Trading Lab Weekly Markets Overview December 27, 2020

As we wrap up the 2020 trading year I will be taking a broader look at markets and what to expect in 2021 and maybe further. 

First let me go over the trading lab. 

I built the trading lab for fellow traders on their journey, whether you are twenty years into that trading journey or just making the move to more active trading. 

Our members include portfolio managers and traders at hedge funds, prop traders, family offices, sales traders from big banks and individual traders/investors alike. 

The journey from wanting to be a professional trader to actually becoming profitable and earning a living from your trading success isn’t as simple as many people would make you think. There are nuances to the job and oftentimes we don’t even know what we don’t know, and have less of an idea of how to ask about what we don’t know. 

Having a large group of like minded traders to bounce ideas off of, ask questions, and collaborate on projects is probably my favorite part of the lab. 

We have a group of traders who are working together on building out their own system, that they’ve put together, daytrading futures in certain market regimes. 

They meet for livestream’s in the evenings (these livestreams are recorded for people living in different time zones or with other obligations), and then breakout to go and do their individual backtests. They submit their work to be reviewed and they go over it together on the next livestream. 

We also meet during the trading day on Zoom to go over markets, fresh research, Q&A and live trading throughout the trading day. These sessions are also recorded and saved for viewing later. 

At the end of the trading day all swing trades are reviewed for the End Of Day VBO/VBO2/FVBO trades and shared with everyone. 

This is all centered around our Slack channel, which is a live 24/7 chat that we all connect with each other on to share ideas, articles, research, insights and the occasional meme. 

Even if you aren’t catching any of the livestreams, the slack channel has been a treasure trove of insights, information and making new friends!

Trading is an isolating business, even more so during the pandemic, where trading floors and offices have all but disappeared. Having access to fellow traders working together is the best part of this!

I will be rolling out a new long term Macro Portfolio Strategy that I built in 2019 and have live tested for all of 2020. This is the same strategy that I leased out to a Family Office who implemented it live as well. Rather than keep it for myself and a select few, I’ve decided to offer it to everyone. 

If you are a member of the Trading Lab, you will have access to this strategy as part of your membership. There will be nothing more for you to do, you’ll receive a monthly newsletter covering all of the positions and detailed information about the positions and markets ahead. 

If you aren’t a member of the Trading Lab but you want the Macro Portfolio Strategy, it is available here 

If you’d like to get access to the Trading Lab and everything else that comes with it, including the Macro Portfolio Strategy then join us! 

TRADING LAB

Now let's take a look at markets

NQ
The NQ is firmly back in Bull Quiet Regime. There are two main strategies that I employ in this regime, both price action based and I trade both End of Day Swing Trades as well as day trading this regime. We spend a lot of time on this in the trading lab as this is where the NQ Futures spend over 75% of all trading days. This is where the big money is made.

 
After we issued a warning and hedged long positions or went short while NQ flipped into Bull Volatile (plus two other factors) price action confirmed the flip of the SQN back into Bull Quiet in mid to late November.

Since then we've been crushing this market both intraday and our swing trades adding 8 times to the long position, continuing our massive long trade since our April 5th initial entry. As that trade was September and December contracts, when we got hedged at the end of August we took the Septembers off and earlier this month the Decembers, now sitting in the March 2021contract. 

EURUSD

The EURUSD like nearly every other dollar pair, is in bull quiet and trending nicely again higher after a few months of consolidation. 

EURUSD, GBPUSD, AUDUSD, CADUSD, NZDUSD are my preferred pairs for the long in a Bull Quiet market regime. Pick the best setup and go with it!

CHF and JPY have yet to really impress me and have been shown in all backtests to under perform. 

Platinum, Gold and Silver are all long only with Platinum showing the most promise

Until I get better information otherwise, long BTCUSD and avoid ALL other crypto names.

Names like LTCUSD, ETHUSD, pretty much any of the big caps, except XRP are all moving nicely. 

But for me BTC still has the most potential with 36,210 as the next price target on a measured move breakout. 

This being the last week of the trading year we typically have very low volume and quite muted moves. 

I will be spending most of my time analyzing all 28 main FX pairs and the Futures markets we cover. 

Happy Holidays and do stay safe out there!