$145 locked in. $645 on the table. | Why traders skip FOMC days (they’re missing this).

Most traders stand aside on FOMC day. Flatten up, sit on your hands, wait for the dust. You have heard it a hundred times and you have probably said it yourself.

My dashboard scored FOMC as plus one.

Not a penalty. A bonus. And once you see why, the whole event-day question turns itself inside out.

The Grumbling Before The Cha-Ching

Let me set the scene honestly, because it does not start with a moment of genius.

I spent most of the live group calls that week talking about, well, grumbling and griping about the shitty lacklustre market movements. Tiny ranges. Nothing moving. The kind of tape that makes you want to go and do something more interesting with your morning.

What we did do was assess for the tiny range we had commented on, and treat it as a breakout. And I was remaining bearish on the swings.

And then. Wooosh.

Cha-ching.

The Setup: A Clear BO, Watched Live

Once again we had a clear BO setup, and we looked at it during the live group call as it was developing. Not afterwards on a replay. Live, while it was forming, which is the only honest way to teach this stuff.

A clear and simple breakout with a nice quality score, 5 out of 6 for the 1st BO.

Direction BEAR. And here is the line on the dashboard that matters:

Day / Calendar: FOMC, plus one.

That is worth sitting with. Every other calendar reading I get is either neutral or a penalty. Mondays take a minus. Most days take nothing at all. FOMC scored a plus.

The rest of the grade math stacked up behind it. ATR ratio at 19.7% earned plus two. The early breakout earned another plus one. Close aligned, plus one again.

Total grade: plus five. Which the dashboard calls DOUBLE, and which means position size 2x.

So on the day everyone else was flat, the system was telling me to go in at double.

The Transform, Then Hands Off

A decisive move down followed, which is exactly what you want after a bear breakout.

That let us lock in profits and transform the trade to a guaranteed profit. Same mechanic we have run through twice before now. The credit spread goes into the money, you buy the wing below, and the position stops being something with risk and becomes something with a floor.

Butterfly, five points either side, sat at 7385, 7390 and 7395.

And then the interesting decision. Rather than close it, ride that bad boy through FOMC to see if there would be some bonus profits, if we can land in the profit tent.

Read that again, because it is the whole point of the piece. The plan was to hold a position through the single most volatile scheduled event of the month. Which sounds reckless right up until you remember there was no longer any risk in it. The floor was already banked. Volatility could only help.

That is not bravery. That is arithmetic.

The Bonus Was Right There

Here is the part that makes this a whole post rather than a paragraph.

We had a pre-news rally right near the short strike. That is 7390. The apex. The exact price where the $645 pays out.

Post news we pushed a little higher, then settled near the short strike again. So through the statement itself, the position was sat on or around the bullseye.

That $645 was not a theoretical. It was live, and it was there.

Then the press release side of the announcements kicked in, and the markets went a little wild. Up, down, up and down. Then settled lower and went on to make new lows for the session.

Which is the distinction worth writing down, because most people treat FOMC as one event. It is two.

The statement landed, and price settled near my short strike. The press conference is what created the chaos, and it is what took the bonus away.

And I want to be clear about where I was for all of that. Not watching. I was doing other things during the shitstorm, while price oscillated around my short strike and decided whether to hand me an extra $500.

It could not hurt me either way. That is the only reason I could afford to ignore it.

The Math

• $145 locked in as the guaranteed floor
• $645 available at the apex, had the close landed on 7390
• Butterfly wings five points wide, 7385 / 7390 / 7395
• Grade plus five, DOUBLE, position size 2x
• Bear win rate on the sample: 82.8%, across 29 trades

SPX finished the session at 7,316.35, down 1.51% on the day, having made new lows into the close. That is roughly seventy points below the bottom edge of the tent.

So the $645 did not land. But it was never a long shot that failed to get close either. It was on the table, at the strike, and the press conference took it off again.

$145 locked in. $645 on the table. All the while I was doing other things during the shitstorm.

Why Event Day Is An Enhancer, Not A Hazard

Here is the reframe, and it is the thing I would most like you to take away.

FOMC is an odd enhancer for the day, not a thing to avoid.

The standard advice exists for a reason. If you are holding an undefined-risk position, or a directional bet with a stop that can be gapped straight through, then yes, event day will eat you. Stand aside. Absolutely.

But a defined-risk position that has already been transformed into a guaranteed profit has a completely different relationship with volatility. The worst case is already known and already positive. A violent move cannot hurt it. A violent move can only decide whether you collect the floor or the bonus.

So the same event that forces most of the market to the sidelines is the event that gives a transformed position its best possible shot at the apex.

And there is a second half to it. My own view, and the reason the dashboard scores it the way it does, is that historically it is simply a better day to trade. More so again when you can lock the profit in early, which is exactly what happened here. Profit banked in the morning, and then nothing whatsoever to stress about for the rest of the day.

That is why the dashboard scores it as a plus. It is not being brave. It is recognising that volatility is fuel when your downside is already sorted.

FOMC day came and went with a yeehaw whipsaw and a yippee kai-yay mother fuckers, and despite that my students and I still collected a full bag of Benjamins.

The Community Got Their Names On The Score Board

And they did not need me to hold their hand through it either.

Don closed the SPX Bear BO at 50% at 3:44. Eddy posted the same trade at 50% at 3:45. Bill posted the same trade at 50% at 3:53.

Three separate desks. Same signal. Same result. Nine minutes apart, on FOMC day, with nobody copying anybody.

That is what a rule-defined entry looks like when it is genuinely working. It does not produce a story about one clever trader. It produces the same answer in different hands.

Mary had wins on both SPX and RUT, then came back later for another on SPX and called it a day.

Chris had winners on both as well, and did something worth flagging. He manually adjusted his SPX target to close at 40% instead of 50%, because he noticed price stalling and wanted to be out with FOMC coming and secure some profits. His own note on it: but it’s a win.

Two different correct answers to the same event, sat side by side. I held mine through the event because the risk was already gone. Chris took his off before the event because his was not transformed and he did not fancy the exposure. Both of those are right. The decision follows the position, not the calendar.

His RUT note is worth quoting too, because he spotted the same thing the dashboard did. FOMC day, the opening range was tight, but it scored high on the dashboard, and price extended nicely for the win.

Well done team.

Want To Collect Morning Income Like This?

If you want a system that tells you when event day is an opportunity rather than a reason to hide, have a look at the Premium Popper system. Same dashboard that scored FOMC as a plus one on 29 July. Same transform that turned a bear breakout into a $145 floor with $645 available while I got on with my day.

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