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.
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.
I hope you have a great 4th of July Holiday weekend and I’ll see you back here next week.
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