Pivots, Patterns, and Intraday Swing Trades, + Website: Derivatives Analysis with the E-mini and Russell Futures Contracts
When the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched the S&P 500 E-mini in 1997, their aim was to provide non-professionals with an opportunity to trade on an even footing with professional traders. Judging by the fact that the intervening years have seen a veritable boom of E-mini stock index trading worldwide, one can conclude that their experiment was a smashing success.It's easy to see why E-mini trading has become so popular among day traders. First, there are the much lower margins associated with the smaller contract sizes, as compared to their floor-traded counterparts. Also, because trades are executed entirely electronically, there are no market makers or floor brokers. And, unlike commodities or standard futures, there is virtually no chance of manipulation, insider trading or any of the other problems that occasionally affect other financial markets. But along with its many advantages and abundant opportunities, E-mini trading brings an entirely new set of challenges and potential pitfalls that can bedevil the best laid plans of beginners and seasoned day traders alike.Due to extreme leverage and the intense participation they receive, the stock index futures markets afford little time for traders to dwell on technical conditions. Intraday volatility in the stock indices is far more exaggerated than that reflected in the daily bar charts of other markets. And positioning techniques that have proven reliable in anticipating the actions of long-term trends in other instruments, fail miserably when applied to the countertrend reactions of the highly leveraged S&P futures contract within the shorter, intraday time frames.Author Will Scheier draws upon his decades of experience as a highly successful day trader and trading educator to provide you with:A framework of Day Models for making sense of the chaos of the day trading environmentCodified, easy-to-adapt trade entry setupsTrading techniques that are anything but mechanical scalpingTechnical Trade Event Models and their rulesTools for spotting major intraday swing trends at the instant they beginFresh insights to Old School and floor trader concepts like the Open Range, Taylor 3-day Cycle and classic pattern breakout filteringArchived performance record of real-time trade callsDivided into four parts, the technical tools exposed in the first three parts are eventually brought together into a cohesive whole in Part Four. There, a special meaning is afforded to them when they arrive in the confluence of pattern, price and time. In addition, once the identity of completed trade entry models are established, Part Four of the book then includes the blueprint for creating a Trade Plan, and enumerates the rules necessary to conduct a business according to that Plan.Engaging, informative, practical, this reliable resource will put you in a prime position to profit mightily in today's ever more volatile stock markets