Tutorials

The E-Mini S&P’s bigger charts were in limbo when we dropped in on them on this morning looking for a ‘camouflage’ trade. We found it in the form of a minor short that was good for a fleeting ride. This was just little stuff – the sort of thing a trader could find even on a slow day. But as you’ll see, just one of these “little” trades per day would add up to $60,000 of extra income per year.

The markets were so slow on this particular morning that our goal was to force a trade come hell or high water. Neither condition obtained, just a lazy drift sideways in most stocks following a 90-second spurt hours before the NYSE opened. If you’ve ever sat at a trading monitor desperate for action, this lesson could help you make the most of boredom next time.

With few tradable opportunities to engage us, even on the lesser charts, we spent most of this hour scrutinizing daily and weekly charts to get a better idea of how certain geopolitical events might play out. You might find my conclusions about the U.S. Dollar and long-term Treasurys particularly interesting, so check ‘em out.

Gold was retracing a big rally from the previous day, but there were reasons to think the correction would wipe out the gains and then some. To see how we arrived at this conclusion, and for a closely reasoned look at how Hidden Pivots form the building blocks of “market instincts,” check out the section of this lesson devoted to gold’s short-term charts.

With the goal of initiating a bull trade in March Natural Gas, I’d highlighted the number 3.258 in a tout published that morning. Although the trade would have worked perfectly, no one in the chat room appears to have done it. Maybe they will the next time, though, once they’ve seen how paying close heed to small details can make or break a trader’s day/week/month. Check out the first ten minutes of this lesson to learn why the number ‘3.258’ promised profits with almost no risk.

Although we don’t usually try to explain one chart in relation to another, it’s tempting to look at price action in T-Bonds, the dollar and the euro as being not only connected, but capable of predicting what the future may hold for the global financial system. During this session, we focused on these three vehicles, and the yen as well, to give us a speculative basis for describing the perhaps unintended endgame of the Federal Reserve & Friends.

January has been gangbusters for stocks, giving us a good reason to look at a bigger picture than usual. With Europe sinking into a deep recession that has now engulfed Germany, and U.S. corporate earnings presumably past an important peak and consumer confidence plummeting, we were surprised to find some compelling rally targets for the broad averages that lie well above current levels. There were no juicy trades to be found during this hour, but even a lack of opportunity held its lessons.

We took a geopolitical tour this time, pondering Switzerland’s entry into the global devaluation Olympiad. Other charts you can see here implied that interesting times will be with us again in 2013. We wrapped up this session with a ‘camo’ trade in Feb Gold that worked out nicely.

The Dow was in the throes of a 300-point surge when we looked in on it during this session, and bullion was up sharply as well. Naturally, our focus was on getting a piece of the action, and we did so with results that will be of particular interest to those interested in sharpening their camouflage-entry technique.