Let’s start by looking back at the year in the markets just to see how action and ranges look. Here’s the ES daily chart from the start of 2015 to December 31:
Hard to remember now how slow the first eight months were. One of the slowest periods in the markets that I can recall except for the lead up to the invasion of Iraq over a decade ago. Then, things got exciting when the markets fell apart a bit in August, recovered, and flattened out for the end of the year and closed almost exactly where we started. 2015 ended with the ES at 2054.00 and 2016 ended at 2035.75, down 16 points.
Here’s the NQ side:
This was obviously more positive, stacked by stocks like GOOG and AMZN that wouldn’t quit into the end of the year for tax reasons, but still very narrowly contained overall for the markets.
I should also note that the volatility picked up quite a bit after August, as reflected in the 6-month average daily range numbers of the ES and NQ. At the start of the year, the ES traded an average of less than 18 points per day (from high to low) and the NQ less then 44. That’s using the average of the 6 months before (basically the last half of 2014). And then ranges got worse during the year. However, by the end of the year, the average ranges for those two symbols was 24 and 65, respectively. That’s a 33% boost for the ES!
Our results for futures for the year fit exactly in line with what our system teaches. Of the trades called officially, 63.4% of them were winners. Note that this does not count set plays like the Opening Range plays, Institutional Range plays, Value Areas, and Seeker/Comber setups that we teach in the program. Starting January 1, 2016, we are officially tracking the Opening Range plays as well, which added over 100 ticks in gains to some of the months in 2015.
As it was, with the 63.4% win rate, we locked in +369.5 ticks in futures calls winners in 2015, which was not bad at all. Granted, that’s a deceptive number since it doesn’t count some of the bigger gains in the mechanical plays.
Here’s to a good 2016 in futures!