Pivots, Patterns, and Intraday Swing Trades: Derivatives Analysis with the E-mini and Russell Futures Contracts, + Website

CHAPTER 7

Trading the News

I've explained this technique in a number of webinars, and one of them is currently on the ValhallaFutures website. In fact, I use this method any day there is pending economic news at any of the scheduled times in the 1st Frame session, normally at 10:00 A.M. ET. In theory it could work for the Federal Reserve's rate change announcement, normally scheduled for 2:15 P.M. ET, but prices have usually been drifting for several hours in the Midday Frame rather than seeking reversals at pivots such as commonly seen in the first hour, so the afternoon scheduled economic news releases lend themselves less consistently to pre-positioning.

Most room monitors who trade futures in a chat room flatten out their positions near the time of a news release if the specific economic report is one that is anticipated for its subsequent volatility, such as the Philly Fed Manufacturing Index. This is partly on caution that they don't lead member-subscribers into positions through extremely volatile price spikes with ugly stop-loss executions, and partly because they have no real methodology to trade the news.

Since news itself is impossible to predict, and usually even less possible to truly interpret after it's released, some method vendors actually prescribe that traders bracket a nearby 5-minute bar range just before the news, with the anticipation that this method of getting a fill will capture the ensuing trend early. I'm not kidding; I actually sat through such a presentation. ...