It’s hard to believe that the S&P 500 futures were only 7 points away from the BIG figure at 2600.00 yesterday.
After dropping down to 2586.75 on Monday night’s Globex session, the ES rallied back to retest the overnight high at 2593.75 just after yesterday’s 8:30 CT opening bell. Once the run up was over, the ES pulled back under the vwap to hold the opening level at 2589.57, and then started to uptick again. After a mixed batch of earnings reports the ES had one last ‘pop’ above the vwap. That was it until the NQ came under selling pressure, causing the ES to make 3 new lows, double bottoming at 2585.50.
When the early low was established, the ES rallied back up to 1 tick below the vwap at 2589.50, and then got hit by several small sell programs, dragging it all the way down to 2580.75. The next move was back up to 2586.75, just after 12:30 CT, before another break down to 2582.50. From there, the ES bounced up to 2587.25 as the MiM went from sell $687 million to $444 million to buy.
In the end the S&P 500 futures (ESZ17:CME) settled at 2586.75, down -2.00 handles, or -0.07%; the Dow Jones futures (YMZ17:CBT) settled at 23,488, up +1 point, or +0.004%; the Nasdaq 100 futures (NQZ17:CME) settled at 6316.00, up +2.50 points, or +0.04%; and the Russell 2000 (RTYZ17:CME) settled at 1477.30, down -19.70 points or -1.3% on the day.
Friends, I think most of you know that I don’t candy coat, and I don’t lie. Being a trader is not easy. It requires a good game plan, the proper tools, and a lot of patience. Some months I make money, and some months I don’t… That’s just the way things work. For those traders that put up monthly profits, my hat is off to you.
After 40 years in this business, I think, for the most part, that I have a good understanding of the S&P, but that doesn’t always mean I execute the idea correctly. Sometimes all the wiggles and jiggles shake me out, and after that happens the ES usually moves in my favored direction. To be honest, it pisses me off that I had the right idea and didn’t hold on long enough to make a profitable trade. You know what I’m talking about…
Nearly 10 years ago, when we started MrTopStep LLC, we did it with the idea of creating a collection of traders that wanted to share their knowledge and help other traders be successful. We still feel we do that today. Last month’s MrTopStep Open House was a great example of that. Over 170 people signed up, and the reviews were were great. We set the price low, so even if you didn’t like the Open House, you didn’t walk away feeling you had been taken advantage of. To me that’s important. There are a lot of other companies that only upsell, we do not do that, and never have.
Over the last several years, many traders have thrown in the towel, and many companies like MrTopStep have gone out of business. They just couldn’t make it in what I call the ‘ever changing trading environment’ of the futures and options trading rooms. John Carter used to have over 600 people in his futures room, but when the guy that ran the room went cold and people started losing money, the attendance dropped like a rock. I think John is a smart guy, but I also think his room is really there just to up sell his products… To each his own I guess.
After writing the Opening Print for over the 22 years, my partners asked me if it was ok to charge a nominal fee for my newsletter. I know it’s not perfect, but I know that it’s real. It comes from a guy that never went to college and went directly to the trading floor at the age of 18. A guy that was part of every large stock market move since 1985, that did the UBS program trading business and watched AIG’s trading book go from one of the largest in the business to one of the smallest during the 2007 credit crisis. I watched one of our largest desk accounts, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) (one of the most profitable trading desk on Wall Street), get turned over to Merrill Lynch, which was one of the worst trading desk on Wall Street. Our S&P desk was there during Gulf War l and ll, and we did all the Dubai business for Sheik Mohamed.
Some people got upset that we decided to charge for the OP (Opening Print), and my words of wisdom. For that, I am sorry, but like the markets, things have changed. MrTopStep is no different than many firms in the trading area. There were over 550 clearing firms between the CBOT and CME when I started in the bizz, today there are less than 25, and only 3 or 4 that you can can open a futures account with. Thousands of IB’s are gone, and they’re not coming back. I am not going to lie, MrTopStep has gotten smaller, but the traffic to our web site is robust.
So why sit back and not take one of our favored products and ask a small fee for it? Again, it’s not about taking advantage of people, it’s about trying to add a small amount of income to keep things going. It’s about charging a small fee for something that people love to read.
I’ve received several emails from people, and one trader told me “I am happy to pay for the Opening Print, it has helped me become a better trader, and I do not know of any other newsletter that has been so correct with the direct, and so honest about the struggles of trading.” Others just said that they’ve read it for so long that it’s the first thing they read before they start their trading day.
Like I said, lying is not part of me, or part of MrTopStep.com. If it was, we would have been out of business years ago. We are not at all like our Chicago counterparts that offer a product for $3,000 then try to sell you on a deal for 50% off, nor do we back traders that believe if they make good trades we can get them millions of dollars for it. To me, that’s all a bunch of BS.
What are are asking for is for those loyal followers to step up to the plate and sign up for the Opening Print. At under $20.00 a month it’s less than .50 cents a day, and like a good friend said to me, ‘if people can’t afford that they probably should not be trading.’
So, just like the Open House, we are not asking for much, and I hope my loyal traders and friends will kick in for a firm that has always tried to it’s best for its followers. Always remember, if trading was easy, we’d all be millionaires!
Thank you for being part of MrTopStep. We understand we could not do it without you!
Danny ‘DBOY’ Riley