The Last 10 Minutes Took One Trade And Paid For The Other

RUT did the job SPX normally does. SPX did not. And the final 10 minutes of the session settled both of them at once.

Two trades to start the week off with.

I continue to experiment with some premarket and global exchange trading out of hours, which means I can get a head start on the day most of the time, before the regular session gets going proper.

Here is how both of them went, including the one that did not work the way I wanted.

SPX: Three Trades, And No Guaranteed Profit

SPX saw 3 trades for me, as I test out new entry setups using the VWAP tool you can see on the chart, which is a part of the new and updated training program and software.

And I will be straight with you about how it went.

Ultimately, no guaranteed profit today. Simply because there was once again little movement to allow me to get a speedy profit locking in, to lift all of the profit curve above the zero line.

That is the whole mechanism in one sentence, so it is worth slowing down on.

The way you build a risk free day is speed. You need enough movement, early enough, to lock the first profit and drag the entire curve above zero. Once that is done, the day cannot go negative.

Monday did not give me that. The market sat still. So the curve kept a worst case of $280 on it all day, and I traded the rest of the session with that still live.

The Popper panel had SPX at WAITING, session IN RANGE, grade plus 0, half size. The software was telling me the same thing the tape was.

RUT: The Classic First Breakout

RUT however saw the classic 1st breakout.

And I was conveniently a little late to it.

Using the reaction off the 2 Day VWAP lines, a trade was placed that meandered a little but overall gave no headaches at all, until an eventual profit was locked in by lunch time.

Which is what we normally see over on SPX.

That line is the interesting one. The two instruments swapped jobs on Monday. RUT behaved like the reliable one, and SPX was the one that would not cooperate.

Worth noting the Popper had this graded below average, half size, minus 1. It still did the job.

The Turn: The Last 10 Minutes

Here is where the day actually got decided.

That last 10 minute push lower sadly took me out of the RUT profit tent.

That is the trade that had behaved all day. Locked by lunch, no headaches, sat comfortably in the tent. And in the last 10 minutes of the session, price walked out of it.

But the same move did secure the profit on SPX.

One move. It took the profit tent off the trade that had worked, and it locked the profit on the trade that had not.

So all’s well that ends well.

That is worth sitting with if you trade both. You do not get to pick which of your positions the close is kind to. The only thing you control is whether both of them were structured so that the close could not hurt you badly either way.

The Math

RUT:

• $154 locked as the profit floor
• Potential for $654 in the centre of the profit tent
• RUT finished at 2,995.08, down 22.79 points, or 0.76%

SPX:

• -$280 worst case scenario
• Profit peaks at $220 and $720
• Eventually closed the day with $220
• SPX finished at 7,652.96, down 21.41 points, or 0.28%

All of these trades are on the challenge account, where I’m taking a small account to a large account in the speediest way possible. And as such, all done with currently johnny 1 lots.

So: a floor that held on one, a tent that did not, and a position that only turned green in the final minutes.

How did you do today?