I get into today’s “anomaly” I wanted to briefly talk about yesterday’s session. It was a bit strange in my opinion just based on watching the price action in the morning session. It’s hard to explain but the intraday price action was way more “hectic” than usual and it felt like Summer market conditions. There were 2 Long Alerts that both hit Target 1 for +9.75 points each and the second one went on to hit Target 2 for +30.50 points.
But here’s something to think about. After T1 got hit on the second Alert the price just kind of meandered towards T2 for two hours. It spent a lot of time “so close” to Target 2 that it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to just close the trade and say “good enough”. Another option would be to set a sell order at T2 and just go to lunch, but you wouldn’t be able to monitor the Trailing Stop. As price meandered in between T1 and T2 for 2 hours the Trailing Stop tightened 7 times. So it would have been advisable to check in from time to time and tighten the stop. Or just place it under the recent price action tighter than the system stop at the time.
Trading the Alerts is not always so cut and dry, especially during the Summer months of July and August. I even mentioned on a post below about how sometimes price goes into “sideways mode” and can just drift around for hours. That’s just a characteristic of the market and the price action itself and we have no control over that. What we do have control over is how we want to handle it and I mentioned that it’s fine to use a little discretion when it makes sense. I stepped-out early and didn’t stick around to see Target 2 get hit but that’s perfectly fine. People have things to do and appointments and it’s up to the market whether the “action” happens early or later in the day or if there’s really any action at all.
So on to today…
The first hour of trading today was definitely “Summer trading” price action. Price was basically just clanging around sideways in a meager 10 point range for the first hour. But about 30-minutes into the session price started poking at the highs and looking like it wanted to go higher. The system gave a Long Alert that triggered-in and was actually looking pretty reasonable up until the very moment “breaking news” hit the wire. It was something Trump said.
We know what happened next.
I believe that was the 2nd “anomaly” like that we’ve seen this year.
The last time price moved like that in such a short amount of time was on 2/20/2026. The system was already in a Long trade and price spiked about 45 points and hit both Targets in the same 1-minute candle.
Today was different because it was basically a “stop and reverse” and it’s debatable whether there was time to react.
If you’re already in a trade and price has a “once in a Blue Moon” price spike in the direction of the trade, chances are you’re going to get a lot of slippage in your favor. The way it played out today it’s more likely that when the first Alert hit the Stop it wasn’t feasible to catch the Short. But it was possible. And there’s no telling what kind of slippage there would have been in this case.
Notice that the Alert price was 7589.50 and the “fill” on the 1-minute close was 7567.50. Something like that happens maybe a few times a year.
The important thing to note is that the Alert Software handled it perfectly. The time stamps (in seconds) reflect everything that transpired in perfect order at the exact times they happened. The problem is that us humans can’t react as fast as the software and that’s just one of those things beyond our control. There was 7-seconds in between when the Short triggered-in and price hit Target 2.
The good news is that worst case scenario was just that today turned out to be a relatively normal stop-out on the first Alert. Just giving back a bit of the gains from yesterday. In hindsight the 1-minute close that triggered-in the Short alert was perfectly valid, but getting out at the Targets would have been trickier.
The 1-minute candle that stopped-the Long and Entered the Short had an ATR of 36.50 points. The following candle that hit both Targets had an ATR of 26.25 points.
So I guess you could say that “a lot can happen in two minutes”.
A Comparison Of Today’s Filled Alerts
7/8/2026
I don’t normally post here every day but we have some new users and I like to help everyone understand the nuances of the system and strategy. And today’s session presents an opportunity to compare the difference between the two (filled) Alerts.
So today there were 2 Alerts and both hit Target 1 for +8.75 points. Neither one made it to Target 2.
But there was a lot of interesting things to think about going on under the surface. There’s a lot more to it.
So which one of these was the better Alert / trade?
Here’s the morning Short.
This Short Alert took -1.25 points of “heat” before it hit Target 1. However price hit T1 briefly inside a 1-minute candle and went just 1-tick past the Target before reversing quickly and moving -10.00 points higher than the Entry. If you didn’t take profits or get filled at Target 1 in that 1-minute, you took -10.00 points of “negative traction” before price moved back down and blew through T1 decisively a little later.
The screenshot above shows that -10.00 points of negative price excursion (Traction) after T1 was hit the first time. When Target 1 was hit the second time, at the lows there was +23.75 points of Traction – more than double the potential “heat” one might have taken on the trade. Eventually price came really close to Target 2 so the Trailing Stop tightened to “protect gains” at Target 1. That tightened stop eventually got hit.
Here’s the mid-day Long.
This Alert was kind of a surprise because I assumed the system was done for the day around Noon eastern. But as we know the market staged a big reversal and subsequently broke out of the top of the Range. That’s when the system fired the Long Alert.
Once that Long triggered-in it literally only took -2 Ticks of heat and then drove straight up to hit Target 1 decisively. There was almost a 5-minute window to take profits at Target 1 and the “Traction” was +12.00 points at the high. And that was the high. Price reversed and hit the tightened Trailing Stop.
So which one was better?
Well I’d say the Short was better because it got way more Traction. It got close enough to T2 for the Trailing Stop to protect gains at T1 whereas the Long Alert just hit Target 1 and didn’t go much further. It faded all the way back down to the (tightened) Trailing stop which was back at the Entry.
The positive Traction was +23.75 on the Short and +12.00 on the Long. (The screenshots don’t show the max traction because they were taken just after T1 was hit).
So the real comparison we use to gauge the effectiveness of the Alerts is the Traction.
In other words we want to see more “positive price excursion” than negative irrespective of the Stop and Targets. If the typical Alert gets twice the positive Traction than negative we know the Entries are providing an “edge”. I hope that makes sense.
Pretend that the system only gave Entries and it was up to the user to decide where to set the stop and target(s). If the typical entry got twice the point moves in the direction of the trade then it could be considered to be a winning system just based on the Entry.
It’s a little difficult to explain to some degree, or maybe I’m just struggling to make the point, but maybe I’ll expand on the idea again in the future. Prior to this latest version 5 upgrade the software measured the Traction from the Alert price. And we still assumed that was providing a pretty good look at the “effectiveness” of the Alerts. But now that the Traction is measured from the Entry it’s an extremely accurate way to measure things.
Tomorrow is my Birthday so I doubt I’ll be posting, but you know I’m always here to answer any questions or help you out in any way I can.
July is off to a really good start as far as the MES Momentum System and I don’t want to jinx it so that’s all I’ll say for now.
An Ideal Session For The Momentum System
7/7/2026
I hope you had a great 4th of July weekend. Yesterday’s session turned out pretty good but honestly it was kind of dull, which I suppose is expected coming back on a Monday after a 3-day weekend. There was only one filled Long Alert which hit Target 1 for +6.00 points. Price actually came within 1 point of Target 2 but didn’t quite make it. The Trailing Stop “protected Target 1” so when price came back down the system closed the trade at Target 1.
Remember, “every Alert that hits Target 1 is a winner”. I did a post about that last month if you missed it.
But today was an ideal day for the system and there are a few interesting things about how the system handled everything. To start, notice on the chart how the Trigger Range basically encompassed most of the price action from the overnight session.
It’s also interesting to see how the Short Alert level coincided with the lows from the middle of the night. And the Short Entry triggered-in just below the lows right after the cash session opened. Basically it was a perfect example of a range breakout to the downside and once all those support levels got broken the market made a substantial impulse move lower.
Here’s a screenshot of the Alert Software after Target 2 got hit. Notice at the time there was as much as +39.00 points of “Traction”. That’s the “maximum positive price excursion” from the Entry Confirmation level. We can see this Alert only took -1.50 points of “heat”.
We have some new users so there’s a couple other points I want to make.
A filled Alert stays open even after Target 2 gets hit. A trade only gets closed when price hits the (tightened) Trailing Stop (or the market closes). The reason for this is that some users might be scaling out differently and holding additional Contracts past Target 2. Some sessions when there’s a huge trend move price can go way past Target 2.
When both Targets get hit and price eventually hits the tightened Trailing stop, the system goes offline for the rest of the session. Basically there’s no point in sticking around and risking giving anything back. And generally speaking when T2 gets hit the price is so far away from the Trigger range that it’s unlikely there would be another Alert anyway. Plus sometimes it’s nice to score a big win in the morning and be done by lunchtime.
Every market session is different. That really goes without saying but it’s an important consideration. In other words at any point in time we have no idea what the market is going to do next and just because today played out the way it did doesn’t mean we should base expectations on that. The important thing to realize is that the System doesn’t try to predict anything, it simply “reacts” to what the market is doing in real-time. There have been sessions where Target 1 gets hit early and then the price meanders around for hours and then eventually hits Target 2 – or not.
The most common thing to see is that just Target 1 gets hit, the Trailing Stop tightens and ends up getting hit. But the good news is those are typically winners or breakeven trades at worst, depending on the number of Contracts traded and the scaling.
The longer you trade the system the more you’ll understand what I’m driving at. Basically the price action manifests differently every session and the system handles each session differently. Today the price bottomed out mid-day and then reversed higher and as I’m finishing up this post it’s all the way back up almost exactly at the Short Entry level. It could have just as easily kept going down.
So the system is essentially trading the “price action” in the direction of the current price movement and the Trigger Range is just the “reference point” it uses to assess and determine the start of directional moves. Today we got a good directional move down that hit both Targets and that’s exactly what we want. What the market does after that doesn’t matter.
Today was one of those “Done for the day before lunch” sessions
A Quick Look at Yesterday’s Alerts
7/3/2026
Since the market is closed today I figured I’d do a quick post about yesterday’s session.
Right after the market opened price ripped higher for the first 30-minutes. The system gave a Long Alert at 9:38 that hit Target 1 for +8.75 points. The Trailing Stop tightened twice and was sitting just 2 points below the Entry when it got hit. The day before a 3-day weekend it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to take the points there at Target 1 and call it a day. There was actually +20.00 points of “traction” on that Alert.
But the real action picked up as the market started selling off and shortly thereafter the system fired a Short Alert that hit both Targets for a significant point gain.
If you’ve been following these posts you know that in normal market conditions the distance to the Targets wouldn’t be nearly that wide. But the market conditions haven’t really been normal lately.
It’s interesting to see that the distance to Target 1 on the Long Alert was 8.75 points and the distance to Target 1 on the Short Alert was 10.00 points. Little nuances like that are part of the magic of the system.
In between T1 and T2 the Trailing stop tightened a couple more times and as price got close to Target 2 the Trailing Stop tightened to “protect gains at Target 1”. That’s a new feature I’ve been talking about. On the early Long Alert price didn’t get “close enough” to T2 so that’s why the Trailing Stop had just tightened to around the Entry.
Here’s a look at the chart once the Short Alert closed and the system was “done for the day”.
Notice that the price scale increments are 10-points which is significant. Even moderately volatile days show 5-point increments but what we’re looking at here is about a 100-point MES move. Also notice the 5-minute candles there around 10:30-11:30 were averaging 15-20 points. That’s some BIG ATR’s and it’s crazy the way they were gyrating up and down.
All in all the second trading day of July turned out great for the system and it’s hard to believe these volatile conditions are persisting into Summer. But hey, that’s better then dull market conditions.
I hope you have a great 4th of July Holiday weekend and I’ll see you back here next week.
July Is Off To A Good Start
7/1/2026
As you know it’s a Holiday shortened week but I wanted to get the new “July” page started since today is the first day of the month. I think July is going to be a good trading month this year, though I have no idea what to expect tomorrow ahead of the 4th of July Holiday weekend.
We have some new users and I think today’s session provides a good example of some important things to know regarding the software and Momentum System.
Here’s the screenshot of the Alert Software from this morning shortly after Target 2 was hit.
Let’s start with the Short Alert that didn’t trigger-in. You can see towards the bottom of the System Notes that the system gave a Short alert at 9:38 but it’s important to realize that not all Alerts get filled. In this case the market reversed right around that level and never had a 1-minute close below the “Trade Price Barrier”. That’s the strategy the system uses to help prevent getting sucked into a false move. It isn’t always perfect, but in this case it worked perfectly. If you’re new to trading the system be sure you understand how it confirms entries.
The next thing to note is how the Trailing Stop moved to protect the gains at Target 1. You can see the Trailing Stop move at 11:05 tightened the Stop to 7547.50 which was the same level as Target 1 which had already been hit. This is a new feature and I’ve been talking about it a lot recently, but it’s going to be a huge improvement going forward. Basically once price gets close to Target 2 the Trailing Stop will protect profits at Target 1. So in this case if price didn’t quite make it all the way to T2 (which was substantial) and reversed then the worst case scenario would have been only scoring +11.25 points on remaining Contracts held past Target 1.
Another important enhancement we made to the software is the Traction Indicator You can see this Alert took -3.25 points of “heat” before moving as much as +42.25 points past the Entry at the time I took this screenshot. The Traction indicator shows the maximum negative and positive price excursion from the Entry now instead of from the Alert price in prior versions.
An important thing to realize about today’s session is the distances to the Targets aren’t “normal”. If you’ve been trading a while you probably don’t need me to tell you that recent market conditions are WAY MORE VOLATILE than usual. It’s partly a function of the price level and just where we are in the cycle. The intraday price moves and ATR’s have been extremely elevated and I’d say about 75% of market sessions recently have abnormally huge ranges. Yesterday the distance to Target 1 was 5.00 points and the distance to Target 2 was 16.00 points (both Targets got hit). Compare that to today and you’ll understand what I mean when I talk about how “every session is different”.
The software is designed to take the current ATR’s and ranges into consideration and that’s why the system will adapt to any market environment. If things do slow down over the Summer we might see sessions where Target 1 is only 3.00 points. So don’t let the big numbers worry you. The system uses the real-time price action to decide the distance to the stops and Targets and when there’s a lot of action the numbers can be big.
I don’t want to make this post too long but I’ll mention one other thing. The Momentum System can be traded “purely mechanically” but it’s also very flexible as far as your ability to use some discretion here and there. In other words at any time you can choose to use a different Stop than the system. There might be times where the candles on the chart provide a better view of where you might choose to “protect profits” by using a tighter stop.
Or say it’s a lazy Summer day and the price starts to meander sideways and things really slow down. Maybe the price is bouncing around between the Targets and looks like it’s treading water. You could choose to just close out the trade and call it a day. There’s nothing wrong with that. Or maybe price gets really close to Target 2 and you decide to set your Stop closer to the price action instead of just protecting Target 1. That’s fine too. Sometimes the candles on the chart offer a better potential exit than the system Trailing Stop.
The other main “discretion” comes with choosing how many Contracts to trade in any given session. That’s beyond the scope of the system because everyone is at different levels. The main thing is to “do the math” and not take too much risk based on your account size or drawdown limit. It’s also fine to vary size based on market conditions. When the 18.00 point “max stop” is in play you might choose to trade smaller because that means the market is extremely volatile and both the risk and reward are elevated.
This is all covered in the Help and here on the Blog and I’ll be talking about all these types of things and more as we go forward.
July is Here – Welcome to the Second Half of the Year
It’s hard to believe it’s already July and the year is halfway over. If you’ve been trading for a long time you know that in past years July and August tend to be dull. Over the years I’ve referred to these two months as the “Summer Doldrums” but I have a feeling that this year July is going to be a little different. I expect the price action to remain (somewhat) active and volatile. It just seems like the market environment is a bit different than years past and even if things settle down a bit, I don’t expect the price action to be as dull as they used to be in years past.
Part of that is because as I’ve mentioned, with ES is in the 7,000’s the “normal price fluctuation” is expected to be considerably higher than years ago when it was in the 3k-4k-5k just because the nominal number is so much bigger. I remember years back we used to talk about how “you can’t surf if there aren’t any waves”. That’s the old days when the typical July would see ES clang around in a 6 point range for hours in dull, listless, low volume trading. We used to talk about how there’s nothing worse than choppy, dull sideways markets with low participation. I remember past July’s over the years where a 10-point move seemed astronomical because price just didn’t move much in the majority of session.
I think we’re in a different sort of environment now. I’ll bet the price action this Summer is more active than it used to be.
While I’m sure we’ll see some dull sessions, I don’t expect it will be as boring as it used to be back in the old days. We’re more likely to see market conditions “moderate” and stay fairly active. And hopefully they will because the past few months the intraday moves have been gargantuan. It’s not uncommon to see 10-20-30 point ES moves in 5-10-15 minute periods recently. And that’s a whole different sort of environment than us old-timers remember. Thank goodness for the Micro Contracts because we created this system before the Micros even existed.
Some of you probably remember this.
That was what the alert Software looked like in 2016. Back then with ES barely in the 2000’s a 10-point move was substantial. We’ve come a long way since then and you can imagine how robust the system is today since we’ve spent the last 10-years refining everything.
As we get into July I’ll use this page to post commentary, notes and charts relating to the Momentum System trading strategy and whatever else comes to mind. This “notes section” of the website isn’t intended to be a daily recap but usually gets updated with new material every couple / few days. It’s the perfect format to post educational material and examples of our trading strategy for the benefit of new and existing users to help make the most of the system.
Additional Useful Information
Moving Beyond the Trade Setup – Futures Trading Strategies to help Increase our Odds – In-Depth Article
June 2026 Commentary – Notes – Education – Examples
PowerEmini Day Trading Futures – Automated Alert Signals