00:00What's going on, everyone? This is my futures trading strategy that I use mostly within the first one to two hours after the market opens—after lunchtime, after the New York lunch hour
00:10For me, I'm based in California, so I get the luxury of waking up around 5 or 5:30 in the morning to see what's going on in the pre-market
00:19As lame as that may be, waking up early has its benefits—like getting a half workday
00:26I'm generally done before lunchtime, but if I'm still sitting around watching the charts, making YouTube videos, or doing some technical analysis for tomorrow, my day is over at 1 p.m
00:35So, let's get into my trading strategy for futures
00:41What I like to do is trade during the first one to two hours of the..
00:46Market open, that's generally when all the price action is going on
00:49You'll start to notice, the more you become a little bit more experienced, that it's the first one to two hours where all the action is happening
00:57Then, there's always a block in the middle where it's very, very dead and very choppy
01:01You might get some moves and be able to scalp something, but it's not like the first two hours
01:07Typically, towards the end of the day, the last hour to hour and a half, you get that run-up, that quote-unquote Power Hour
01:15If something's going to reverse or if something's going to make an insane move, normally it comes for me between 11:30 a.m
01:18and 1 p.m
01:21Pacific Standard Time
01:24So, let's get into the strategy here; it's a very..
01:26A simple strategy
01:27Not only do I use this strategy to trade futures, but I also use it to trade options
01:32So, predominantly, just a little bit of background about myself: I've been trading full-time for around six and a half years, and I've been trading for about eight and a half years
01:40So, a long, long time now
01:42I'm not going to sit here and say that I've seen every market condition; obviously, I didn't trade through 2007 and 2008
01:48I obviously did not trade through the .com bubble in 2000
01:54So, I haven't seen those types of hard times, but I have experienced some decent enough hard times, and I've been through plenty of market cycles
02:05Now, to kind of identify where we shouldn't, you know, kind of pull our foot off the gas pedal and when
02:11We try to, you know, stomp the gas pedal
02:13So, looking at this chart, you're going to see that it's very, very plain, and I have it set up that way for a specific reason
02:19Because if you're looking for this type of content and this type of video on a futures trading strategy, it tells me maybe you've been trading for under a year, maybe under two years or three years
02:34Perhaps you've had a little success, and then you kind of give back all your profits
02:40Maybe you're a trader who has a really good week, then one day or one trade, and you give it all back
02:44It's like small wins, small wins, small wins—you’re building up confidence, and the account is going up
02:50And then you have one horrible day, just due to the market, you know, maybe being range-bound, maybe being choppy, maybe not the best conditions, maybe there was some news, and then you kind of give it all back, and then you go look for a new strategy
03:00I'm going to be the first person to tell you, please, in the beginning, stick to one strategy
03:07Each strategy will work
03:13It doesn't matter what strategy it is; it doesn't matter if I'm teaching a strategy or you're learning the strategy from someone else, or you've read some type of technical analysis book on Japanese candlesticks
03:20It doesn't matter what strategy you're using
03:23In order to really see these strategies play out and for your P&L to really grow, you need to work in blocks of..
03:2820 and 40 trades
03:30What that means is trading the same instrument, which is the same ticker, right? So for me, it's going to be NQ, or I would suggest if you're a newer trader, trade the micros, which is MNQ, and that's the NASDAQ
03:41It's only going to move two dollars a tick versus 25 an hour, right? So just kind of build your account up that way, that way you have a little bit of skin in the game, you can make some profits, you can work on your strategy, and the main thing, you can work on that, you know, psychology, right? Because trading is about 90% mental
03:54Any rookie can learn how to read, you know, price action
04:01Any rookie can learn how to, you know, build a strategy and a trading plan, but you know, it takes a little bit more than just your average beginner to basically, you know..
04:10Put it all in motion and manage this on a day-to-day basis, especially when it comes to the mindset of it
04:16So, just kind of getting into the strategy, here we have the 20 SMA on our chart
04:19We are looking at scalping, right? So, for me, I love to scalp futures, just because the NQ moves so fast
04:24We don't need to be in these trades for days and days on end; we don't need to be in these trades for hours
04:30We can get 10, 20, 30 points in a matter of minutes, let alone under an hour
04:35I'm going to break it down for you
04:37So, look at the day opened here at 6:30 a.m., we get a little bit of a pop over the 20-period moving average here, and then we get a nasty reversal candlestick that came at around 6:35 a.m., Pacific Standard Time
04:48Now, you're going to notice some red
04:49Arrows that are above and below, and some green arrows below, but you're going to notice these red arrows throughout the chart here
04:56Now, all this is just letting me know, okay, it's like a little indicator
05:02It's just letting me know, hey, price action—this candle has now closed below the 20 SMA
05:07Price action—this candle has now closed above the 20 SMA
05:12Does not mean that I'm going to be buying and selling each and every one of them
05:15I do have risk parameters and confluences that need to come into effect in order for me to take these trades
05:24But again, I can tell you which trades are good
05:27Now, once we get into the New York lunch hour—which for me is going to be between..
05:35This 9:30 and this 11 o'clock break, right? You can notice how, yes, we are on an uptrend here, but price action starts to get very, very choppy, very, very choppy, right? So I don't really want to be involved in any of this kind of choppiness action
05:50Yeah, I might be able to make a little bit of money, but what I want to have happen is the majority of my trades to come within the first two hours, so between 6:30 and around 8:30, 9 o'clock at the latest
06:01I want my trades to happen during that time window
06:06Now, if you are using this strategy or you were in the Discord today, you would have caught this move
06:13Okay? So, I'm just drawing some quick supply and demand zones
06:15This was our intraday supply, so I'm going to write "Supply" here
06:19All supply means is that it's an area of resistance
06:25Demand means that we've got some buyers there, right? I'm going to keep this video very, very simple
06:29There's no reason for me to get technical with, you know, some kind of Dark Knight order block or some crazy name
06:41Guys, resistance and support, demand means people are buying
06:44Supply means people are selling
06:49Simple, right? We don't need to get too crazy with it
06:51This is not rocket science, guys
06:58We are not brain surgeons or heart surgeons
07:04We are not doing anything special
07:11We are not saving the world here watching these candlesticks, okay? We're not, we're not, we're really not
07:18The moment you learn that and just tone everything down to a very minimal level, the less stressed you'll be and the more money you're going to make
07:26So, if we look at this candle here at 6:35 that closes below the 20-period moving average, this is an indication
07:31I love this big, engulfing red candle here
07:33Now, we do get the close; my stop loss is going to go at the top wick here
07:37And then, all I'm looking for is a confirmation of this candle that closed below the 20 SMA
07:41Very, very simple, right? So, you can see here, we do break that price action, we do get into this candlestick here for a short position, and then we have to sit
07:49Through 10 minutes of drawdown, one thing that I'm going to tell you guys is that you need to become very, very comfortable, especially if you're trading futures, being in drawdown
07:57But you also need to be really good at managing that stop loss
08:02Okay, that stop loss is here; do not deviate from that stop loss
08:04The stop loss is over your reason why candle
08:06So, let me make this very, very clear: the reason why we're going to enter a short position is because we just closed underneath the 20-period moving average
08:16As simple as that sounds, that's as simple as it's going to be
08:19Okay, I use this strategy day in and day out
08:21I used this strategy this morning to actually catch this short
08:24So, what we're looking at here is we closed below the 20-period moving
08:28Average, we're going to set our stop loss at the reason why candle's high
08:32We're going to use the bottom wick as our entry, so this becomes our pivot
08:36What we need to see happen on the next candle—preferably the next candle or at least the first two candles after our reason why candle—is a confirmation of price action
08:51Then, we need to get short
08:52As we get short here, we see an immediate reversal
08:55Let me tell you one thing: if you're trading 5 or 10 NQ contracts, this move here—okay, this move—you would have entered somewhere around 13,275
09:08This move bounced all the way up to 13,304
09:12This move bounced 25 points
09:15If you are trading five NQ contracts, you are going to be..
09:19Your pants in massive drawdown, you are going to panic
09:24Your palms are going to sweat, you are going to be pissed off, you are going to be throwing your computer monitor out the window
09:30Okay, 25 points of drawdown on five to ten NQ contracts, you're going berserk
09:35Okay, you go berserk, you sell for a loss here, you throw your computer screen out the window
09:47Five minutes later, we start to go in the direction that we thought we were going to go, and we proceed to have one of the biggest drops that I've seen in quite some time within this short period of time
10:00Okay, so this is why I tell you guys that trading is a mindset, trading is about psychology, and if you don't manage your risk properly and you're oversized or over-leveraged
10:12You're putting on too much weight on the trade
10:14With this move, you're going to enter, get stopped out, because you're going to be in pure panic mode, and then you're going to see this flush, and you're going to be so pissed off that you missed the move while everyone else is celebrating these insane gains
10:28That's why I say either trade one contract on the NQ or trade MNQ
10:33If you just trade the MNQs, you take two or three of these contracts, and you would have essentially caught this down move
10:42Yes, you would have had to sit through drawdown
10:45I'm going to use three contracts, for example
10:46So, if we're going to move two dollars a tick, and we move 30 points against you..
10:51Probably down at this point, anywhere between 100 and 200
10:53Let's just give or take that, right? I've got a calculator here, don't care to get one
10:59Let's just say you're down 200
11:01200 is not life or death; 200 is not going to blow your account up
11:04Two hundred dollars is nothing
11:05As we start to come down here, we then confirm the price action
11:09We get below our entry, and we go from our entry price of around 13, two seven five, all the way down to 13, one ten
11:17So, from 13, two seven five to 13, one ten five
11:22Guys, we're talking about over a hundred and fifty-point move, over a hundred-point move
11:35Even if you didn't catch the whole move, which I would never expect anyone to absolutely know to sell here, maybe you would have taken some off here
11:43Maybe you would have taken some off here, maybe you would have taken some off here when we started to chop around and get Bar Cody to come back up
11:48Maybe you would have taken some off here
11:50The point that I'm making, guys, the point that I'm making is if you would have just followed the strategy, you guys would have made at least
11:58Even if you sold here, right, thirteen one five
12:00Thirteen one five
12:02What do we say? This was thirteen two
12:04You would have made 120 points
12:06So, 120 points times three contracts that you would have had in this situation
12:12That we're using as an example, you would have taken over 300, 400, or 500 dollars depending on where you're selling
12:20It would have been at least a three to five hundred dollar trade, in a matter of, from the entry
12:27That was sitting at 6:40
12:31Okay, entry that was sitting at 6:40, and even if he was sold here for 100 points down to 7.25, if you would have sold here at 7:45, less than an hour, you could have essentially made anywhere between three and five hundred dollars, depending on if you're trading two contracts or three contracts
12:47Depending on where you sold, obviously everyone's going to sell at a different spot, but the point that I'm trying to make is that you could have made, trading MNQ contracts today, three to five hundred dollars very, very quickly in under an hour
12:59I don't know too many average middle-class jobs that are paying three to five hundred dollars an hour
13:09Essentially, you could have enjoyed the rest of your day
13:11You could have gone to lunch, you could have taken your wife to lunch or taken your dog for a walk, you could have gone to the beach, you could have gone back to sleep, you could have done a number of different things, guys
13:22And that's only trading two to three contracts with a very small risk; we were only risking about 150 to 200 dollars on a trade to potentially make 300 to 500, maybe 600 dollars on the potential trade
13:32This is my go-to trading strategy
13:35Again, I use this in the first two hours after the market opens during the New York session, obviously from about 9:30 a.m
13:39to 11:30 a.m
13:46I don't really like to get into trades, but you can see here that we did have another trade that kind of set up right going into the lunch hour
13:52So, look at when we do cross back
13:55Over this 20-period moving average and confirm it on the next candle
14:00Thirteen, fifteen, thirteen, fourteen, nine—right, let's call it thirteen, one fifty, all the way up to thirteen, two, two, two
14:07It's another 60, 70-point move
14:13You could have essentially taken the first two setups that were given to you, okay? The first two setups that were provided, and you could have essentially made 300, 400 dollars on the first setup
14:20You could have made 200 dollars on the second setup
14:23It could have been a six or seven hundred dollar day, right? Depending on how good your risk management was, depending on how good your patience was, because patience is very, very key
14:29But again, go through your charts, look at the setups, see how many setups fail after
14:36Look at how many setups work out in your favor before lunch
14:40Keep your trading to the first two hours of the market open, and also focus on the last hour of the market close
14:48Leave everything else in between alone
14:50Okay, do this, and you're going to be a much better trader
14:53That's my trading strategy for futures
14:54Hope you guys enjoyed the video
14:55If you want to get funded with a great prop firm, I work with two, actually three prop firms now, but I represent two, which are listed in the description box below
15:02These are fantastic prop firms, especially if you want to trade stocks and cryptocurrencies, not just futures
15:05You'll see that one down below
15:07If you just want to trade futures, there's an excellent prop firm listed in the description as well
15:12Access to my entire strategy guide, because this is just one tool in my tool belt
15:16If you guys want to get access to that, and one-on-one coaching, you want to get access to the Discord membership so you can trade with other traders and get real-time, sort of watch lists and technical analysis pivots, and you know, get through the day with other traders who are doing this full-time, definitely go to evolutiontraders.com
15:33That link is down in the description box below
15:35Sign up, become a lifetime member, you're going to get access for the rest of your life
15:38It's a one-time fee that comes out to less than, you know, less than a dollar a day, right? Less than a dollar a day
15:45With that being said, I will see you guys all on the next video
15:47Thank you.