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.
Reaction Times Matter
5/8/2026
I wanted to point something out that we haven’t talked about much. That is “the speed in which things can transpire in the market”. And today was a good example of how the Alert Software handles “fast markets”.
The software’s reaction time is probably a bit faster then us humans, but that’s not really a drawback. Sometimes a few seconds lag can provide better fills (not always). But today was a little unusual because there’s typically more time between “events” but we know how fast price can move.
Check out the time stamps in the System Notes for the Long Alert this morning.
So there was kind of an early heads-up at 9:38 when the first Long Alert fired off, but it didn’t trigger-in.
Then at 9:45 another Long Alert fired and it triggered-in on the close of that very same 1-minute candle at 9:46. 1-minute later at 9:47 the Trailing Stop tightened and 4-seconds later price hit Target 1 and the Trailing Stop tightened again.
You’d have to have pretty fast reaction time to execute all that without any slippage. But not to worry. In reality it would have been easy to get filled above Target 1 in the few minutes that followed.
Here’s the 1-minute chart so you can see what I mean.
Those of you who are intimately familiar with the Momentum System knew that the earlier Long Alert that didn’t fill was a heads-up. Meaning if price broke back out of the top of the Range again we’d get an Alert at the exact same level. And that’s what happened.
But the important thing is that even with a little bit of slippage on the Entry, there was plenty of time to compensate for that in the next few minutes after price sliced through Target 1. In other words if you got filled a point over the system Entry it was easy enough to get filled a point over the first Target.
And the same thing applies up there at Target 2. We can see that there were two 1-minute candles in a row that moved several points above Target 2 at the same time it was being hit. But you had to be quick to grab it there. Fortunately a few minutes later the market offered plenty of opportunity to get out at the exact T2 level.
I want to stress that it’s not really common for things to transpire so quickly. Most sessions there’s plenty of time to react. We’ve seen hours go by where the market drifts around between T1 and T2 so it’s always a good idea to set limit orders and just sit back and let things play out.
Neither we nor the system has any control over how fast the market moves at any given time. I’ve seen ES move 30 points in 1-minute. And we’ve seen tons of 10-20+ point moves in a minute or so over the years.
The good news is that the software can handle that just fine. You can see the time stamps in the System Notes are in Seconds. It reacts FAST but it’s up to us to deal with fast price action when it happens. The good thing about “slippage” is that many times it can work in our favor. It’s actually very common for price to just blow through the Targets faster than we can react trading manually and that offers a chance to grab more points than the system.
The last thing I’ll say about today’s session was that the numbers were considerably smaller than they were on the previous post. That’s the system adjusting the distance to the Targets based on market conditions and ATR’s.
Directional Price Movement
5/6/2026
ES was up over 30 points at the cash open this morning and in the back of my mind I was thinking “no way this goes higher”. I was expecting a down day since the market has basically been going straight up for weeks now. It’s extremely overextended and these type of parabolic moves frequently end with a gap-up and then a reversal.
It’s a good thing the software doesn’t have any bias. It simply reads the real-time price action and reacts to “directional price movement” using the Trigger Range as a reference point. It doesn’t try to predict anything, it simply reacts to what the price is doing right now and is completely objective.
The only way to make money on a trade is directional price movement.
This is the most fundamental principle of trading. Regardless of the strategy, tool, or indicators we use, profits are only realized if price moves in the direction of our trade after we take an entry. Think of this as the first law of trading physics. Since the system is attempting to get in at the start of a significant trend move, it only makes sense that we are taking entries in the direction of the current price movement. It’s trading in the direction of the current primary trend.
Here’s how that turned out
The points captured at the Targets today was fairly substantial. And even better, both Targets were hit early in the session which is always nice for those of us that don’t necessarily want to sit in front of the screens all day.
Part of what makes the system work is the idea of “continuity of motion”. Like a Law of Physics.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an opposing force.
Price movement follows the same principle. Once price starts moving in a certain direction, it has a tendency to continue along that path, sometimes for just a few points, other times for sustained trends.
“Until acted upon by an opposing force”.
This tendency is what gives breakout trading its edge. The initial range breakout serves as the spark, and inertia / momentum has a tendency to carry price forward. The system doesn’t assume that every breakout will lead to a massive trend, but it leverages the probability of continuation. Even small continuations can be exploited and every significant trend starts this way.
Days like yesterday there was enough follow-through for price to hit Target 1, but price snapped-back violently and hit the tightened Trailing Stop resulting in a breakeven session. It happens and that’s fine because getting the stop to breakeven is part of the strategy that gives the system it’s edge.
When price is moving in one direction and then begins moving in the opposite direction we have no way of knowing if it’s just a counter-trend move or a full blown reversal. So the strategy of reducing risk by tightening and trailing the stop makes perfect sense. As price begins a directional move from point A to point B, the Momentum System trading strategy is to take partial profits at the first “easy to hit” Target. When Target 1 gets hit, the initial stop tightens to put the trade at breakeven. There’s no risk of a loss at that point.
One of the smartest things we can do in trading is eliminate downside risk as quickly as possible. Instead of worrying about losing, we’re trading from a position of strength. That frees us up to let the second target or the trailing stop do its work without second-guessing things.
Here’s the reality: we can’t know the outcome of any single trade. But we don’t have to. Like the casinos in Vegas, all we need is a small, repeatable edge that plays out over time. That’s exactly what the Momentum System provides – a statistical advantage.
A Perfectly Normal Session
5/4/2026
What I mean by “normal” is the distance to the Targets in today’s session. This is about what we’d expect during normal market conditions.
Prior to today the market has experienced elevated volatility and larger than normal ATR’s in the majority of sessions so I wanted to point out what I consider more along the lines of “average”.
We see that Target 1 was 4.50 points from the Entry and Target 2 was 15.25. That’s right about average for normal market conditions going back several years.
Sessions where Target 1 is around 10 points or more we know the session is experiencing higher than normal volatility. And when I say volatility I really mean that the average ranges are higher than normal. Over the past year and a half I’ve talked a lot about market conditions here and I can’t stress how important it is to have a good perspective on market conditions.
The market goes through phases and there are periods of time where we might see 5-minute candles averaging 10-20 points. That’s typically related to the news cycle but those are wild sessions and the ranges in the markets tend to be huge. The funny thing is right after T2 got hit today some news hit the wire and that’s exactly what happened. Big time “range expansion”.
Then there are periods where things tend to be really dull. Over the years July and August tend to be like that and we see days where 20 point swings all session are considered huge. Those of you that have been using the software for several years or more know exactly what I’m talking about. Those are the sessions where Target 1 tends to be around 3-5 points and T2 is somewhere in the 12-18 point range. That’s about normal.
The overall market environment is constantly shifting and morphing. We can get volatile days followed by dull days but the bigger picture is that the market goes through phases where it transitions from making huge point moves, to settling down and entering a dull phase. And again, it’s pretty much a function of the news cycle. Think back to last year around this time when all the tariff news was a daily occurrence.
It’s interesting to me that market conditions aren’t really discussed much in the context of trading strategies. In other words it seems like everyone expects a strategy to work the same way no matter what the market conditions are. But as you know the Momentum System adapts to varying conditions by using the current market structure and ATR’s to set the stops and Targets. It kind of makes sense. When price is making big moves it’s better to use wider stops and set larger targets to compensate for the increased volatility.
That concept is part of the reason the system has been around so long and still works great. It’s seen every type of market session there is from extremely dull to insanely volatile and it self-adjusts every session. There was a day last year where Target 1 was 21.00 points and Target 2 was 70.50 points (both got hit after a max stop-out that session). But compare that to today’s numbers and I think you’ll get the idea of what I’m talking about here.
Normal market sessions are preferable to insane volatility and easier on the nerves. Today turned out well.
Using A Tighter Trailing Stop Makes Sense Sometimes
5/2/2026
Picture this. It’s Friday morning and it’s been a long week. You’re looking forward to the weekend. But there’s a lot of action in the market and it would be nice to close out the week with a good trade.
So you’re trading the ES / MES Momentum System and a few minutes into the session you get a Long Alert. Looks good as price is breaking out of the top of the Range and forming a Bull Flag. About 10-minutes later there’s a 1-minute closing candle a couple ticks past the Barrier and you pull the trigger and get in. You switch over to the 5-minute chart to see the bigger picture and follow the trade because we’re only using the 1-minute chart for the Entry.
The next 5-minute candle starts forming and you notice you took a little bit of heat -4.75 points to be exact but price is rallying back up. Four minutes later price explodes higher and just blows through the first Target. Target 1 was +7.50 points and maybe you grabbed a couple extra points in the time it took to click to take profits. The high of the 1-minute candle that hit T1 went about 5-points higher than the Target.
So far so good. You’ve locked-in 7.50 (or more) points at Target 1 and by the close of that 5-minute candle price is almost halfway to Target 2. You’ve tightened your Trailing Stop a couple times and it’s sitting just a couple points below the Entry. It’s a no-lose trade no matter what happens.
For the next 20 minute price just consolidates around the mid-point between Target 1 and Target 2. The Contract you’re holding for T2 has about +20 points of profit on top of the points you already locked-in at the first Target.
You’re looking at the 5-minute candles and based on the pattern you’re wondering if it might make sense to protect more of those gains rather than taking the chance that it goes back down. Of course it makes sense.
After all, price came within a few points of Target 2 which was 25.75 points over the Entry, but price only got +22.50 point of “traction” towards the second Target.
You had 2 choices. Either grab 20 points of profit and say “good enough” or set a tighter stop where I drew the Red Dashed Line on the chart below. Just below the low of the consolidation zone.
Actually you had a third choice. Let 20+ points of profits evaporate because the system Trailing Stop was hanging back around the Entry.
Normally the Trailing stop is automatically at the ideal location. Remember, the system is designed to keep a trade open through normal counter-trend moves and price fluctuation so that a trade doesn’t get knocked-out easily only to watch price go on to make a significant trend in the direction of the trade it was in.
In a nutshell, it would have made perfect sense to use a tighter Trailing Stop in the latter part of that consolidation period. I think the best level would have been just below the low of that 30-minute consolidation period. That’s just based on the candlestick pattern at the time.
The reason I say that is because that we already had a gain of +7.50 points at Target 1 and the price had basically stalled out within spitting distance of T2. We had about 20 additional points “in the bag” barely an hour into the session.
At the time we had no way of knowing whether price would continue higher and hit T2. The only reason to even consider using a tighter trailing stop than the system was based on the 5-minute candles.
Under normal circumstances there’s no reason to try and game the system and use a different trailing stop. Only in certain specific cases like this where an experienced trader can see that it makes more sense.
The system logic did exactly what it was supposed to do. Get the Trailing stop to breakeven once Target 1 got hit and better than breakeven when price got close to T2. Using a different / tighter stop than the system isn’t something that makes sense most of the time but this was one of those rare occasions where it seemed like a good idea. Right?
Here’s what the Alert Software looked like right around the same time as the chart above.
Notice the green bars in the Proximity indicator next to Target 2. We can see the “proximity” made it almost all the way to T2 where the dark green sections are filled-in within three sections of the Target. And we can tell by the bright green sections that price had backed-off a bit. The Traction indicator shows the trade had +22.50 points of maximum excursion (traction) in our favor and the chart shows where it made the most sense to set a tighter discretionary stop.
The point of all this is that sometimes you want to use a little discretion as far as your stops. Not always and of course you don’t have to at all. You could trade the system like a robot and stick to the exact numbers and never make a single judgement call. That would work out just fine over a long series of trades.
The system is designed so that it can be traded purely mechanically and it will be profitable over a long series. That’s where the “edge” comes in. This trade was profitable using just 2 Contracts and matching the exact numbers even when the Trailing Stop got hit.
But imagine just closing it out with a 25+ point gain an hour into the session on a Friday and calling it a day because that made the most sense based on the chart.
And everything I said is just assuming a standard 2 Contract trade. It’s also important to realize that trading 3 Contracts, selling 2 at Target 1 (+15.00 points) and letting the remaining Contract go all the way back to the Trailing stop (-2.00 points) still resulted in a nice profit.
There’s so much more I could say about this example but I’ve been trying to keep each post at a reasonable size. In this day and age it’s admirable that you took the time to read this so far based on the idea that so many people’s attention span has been greatly reduced. Us older guys don’t mind and actually enjoy reading but I get the idea that younger folks have an aversion to reading things that take more than a couple minutes.
So this month I’m going to make an effort to post some good educational and concept type stuff and make an attempt to back-off the recap type posts. Honestly it’s easiest to use a recap of what transpired in a given session as an example of something pertinent to the system and strategy, but I have some good material that I’ll cover that don’t necessarily need examples.
So check back here every few days for more insight on how to best trade the Momentum System and other interesting trading related material.
May is Historically a Great Month for Trading Futures
Over the years May has typically been a great month for the Momentum System “seasonally speaking”. Spring time is usually an active trading environment overall. With the market up at all-time highs as we enter the new month it should be interesting this year.
We’re basically in a news-driven environment and with ES currently over 7,000 the “price movement” numbers tend to be big. That makes sense because a 10-point move at 7,000 isn’t substantial compared to a 10-point move when ES was trading in the 3,000’s or 4,000’s which wasn’t all that long ago. The intraday ranges and ATR’s are a lot bigger then they used to be given the “nominal price levels” of the indexes.
In the current market environment, 10+ point moves in just a few minutes are more the norm. It’s important to keep that in mind to maintain perspective. When typical intraday price movement is WAY larger than it used to be we’re in a different sort of environment. Super tight stops are more likely to get hit. Normal price fluctuation is probably double what it used to be back in the day.
Fortunately the Momentum System adapts to this because it uses the intraday ATR’s to calculate everything. That’s why the system and strategy are just as viable as they’ve always been over all these years.
As we get into May 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
April 2026 Commentary – Notes – Education – Examples
PowerEmini Day Trading Futures – Automated Alert Signals