Trade to Win - Proven Strategies to Make Money

c03 JWBT016-Busby September 30, 2008 14:23 Printer: TBD

Opening the Vault with Key Numbers 39

FIGURE 3.1 Evidence of the E-mini S&P’s drop. The index lost about 10 percent

of value in the first quarter of 2008.

any long-term play. I do not enjoy fighting Wall Street. I want to determine

the market’s mood and take advantage of trading in the right direction. It

is far easier to float with the current as it flows downstream than it is to

paddle up a waterfall.

By looking at intramonth data, I am able to gain an intermediate view

of the product I am trading. Are prices up or down for the month? If each

Monday has seen a lower opening price, I know that a selling opportunity

is what I am looking for. Then I just need to determine the best time and

the best price at which to sell.

I am a trader. I like to day trade, and I do that often. However, I also

make intermediate- and long-term trades. Market conditions determine

when and what I do. For my day trading, I enjoy trading futures. I have

been trading the S&P 500 equity index futures since their first day of opera-

tion in the early 1980s. I also day trade the Dow and Nasdaq futures as well

as Dax futures (a German index) and the Dow Jones EuroStoxx (an index

listing blue-chip European companies). Therefore, I stay abreast of the key

numbers associated with each of these products. I have designed software,

my RoadMapTM, to automatically track numbers for me and record them

for my analysis and review. However, it is possible to keep data manually