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.
Perfect Way To End The Month
9/30/2026
It’s the last trading day of September and the ES / MES momentum System finished on a high note.
Both Targets got hit in the first 45-minutes of the cash session for a combined +21.50 point gain. And it was an interesting session early-on.
Notice the pre-market and early trading shaded area I marked on the chart which I’d characterize as “noise”. Price began to break out of all that “congestion” and proceeded to make a significant “impulse move” higher. I’ve talked about the difference between impulse moves and trend moves in the past but the system is designed to capitalize on both.
This is a 1-minute chart so we can see how everything transpired so quickly.
Target 2 turned out to be calculated at a pretty accurate level given the fact that’s about where the initial impulse move stalled out. We can see where the Trailing Stop tightened to “protect Target 1” and got tagged before price made another run at the T2 level.
It’s also interesting to see the subsequent pullback took price right back to the support at the Long Entry level (green dashed line). Sometimes the levels really make sense and match up and sometimes it’s just coincidence. This morning price really seemed to respect the levels from the Alert Software and everything on the chart above makes sense and lines up well.
Here’s a look at the Alert Software when Target 2 got hit.
Notice the Time Stamps. There was 7-minutes between when the Long Alert fired off and when it triggered-in. Then it took less than a minute to hit Target 1. It was practically a straight shot to Target 2 and you can see where the Trailing Stop moved to the Target 1 level.
Price doesn’t always move this fast. Lately we’ve seen quite a few sessions where price just explodes and makes a big move in one direction or the other, usually as the result of news. But over the years there are lots of times where price moves a lot slower and it takes time for things to play out. Every market session is different.
Today being the last trading day of the month and Quarter I kind of expected some unusual behavior. The 5-minute ATR’s in the morning session were pretty wide and there was a lot of up and down movement. But this “impulse move” was all the system needed for the Targets to get hit and it was “done for the day” at 10:14 when the tightened Trailing stop got hit.
This was basically a picture perfect Alert and an ideal way to wrap up the month of September.
A Bird In The Hand…
9/29/2026
Today was a good example of how and why the Trailing Stop moves to the Target 1 level when price gets close to Target 2.
We can see on the chart that the trend was clearly down from the pre-market highs and when price started breaking down the system gave a Short Alert that triggered-in on the candle to the right of where I have it marked in the chart. Price vacillated in a range for about an hour then resumed the down trend and hit Target 1 for +8.00 points.
After Target 1 got hit price got “close to Target 2” and the Trailing Stop tightened to the Target 1 level so no matter what happened after that, any remaining Contracts held would at least score 8.00 points. As we see on the chart price rebounded and hit the tightened stop. So a 2 Contract trade scored +16.00 points.
The main thing I wanted to point out is that we’ve seen this type of pattern lots of times and “anything could have happened” after that point in time. We’ve seen plenty of occasions where price would rebound significantly and could have easily staged a full-blown reversal and gone much higher then the Entry at the red dashed line.
For all we knew price could have formed a V-bottom and gone all the way back and make a new high, just like it did yesterday and so many times before. Better safe than sorry.
It just so happens that price only went 2.50 points higher than the Trailing Stop / Target 1 level then reversed back down and eventually poked through Target 2 several times. In other words if the Trailing Stop hadn’t tightened to “protect T1” then this Alert would have hit both Targets.
But my point is that at the time there was no way of knowing what would happen next and we believe that protecting that 8.00 point gain is better than risking giving it all back.
Actually at any point in time we have no idea what price will do next and that’s the reason the Trailing Stop is such a critical component of the system. It’s designed to reduce risk as quickly and as often as possible when an Alert gets “forward momentum” or traction in the direction of the trade.
I’ve said before that everything in trading is a compromise and this is a good example. Protecting gains is more important than risking giving it all back even when on occasion it “thwarts” a bigger gain. Any time you tighten a stop, that increases the chances it’s going to get hit. The tighter the stop the more likely it is to get hit. I’ve said that here a bunch of times and it’s a really important concept.
Last week there was an Alert that hit both Targets for +16.25 points. Today price only hit T1 but the net result was +16.00 points just to put things in perspective.
And of course there no rule against saying “close enough” and just selling near T2.
Directional Price Movement With Actual Momentum
9/28/2026
Before we look at today’s Alert I wanted to talk about Friday which was a bit of a rough session for the system. There were two full max stop-outs early-on before the market eventually picked a primary direction. The third and final Alert of the day hit both Targets and helped make up for some of the earlier damage on those two fake-out moves.
As I’ve mentioned here numerous times, the current market environment is a bit unusual in a couple different ways. First, it seems like almost every day now there are HUGE point moves out of the blue based on “news” that may or may not even be real or relevant. An offhand comment or news item relating to “whatever” suddenly affects the market a lot and results in humongous point moves.
The other unusual thing is the fact the market can move 30-50+ points in a very short amount of time based on that news. And by news I mean “someone important said something”. And by “someone important” I mean a Fed member, the President or someone in the administration, or one of the tech industry titans.
I’ve emphasized here that we should expect to see bigger point moves in the market since the ES nominal number is so big so I guess it’s all relative. As an example today ES made a 50 point move down from the open, then a 50 point move up from the early low, then a 40 point fade back down into the close. Those are HUGE numbers to us old-timers that remember when ES was in the 2,000’s. These type of point moves are even huge compared to when ES was in the 4k-6k area and the only thing we can do is adjust mentally to accept that 10-20 point ES moves are just “normal” these days.
So case in point – this morning in pre-market and into the open there was about a 30-point range that I’d consider mostly “noise”. Then about an hour into the cash session price broke down below all that and the system gave a Short Alert that filled and hit both Targets quickly.
As we see, the entire trade played out in the span of three 5-minute candles. When price broke below the earlier lows the system fired a Short and it filled that same 5-minute candle. The following candle hit Target 1 and the very next candle hit Target 2 for a combined +28.00 points.
And the crazy thing is, if I think about it, going back to the beginning of the year an Alert that hits both Targets that adds up to less than 30 points is “just average”. In other words I’m adjusting to the idea that 30-40 points is more like the “new normal”. We just have to get our head around the idea that the point moves and ATR’s are so much larger these days.
Here’s how the Alert Software looked right after T2 got hit.
I like to include the software screenshots so we can review the time stamps and see the “sequence of events”.
It took about an hour into the cash session for the Short Alert to trigger-in but once it filled it only took 8-minutes to hit both Targets. And the Trailing Stop tightened 4 times in that span.
It was a significant directional price move with lots of momentum, hence the title of this post. I honestly don’t know if that early move was due to any news or not, but I know the subsequent rally back up was. But you can see that the Trailing Stop was sitting right at the Target 1 level when it got hit but a 2 Contract trade was already “done for the day”.
I’m really warming up to the idea that so many sessions the system is finished early and I can go on to do other things, especially now that the weather is starting to feel more like Fall.
Reaction Times Matter
9/24/2026
I don’t always post on Thursdays but today’s Alert provided a couple topics that are too important to pass up.
Actually the example I want to discuss was the second Alert of the day. There was an early morning Long that hit Target 1 for +6.00 points, got as much as 11.25 points of Traction and then went back down and hit the tightened Trailing Stop which was exactly 6.00 points below the Entry. So it was a breakeven using the 2 Contract strategy.
The second Long Alert resulted from some “breaking news” and transpired very quickly. But from past experience we know the market can move fast on news and we have to be on our toes. Several times this year we’ve seen Alerts that played out entirely in the course of a 1-minute candle.
While the Alert Software itself can handle that, it’s debatable whether us humans could have actually traded those, and any attempt would have resulted in significant slippage.
But today’s second Long Alert was easily tradeable provided you had the Alert Software open and got the heads-up “audio alert”. Over the years I’ve run across users that just like to use the indicator and not bother opening the Alert Software but the downside to that is you won’t hear the Audio Alerts and could miss a good trade like this one.
There was plenty of time to manually trade this Alert.
The Alert fired off at 12:15:03 (eastern) and it filled at the close of that same candle almost a full minute later. Plenty of time to see that the “very next 1-minute close” was going to be over the Trade Price barrier / Pending Alert Level.
On a side note, I’ve explained how to use the “timer” in the lower right-hand corner of the Alert Software to know when the next candle is about to close in a previous post. It’s pretty self-explanatory if you didn’t read it and you can also use a “bar close” timer on your chart.
I’ve said before “a LOT can happen in a minute” and the candle that Confirmed the Entry had a range of 15.00 points. It’s the one with the “Long Entry” to the left of it on the chart above.
Pulling the trigger to enter a trade anywhere around the close of that candle likely resulted in a little slippage but it could have easily been in your favor. Speaking of slippage, by the time you realized Target 1 got hit 25-seconds later, clicking to sell would have likely nabbed a few extra points too.
Target 2 officially got hit 53-seconds after the Entry Confirmation but the high of the 1-minute candle was exactly the same level as Target 2, so in reality getting a fill at Target 2 would have occurred in the following 1-minute candle where I have “Target 2 hit” marked on the chart.
Let me emphasize that an Alert that plays out this quickly is unusual. I believe this is only the fourth one this year.
But it demonstrates a couple things. First, that the Alert Software can handle “fast markets” and second is that news can trigger fast moves. It’s just the nature of the market and we have no control over that.
Here are the time stamps from the Alert Software that show how everything transpired.
Now you see why we have the Time Stamps set to display everything in “seconds”. A LOT can happen in a minute.
Target 1 + Target 2 was +25.00 points “by the numbers” in the software. That seems fairly respectable. And so far this week every filled Alert has at least hit Target 1.
Understanding The Distances To The Targets
9/23/2026
In theory “it’s all relative” meaning that the distances to the Targets are based on the pre-market and early session 5-minute ATR’s. But a day like today price ended up going WAY past Target 2. Same thing Monday.
But early in the session we (meaning the system) have no way of knowing if the market is going to end up making a gargantuan point move or not. So the software is just using the available data at the time and sometimes the Targets end up being pretty small compared to the price move the market eventually makes.
I took this screenshot this morning after Target 2 got hit.
At the time it seemed like a perfectly reasonable and excellent trade. Shooting for both Targets with 2 Contracts scored +16.25 points.
By the end of the session the chart made it look like the Targets were “too conservative” because price continued lower WAY past Target 2. This Alert ended up with +57.50 points of “Traction” at the lows and only took 3-ticks of “heat” initially.
This screenshot provides us with a little “perspective” because we can see the early ATR’s were relatively small and trading in a tight range.
So based on the candles in the area I have shaded, the distances to the Targets were very reasonable “relatively speaking”. It just so happens the downside momentum picked up steam after the Targets got hit.
That’s why the system stays online after T2 gets hit. Conceptually the idea is it’s looking to trade the primary trend of the day and using the Trailing Stop to stay with the trend as long as it persists. The Trailing Stop tightened a bunch of times after what we see here and eventually got tagged at 7784.75 which was 31.50 points below the Short Entry.
The thing of it is that it’s easy to look back in hindsight and wonder how or if maybe we should have held past T2 but there’s lots of time where price hits T2 and “that’s it for the move”. The Targets are there for a reason and if you’re trading 2 Contracts shooting for the 2 Targets, once they get hit you’re done for the day. And there’s no reason to look back.
But the system was originally designed to take advantage of long-range strongly trending days and that’s why trades stay open and active even after the Targets get hit. That’s the “trail” part and when the market makes a significant trend move it’s possible to capture big points with additional Contracts held past T2. We call those “runners”.
The Trailing Stop does most of the heavy lifting keeping a trade open after the Targets get hit and tries to avoid getting knocked-out by normal price fluctuation and counter-trend moves. There was a significant counter-trend move just after what we see on the chart above but the Trailing stop was hanging back “protecting” Target 1 at the time.
The Trailing Stop gets more aggressive later in the session on days where Alerts are still open later in the afternoon. That’s when you’ll notice it tightens just above or below a prior pivot. But every session is different and we never know what price will do next.
And always remember you’re free to use a different or tighter stop than the system at any time. It’s a very flexible “tool” and can be traded in any number of different ways.
No Momentum Breakeven Session
9/22/2026
Today was a bit strange. The price action was slow and dull and the cash session intraday range was minuscule compared to normal. There was absolutely no real “momentum” at all.
But we know price can still “drift” in one direction and the Short Alert this morning was perfectly valid. The trend was down early-on.
So the ES / MES Momentum System ended up at exactly breakeven assuming trading 2 Contracts shooting for the 2 Targets. There was a Short Alert that triggered-in an hour after the cash open and an hour later it hit Target 1 for +5.75 points. The Trailing Stop moved to 5.75 points above the Entry which put the trade at breakeven to the tick and the stop eventually got tagged at 1:00 in the afternoon.
That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. Once an Alert hits Target 1 there’s no risk of a loss because the Trailing Stop has tightened to put the trade at breakeven. We consider a couple points on either side as breakeven because it can vary slightly depending on the fill. Today was actually unusual for it to be exactly breakeven to the tick.
I didn’t post yesterday but the market made a huge move higher. Both Targets got hit for a grand total of +12.00 points which was the smallest gain all year with both Targets hit. That was due to the fact the ATR’s were really tight prior to and just after the cash open. It would have been a perfect day for a huge “runner” but the Trailing Stop got tagged “protecting Target 1” since the tolerances were so small.
For comparison, NQ Momentum got +571.00 points of Traction since the Trailing Stop never got hit all session.
I took this screenshot yesterday after T2 got hit before price tagged the Trailing Stop at T1.
It’s highly unusual for the Targets to be so small these days and we’ve seen lots of sessions where Target 1 was more than 9.00 points – which was T2 yesterday.
But the system calculates everything based on the early ATR’s and that’s just how it panned out. Every session is different.
Typically when both Targets get hit the total is 20-30+ points so it was definitely out of the ordinary. But the market itself seems like it’s been anything but ordinary for a while now.
Today is the first day of Autumn and we’re headed into what’s normally one of the best times of year for trading, so there’s that.
An Unusual Week
9/18/2026
So Monday was Contract Rollover – Wednesday was Fed Interest Rate Announcement day – and today was Triple Witching OPEX day when stock options, index options, and index futures all expire simultaneously.
What a week. All these things have an effect on how the market behaves and tend to skew “normal” price discovery to some degree. Market mechanics and positioning come into play and maybe that’s why there were lots of periods of flat sideways price action this past week.
But the week ended strong for the system and even though it seemed a bit rough this week, 6 of the 9 Alerts hit Target 1. Only 2 hit Target 2 but the week actually netted out profitable for the MES Momentum System assuming every Alert was traded with 2 Contracts shooting for the 2 Targets. Skipping trading on Fed Day worked out even better.
I took this screenshot of the Alert Software this morning after T2 got hit.
The “numbers” (distances to the Targets) were actually “normal” today. In what I’d consider a “normal” market environment T1+T2 typically equal between 20 and 30 points.
We’re heading into one of the seasonally best times of the year for trading based on past experience. So I’m hoping things get back to normal going forward now that we have all those events behind us.
What I’d like to see is more intraday directional price movement and the “action” to pick back up. The past few weeks it seems like there have been extended periods of time where the market feels like it’s trading in “slow motion” and price just chops around sideways like it’s waiting for something.
But we’ve been in sort of a “news driven” environment and of course all those things I mentioned above have been affecting things, so I’m hoping going forward that the price action picks up.
In theory it should.
Tomorrow Is Fed Day
9/15/2026
I’ve posted here the day before the Fed interest rate announcement every time since the beginning of 2025 so why stop now?
I’ve mentioned it here prior to every Fed announcement but I always like to reiterate and reinforce it because the software doesn’t take news into account. Basically over the years in the minutes immediately following the Fed announcement (at 2:00 eastern) the market tends to make sharp violent price moves. And the direction of the initial price move is basically a random crap-shoot.
So if there happens to be an open trade / alert prior to the announcement it’s probably best to just close it out. And if a new Alert fires off anytime after 2:00 you might consider just skipping it. There’s any number of possibilities of how things can play out as far as the software and Alerts on Fed day, but it’s one of those sessions where it’s usually best to exercise some judgement.
It’s fairly common for the price action to be dull in the morning ahead of the announcement and even the day before. And today that’s pretty much how things played out after lunch.
There was actually a decent impulse move lower in the first 90-minutes of the cash session and Target 1 got hit for +10.00 points. After that price just zig-zagged up and down in a range between the Short Entry and Target 1 the rest of the day.
It’s pretty obvious that all the real action was early in the session. The Short Alert managed to get 18.50 points of Traction at the lows but that wasn’t quite enough for the Trailing Stop to tighten later in the session which is kind of unusual.
Normally the Trailing Stop would have tightened to right around the Entry but in this case it would have taken about 20+ points of Traction. It didn’t really matter because the Trailing Stop had already moved to “breakeven” and it never got hit by the close. Price never really even moved back above the Short Entry all day.
The sideways chop all afternoon was fairly typical of the day before Fed Day so I’m not surprised.
Tomorrow should be interesting and we’ll see how the dust settles after the new Fed Chair’s first big event.
Handling Contract Rollovers
9/14/2026
There was some confusion this morning on handling the Contract rollover with NinjaTrader. As you know the Alert Software uses data from the full size Contracts even though most users are trading the Micros.
So NinjaTrader did “prompt” to rollover the ES Contract to 12-26 but not MES. So it has to be done manually until they pop-up the prompt.
Here are the steps to rollover MES to the 12-26 Contract.
1. On the Control Center click Tools > Instruments
2. Search for MES and select it in the list – then click Edit
3. On the Properties box scroll to the bottom to Contract Months – when you put your mouse over it you’ll see Edit Rollovers – click that
4. Click the drop-down box Contract Month and use the calendar to select December-26 or 12-26
5. Click Rollover date on the properties screen and check the “Today” box
6. Close NinjaTrader and then re-open it (important)
(you should just get the “prompt” to rollover MES when you open Ninja back up)
7. Now where you select the symbol for a chart you can go down to Micros and the 12-26 Contract should be available to load
It’s unfortunate that NinjaTrader didn’t just “prompt” to rollover all the index symbols and corresponding Micro Contracts, but I can’t explain that decision. As I mentioned Friday, they published a staggered list of dates for the rollovers which didn’t make much sense. And I’m seeing that they rolled over NQ mid-session which is also weird.
Fortunately if you follow the steps I outlined above you should be able to rollover any Contract and the corresponding Micro Contract so you’ll be all set. Over the years the Contract rollovers have always been a point of confusion but you see the first line of the System Notes for each instrument shows which Contract the software is using – so be sure to check that this week.
Today was a 3 Alert day and was kind of strange due to a lot of “news” both over the weekend and during the session.
The first Alert hit Target 1 for +4.00 points and price got close enough to T2 so the Trailing Stop moved to protect T1, where it got tagged.
The second Alert got enough traction towards T1 that the Trailing Stop tightened once and then got hit -6.5.
The third Alert hit T1 for +4.00 points and T2 for +12.75 points.
So depending on the number of Contracts and the scaling the session turned out ok. That final Long Alert actually got +39.25 points of Traction at the highs so it was a significant directional move.
All in all it was a decent day for the system other than the potential confusion on the rollovers. I’m certain NinjaTrader got tons of support calls today and maybe that will inspire them to “standardize” like the good old days where all the main index instruments rolled over on Monday along with the corresponding Micro Contracts.
If you’re using a different platform then you probably didn’t have any issues. But be sure to check the system Notes in the morning to confirm which Contract is being traded for which instrument and which system.
Contract Rollover
9/11/2026
Monday is Contract Rollover day for ES where the system and most platforms will switch to the December Contract. For some odd reason NinjaTrader is showing ES rollover Monday, RTY rollover Tuesday and NQ rollover Wednesday and the Alert Software uses their calendar and dates to change the instruments to the new Contracts. So be sure next week to check the System Notes to see which Contract is being traded.
I have no idea why they’re staggered like this and in theory all the index instruments should rollover on the same day and that should be Monday. I could have sworn CME standardized that a long time ago, so it’s odd they wouldn’t roll them all over at the same time.
Maybe that had something to do with the nasty price action today or maybe it was just one of those sessions where price zig-zagged all over the Range. But it turned out pretty ugly for the MES system and all three Alerts hit the full stop. Three Alert days are fairly infrequent and usually happen when price chops up and down and never really picks a direction. But it’s extremely rare for all 3 to hit the stop without at least making it to Target 1.
But it does happen a couple or a few sessions a year and that’s why we have the system set to only issue a maximum of 3 filled Alerts a day. It just so happens that today it took all the way until right before the close for the last Alert to hit the Stop.
That was some pretty hectic and erratic price action and we see quite a few sets of 2-3 candles that traversed the entire Range.
It was just a weird day. When the CPI numbers came out this morning the following 5-minute candle had a 40 point range and then price decided to rocket higher prior to the cash open. SPY had a huge gap-up and I was kind of wary of that from the start. Price attempted to push higher in early trading and got rejected back into the Range. Then it tried to push lower and triggered a Short Alert but found support around the levels of the pre-market highs following the CPI numbers.
All three Alerts basically fired around support and resistance levels within the huge sideways pattern we see on the chart above and there was not enough directional move out of that wide range to get any of the Alerts to Target 1. It happens on occasion.
Besides capping the number of trades at three per session about the only thing we can do to minimize the damage in a session like this is call it quits after one or two, after seeing how erratic the price action is and how big the ATR’s are. In theory the first two Alerts were viable but that Long just before lunch was clearly dicey since it fired right up at a clear resistance level.
When I look at that chart what I see is just a “mess” as far as price action, especially the first half of the day. In hindsight I can see that going Short at 7680 and Long at 7660 would have been the way to play it but I know that days like this are fairly rare. Price doesn’t just vacillate between two levels all session very often. And the only really clean reversal was that final poke into resistance at 1:30 and then price faded back down into the close.
The way the price action unfolded today was just not conducive to the system strategy.
“In trading, everything works sometimes and nothing works always” ~ Ed Seykota
Price Reaction To News
9/9/2026
It’s funny I mentioned a few posts back that we should basically ignore the frequent 10:00 “economic news releases” and not worry about how they are going to affect trades. They usually don’t matter that much and don’t tend to have dramatic effects on price.
But I mentioned it was the “news releases out of the blue” that tend to have the biggest effect and we saw that today. The thing about “breaking news” is that it may or may not matter to the market and if it does, the “reaction” can go either way.
If we’re in a trade and there’s a big price reaction to news, it usually either causes the Targets to get hit or the Stop. Today unfortunately it was the latter.
At 11:00 eastern the Treasury announced the size of their bond buyback. Sounds pretty boring to me but it caused a crazy price reaction. First the price spiked higher and caused the open Short Alert to hit the full stop at 11:01. Then price reversed immediately thereafter and the system fired off another Short Alert that filled at 11:06 and went on to hit Target 1.
Here’s how all that looked on the chart.
We can’t anticipate breaking news out of the blue. And we can’t anticipate how price will react to news, even if we know it’s going to be released at a certain time.
It’s not really a problem or an issue because over a long period of time these things tend to even out. In other words, if there’s an open trade, sometimes the reaction is in our favor and sometimes it isn’t. It’s just one of those things that goes with the territory.
Notice the 5-minute candle when the news broke had an ATR of 18.25 points which is pretty significant. And coincidentally the second Short Alert got exactly 18.00 points of Traction.
Also price came close enough to Target 2 for the Trailing Stop to move to protect the Target 1 level on the second Alert. And that got hit fairly quickly and that was it for the day.
Not ideal but not a big deal. The price action was actually pretty choppy both early and late in the session. It’s a Holiday shortened week and from what I gather “the market” is waiting to see what the CPI numbers look like this Friday.
And fortunately those numbers will be released pre-market.
The important news that we can anticipate is almost always released before the cash open.
The Nuances Of Protecting Target 1
9/8/2026
I hope you had a good 3-day weekend. Real quick I wanted to mention that today was another day with Microsoft 365 being down all day so I was unable to get into my PowerEmini email. This is only the second time all year but if you ever email me and don’t get a reply in a short amount of time you can always contact me at my info @ investingsystems.com email. That’s on a different provider.
I wanted to talk more about the new feature where the Trailing Stop “protects” Target 1 when price gets close to Target 2 because today was a good example of how and why it’s a big improvement. Also I wanted to dig in a little further and explain some of the nuances of this change we made in June.
You can see in this screenshot of the Alert Software where the Trailing Stop moved to the T1 level when price got within a few points of Target 2.
The idea here is pretty simple. When Target 1 gets hit and we take partial profits the trade is “in the clear”. That’s because as soon as T1 gets hit the Trailing Stop tightens to put the trade at “virtual breakeven” and there’s no risk holding additional Contracts shooting for T2 or beyond.
But sometimes price doesn’t quite make it all the way to Target 2 since it’s a “way out” Target. Today Target 2 was 20.25 points away from the Entry and price only made it 17.25 points before it started snapping back. Since price got just a few points from T2 the Trailing Stop tightened again so that if the snap-back turned into a full blown reversal, it would be protecting the gains at T1 rather than letting price go all the way back to the Entry and breakeven stop – or even further.
In this case price “snapped-back” 24.75 points from the low near T2 to the high of the counter-trend move. And it could have just kept on going. That’s the thing. We never know what price will do next at any point in time, so basically the system is choosing to reduce risk and “protect gains” by tightening the stop to the T1 level.
Trading 2 Contracts on this Alert would have resulted in a gain of +13.00 points (2x T1). That’s fairly respectable considering the system was done for the day an hour into the session.
But one thing to consider is that today was a fairly tame session. In the past there were times where T1 was say 14 points and T2 was 36 points and price made it within a few ticks of T2 but didn’t quite make it and went all the way back to the Entry. That happened enough times to make me realize that it didn’t make sense to let a trade like that go back to breakeven.
But there are certain instances like today where Target 2 would have been hit if the Trailing Stop didn’t tighten to protect T1. Everything is a compromise.
When price gets between T1 and T2 the system can react in any number of ways. It depends on how fast the approach is and how much time is spent between the targets. It’s actually kind of difficult to explain because it reacts differently depending on how the price action unfolds. There are times where the Trailing Stop might tighten 6 times in between T1 and T2 and other times like today where it just tightens once or twice.
In order for the Trailing Stop to move to protect Target 1 there has to be a 1-minute candle CLOSE close to Target 2. If it happens in a split second spike the stop won’t tighten. That’s one of those “nuances” I mention frequently.
Any time you tighten a stop the chances of it getting hit go up. That’s just basic physics and the reason we can’t use 1-tick or even 1-point stops. As traders we tend to err on the side of tighter stops and today is an example of where that can sacrifice a larger gain. But it was still the right move.
I think the chart will help show why.
Imagine holding through that counter-trend move and watching price chop around for hours and then eventually hitting T2.
The key takeaway here is that the system is going to react differently every session depending on how the price action unfolds. A similar session might have resulted in a second Short Alert but it just didn’t play out that way this time. Other similar sessions the price might have kept on going in that counter-trend move and hit the high of the day.
We never know what price will do next so “taking a win” at Target 1 is perfectly reasonable.
Labor Day Weekend
9/4/2026
It was a good end to the week as we’re headed into the 3-day Labor Day weekend. The market vacillated around for a bit after the cash open and the system gave both a Long and Short Alert. Actually the Alerts were “potential” trades so whichever direction the market decided to take that Alert would fill and we’d be along for the ride on a trend move.
The Alerts calculated “Trade Price Barrier” levels above and below the early price action which are basically lines in the sand. Any directional move will break through one of these levels and the idea is we want to trade in the direction the market decides to break-out. The system doesn’t give barriers both above and below the price action every session – it depends on what price does.
The market finally picked a direction and the Short Alert filled and hit both Targets.
But notice the time that elapsed between when the Short “Entry Pending” Alert fired off and when it actually filled. It took 25-minutes before the trade triggered-in.
Look at the time stamp on the Short Alert and the time stamp when it filled with the Entry Confirmation.
When the software fires off an Alert it’s a “potential” trade and the idea is we want “confirmation” before jumping in. Kind of like any trade setup or a candlestick pattern, there’s usually a “trigger” that confirms the entry and that validates the setup.
Sometimes we get an Alert and it fills on the very next 1-minute candle close and sometimes (like today) it can take quite a bit of time for price to “close past the Barrier”. 25-minutes seems like a long time but conceptually it should make sense that the system waited for the market to pick a direction and “confirm” it before jumping in.
Both yesterday and today the system issued Parabolic Stop levels which aren’t all that frequent, so I thought I’d mention that real quick. Basically they are super-tight discretionary stops that can only show up after Target 2 gets hit and are almost always going to get hit quickly.
The Parabolic Stop only shows up when price gets extremely extended in one direction and is almost certain to snap-back soon. It’s basically there to protect as much gain as possible for any Contracts held past T2 similar to the Aggressive Protection Level. Except it only shows up when price is extremely extended after making a “parabolic” move.
Honestly I wasn’t expecting much today on a Friday ahead of a 3-day weekend, but the market saw some decent action due to the “jobs numbers” that came out pre-market. Both targets got hit before lunch and that’s always nice.
It was a good end to the week Enjoy the long weekend!
If At First You Don’t Succeed…
9/3/2026
This morning was a bit unusual. It seemed like the market wanted to go higher but was temporarily sidetracked by some economic news at 10:00 (eastern).
There were 2 Long Alerts that filled and the first one came within 1-tick of hitting Target 1. When the ISM numbers that no one really cares about came out, price took a quick header back down and hit the (tightened) Trailing Stop. It’s amazing how sometimes one tick can make a difference.
Then for some reason an hour later the market took off higher and never looked back. It was probably news related too. The second Long Alert went on to hit both Targets and then some. The Trailing Stop continued to ratchet and tighten and never got hit by the cash close.
Here’s the chart of the whole session.
The second Alert that hit both Targets more than made up for the first one that hit the Stop. That’s important to know and the way it generally works out. An alert that hits both Targets typically makes up for a full stop out – even if they don’t happen on the same day.
That second alert got +46.25 points of “Traction” at the highs and only took 1-tick of “heat”. It’s interesting that the fills on both Alerts occurred at the exact same level.
Here’s what the Alert Software looked like when T2 got hit so you can see all the details in the time stamps.
There were a few short Alerts that never triggered-in while the market was chopping around and there were quite a few candles today with BIG ATR’s. It was kind of a wild session with a lot of big moves.
A while back someone asked me if we should be wary of “economic news releases” and my answer was that generally speaking the 10:00 news doesn’t have a big effect on price. The news that really moves the market typically comes out before the open. But every now and then the reaction to the 10:00 economic news does cause a move one way or the other and if there’s an active Alert it’s either going to hit the Targets or the Stop – if the news causes a significant reaction.
Most of the time it doesn’t matter and over a long period it will all even out anyway. The market moving “news” we should be concerned about usually comes out of the blue in the form of a Trump post or something a Fed member says or something unexpected and there’s no way to plan for those.
My suggestion is to ignore the news. The price reaction to news cuts both ways and the important thing is that the system is trading in the direction price is moving, so if news creates a big trend move, it’s likely we’ll be on board for it.
The system trades in the direction of the current primary trend.
Morning Trend Move
9/2/2026
Today was actually similar to yesterday. Price chopped around for the first 30-minutes of the cash session then picked a direction and made a nice trend move higher.
Both Targets got hit in the first hour and there was quite a bit of additional Traction past Target 2.
There was something interesting that you may or may not have noticed. After Target 2 got hit the Trailing Stop was still hanging back quite a bit “protecting” the Target 1 level. When price was significantly above Target 2 you would have thought that the Trailing Stop would have tightened sooner right?
The reason for that is because price basically made a straight shot higher for the entire early trend move. The system was waiting for a pullback or “counter trend move” before it decided what level to tighten the stop to. The first Trailing Stop move after Target 2 got hit was about an hour after after T2 was hit and put the Stop right at the low of the candle that hit T2.
Interesting eh?
I decided to go a little deeper than usual in this post because we have a new user that was asking me a few questions about the indicator.
So here’s the chart that shows all the levels and everything that transpired.
As you know, the indicator plots all those levels in real-time on the chart and the lines move as everything updates. I plot and maintain the lines and levels on my chart so we can go back and review what transpired. It makes it easy to go back and see how an Alert played out.
You might notice I included the Aggressive Protection Level on the chart to demonstrate how it works. I marked it in red where it says APL and notice how it was tucked right below the low of the first “counter-trend move”. That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. The APL is simply a tighter more “aggressive” stop level you can choose to use when holding any Contracts past Target 2. It only shows up after T2 is hit and is typically right below the prior pivot low.
The Aggressive Protection Level is only sent out through the System Notes and the indicator doesn’t plot it because too many lines on the chart can get confusing. That’s why the regular Trailing Stop is only one line and it moves to a new level as the Stop tightens.
Here’s a screenshot of the Alert Software today so you can see where the Aggressive Protection Level kicked-in and see where the regular Trailing Stop was at the time.
For the benefit of new users I also marked up the “Entry Pending” Alerts that didn’t trigger-in. The most important thing for a new user to understand is that not every Alert triggers-in or “fills”. That’s why the Alert Banner shows “Entry Pending” when an Alert fires off and changes to “Entry Confirmation” after it does fill.
On the screenshot you can see the time stamps that show how it took an hour for the Trailing Stop to tighten again after T2 was hit and on the chart you can see why my explanation for that makes sense. You can also see how the Trailing Stop moved to the exact Target 1 level as price got close to Target 2. So in cases where price gets close to T2 but doesn’t quite make it, the Target 1 level is “protected”.
One other interesting thing about today is that price just “ripped through” both of the Targets on the 5-minute timeframe. In other words the candles that hit the Targets closed well above the Targets and that’s something to think about. There are other times where price will hit a Target briefly then reverse so trying to squeeze a little extra may or may not be a good idea. It’s a potential discretionary tactic along with so many others, it’s probably a good idea to save that for another post.
But remember, you can always feel free use a different Stop than the system at any time. That opens up a lot of possibilities but for the most part I know most users prefer to trade the system as mechanically as possible. But every now and then “protecting levels” a little differently than the system Trailing Stop might make sense based on what you see on the chart. It’s always easier in hindsight.
I wrote this post a earlier than usual today because the system was done for the day early. Lately we’ve seen plenty of sessions where most of the action happens in the morning and things get dull mid-day. The nice thing about days like today and yesterday is that we don’t need to stick around and stare at the charts while price grinds around sideways.
Directional Price Movement
9/1/2026
Yesterday was the last trading day of August and it went about as expected. There was one early Alert that hit Target 1 and that was it for the day. The market basically traded sideways in a narrow range for the rest of the session until right near the close, likely due to end of month positioning. I mentioned that there’s nothing worse than sideways price action.
Today the “action” picked up and hopefully that’s a sign of good things to come.
We still have a few trading days to finish the week and then it’s Labor Day weekend and that usually kicks-off one of the best times of the year for trading – seasonally speaking. Summer is basically over except the weather hasn’t cooled down yet.
The first day of September turned out well for the ES / MES Momentum System. Both Targets got hit early.
The distances to the Targets were in the “fairly normal” range today and what you see in that screenshot is exactly what we want to see (as often as possible). Days where the market picks a direction early and makes a decent impulse or trend move provides ideal conditions for the system.
The market gapped-down at the cash session open, chopped around for the first thirty minutes, then picked a direction and made a significant “directional move” higher. That’s all the system needs. A directional move and it doesn’t have to be too significant to hit Target 1.
The only way to make money trading is with “directional price movement”. I already mentioned that but it’s so true that I wanted to reiterate it to start this month. I talk a lot about market conditions but it’s important to understand that as traders “we are beholden to market conditions”.
We can only trade what the market serves up from session to session and we obviously have no control over that.
So if the market spends the day just grinding sideways in a tight range like it did yesterday, we just don’t have much to work with. Days like today where it gives us a nice trend move, the system will capitalize on that.
And one of the nice things about a day like today is that once both Targets are hit, that’s basically it for the day. Honestly I like days where I can wrap it up early and go on to do other things.
September is off to a good start.
The Market Action Usually Picks Up In September
We’re almost past the Summer Doldrums and I’m expecting the price action to pick up after Labor Day. The Fall usually presents us with some of the best trading conditions of the year.
This Summer actually turned out a bit better than expected if you consider June, July and August as the Summer months. We made some enhancements and tweaks to the back-end Momentum System in June and that turned out to be a big improvement. So going forward I’m expecting good things and we’re constantly testing and looking for ways we can improve things even further.
I’ve mentioned a few times on the regular posts how the market “moves more points” nowadays than it used to, so keep that in mind. In other words with ES in the 7,000’s we expect larger ATR’s than when it was trading in the 2,000-4,000 levels some years back. Ten points was a big move back then but the nominal number is much bigger now. These days we frequently see 20+ point moves in just a couple five-minute candles so it’s important to keep that in mind for proper perspective. All the numbers are larger now but MES is still $5 a point.
As we get into September I’ll be posting commentary, notes and charts relating to the Power Emini Momentum System and whatever else comes to mind. This “notes section” of the website isn’t intended to be a daily recap, but gets updated with new material every couple / few days. It’s a good way for me to be able to post examples of our trading strategy and educational material to help new and existing users make the most of our system. Check back every few days.
Additional Useful Information
Moving Beyond the Trade Setup – Futures Trading Strategies to help Increase our Odds – In-Depth Article
August 2026 Commentary – Notes – Education – Examples
PowerEmini Day Trading Futures – Automated Alert Signals