So Much for Election Year Cycles: Market Insights into Tue Jul 23, 2024

On Saturday, July 13th, a past U.S. president was almost assassinated. On Sunday, July 21st, our sitting U.S. president stepped down from the race for re-election. The latter of these two events leaves me with many more questions than answers. But because of the likely opportunities for increased market movement it may provide, I thought I'd go ahead and share my current thoughts and planned actions. 

–> I feel bad for Joe Biden, as a person. I think that it must be a lot to go through what he's experiencing.

–> I can see how the Trump campaign has to suddenly regroup because the entire narrative of who they are against changed.

–> I imagine that Kamala Harris has a million things going through her head and that those who advise her and counsel her are also suddenly in rocketship mode, trying to do everything they can to make her the official candidate for the Democratic Party.

As I mentioned, I still have a lot of questions about the politics and communications and democratic process. However my questions are NOT ones that are going to change how I trade.

–> They're not going to change how I plan trades and execute for the ES futures market

–> They're not going to change how I analyze the SPY every Sunday to get my bearings on the S&P market overall

–> They're not going to change how I use price, time, and momentum to boost my trading and to help you boost yours.

Here's what they may alter in the short term.

#1 I will likely need to revisit my own studies on forecasting. I'd usually do this in the winter, since right now I'm on a “speed trading” rotation (theme of tomorrow's live training!) But it's time to push up my forecasting review schedule. This includes my Lost Forecasting Trading System and my Advanced Lost Forecasting System. It also includes my Gann Trading Patterns System, where I have a calculator that I created years ago to help me better prepared for potential price highs and lows.

This is because I feel that the longer term trends, the ones that last weeks or even months, are now a bit rattled and not necessarily going to so readily follow typical election year tendencies. Again, because of both historic events happening within the past 10 days.

This will help me for long-term analysis on markets like the 10 year yield, the VIX, oil futures, and other markets that are closely related to how the S&P moves. And this will hopefully help me better guide you.

Now there's no huge rush because again I'm not changing how I trade day to day, I am just going to look at what to brush up on sooner than later.

#2 I'm going to continue with my recent change of checking margins a couple times a day because it's fascinating to see how they are shifting with these events. They jumped up again for TradeStation brokerage for the E-mini S&P since last week. It's been a minute since they were above $13,000 on a contract to trade ONE E-mini S&P. See for yourself here https://www.tradestation.com/pricing/futures-margin-requirements/

#3 Something new I am attempting is recording video of my trading – in silence. When I do my own short term E-mini trading, I'm still going to do it by myself, but I'm going to turn on screen recording software and just let it run.

I experimented with this today, and it was interesting to capture my process of making a $570 trade in about 15 minutes, no talking, just my Brain.FM concentration music gently in the background. I've since figured out some ways to have the optimal settings for screen recording, so next time round should be even better.

What exactly I'm going to do with these videos is yet to be seen, but here's a couple of thoughts:

A) First, they will provide me with even more insight into how I myself am trading because they go beyond just a recap video and actually show my movements (trades, analysis) live at the moment. It's like watching the tape (if you are a sports fan).

B) After I assemble a couple of these recordings and take a look at them, they may provide useful snippets of live market action demonstration of my methods on intraday charts that I can share with members of various courses, starting with the Four Zones RSI Coverage System. And I'll likely set aside bigger chunks of video with insights as bonuses for our S&P Edge Pro traders who are investing in getting my daily and weekly research. 

And on a general note, not specific to trading, I'm going to “capture my questions.” Just like you, I can't possibly know what's going on with the leadership of either the Democratic or Republican parties. I can't possibly know what's happening over at the Secret Service, although after today's testimony by the head of that organization, one can imagine it's not pretty. So I'm going to track my questions so that I am on a more calculated and strategic lookout for the answers.

And I'm talking about the important questions that relate back to trading and analysis so that I and all of you can better navigate these historic times.

Listen, I had said at the beginning of June “I don't think this is going to be a normal summer where the market slows down and then revs up into the fall.” I said with everything going on, there's probably going to still be a lot of trading opportunities. We're halfway through the summer, and so far that's been spot on.

So let's head out there and navigate these markets together.

~ Hima