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So we're going to try to make this a quick crash course and get you all set on how to read moving averages, how to use them in your trading, how to read trends, etc. What is an exponential moving average or an EMA? Moving averages in general are an indicator that calculate your desired time period based on past data and plots it into a line you can use for trading or investing. So it's as simple as that. This is all based on past data. So if you have a nine EMA on the one day time frame, that is accounting for nine days worth of data or nine days worth of past data. If you have a 21 EMA on the one day, that's accounting for 21 days of past data and implement it into an average. So EMAs work on all time frames. My personal favorite is going to be the five minute, the 15 minute, the one hour and the one day. That's where I always try to look for some type of support. Higher lows kind of like you see here. You can see spy making higher lows off the light blue 50 EMA. You have multiple bounces. You got to bounce, bounce, bounce. You got to holding the nine and 21 combo right here. Pretty good. So you're just learning to read trends with moving averages and everybody else is looking at them to including algorithms and computers and their program to buy and sell based off of them and based off the trend that it's providing. So EMAs are good at showing the overall trend. They can also act as support or resistance. And EMA crossover strategies have proved to be consistent for a very long time. So people have been using crossover strategies for years, pretty much since technical analysis was even invented and moving averages were kind of some of the first technical indicators that people used back in the day. So the nine crossing over the 21 EMA is indicating a potential short term to medium term trend change. Your 50 crossing over the 200 is indicating a potential longer term trend change. And there's names for those. If you get a upside cross on the 50 crossing over the 200, that's called the golden cross. If you get the 50 crossing down the 200, that's called the death cross. And those are just some nicknames for it. So we're going to be covering mostly the nine and 21 EMA combo. This is what I use the most personally. We're going to learn how to use, read and trade trends with it. You can see in this example right here on QQQ one day, you have your green, it's your nine, and you have your yellow, it's your 21. And you can see there's a crossover right here of the nine and 21 that indicated a short term trend shift. And you can see it just rides it very well. You do have one head fake below right here. But then once it reclaimed back over, keeps holding a support, holding back tests, holding a very good trend overall. And this can help you kind of dictate where the market's going to go, how well it's going to hold, maybe where you keep your stop losses trailing. You can keep your stop losses under the moving averages. If it starts breaking, you could probably start getting out of your lungs, obviously on a move like this, that would, you know, fake you out. But then, you know, you can reenter once you get back over the moving averages and moving averages are so simple and very effective. And they're really good for beginners. So I feel like this will be a good video to cover them. And here's a crossover to the downside. You have the green crossing over the yellow. That's the nine crossing down over the 21. That's indicating a short term trend change to the downside. And likewise, picks back up over here, back to the upside. And it does this over and over. And like I said, your nine crossing over your 21, indicating a short to medium term trend change. And then your 50 crossing over the 200. It's going to be a more long term trend change. All right. And now let's go ahead and get into some trade breakdowns. We're going to go over some recent examples of recent market conditions and some trades I took. We're going to be using our X trades web platform for my entries and exits, because I do track my trades and alert on there. And it's just way easier to post that because it has the time stamps, has my entry price, has what the asset was at, and also has some of my own personal notes that I put in before taking the trade. And this is on app.xtrades.net. I'll plug in the link in the description. You can go check it out. Maybe you can sign up, get a free trial. Come check us out. It's amazing. And all these are real time entries. Our database is plugged into actual exchange data. So anytime you put buy to own QQQ 362 calls, 10.6 at M, that means at market. It's going to fill you directly at market price to whatever the exchange is offering. So it's all real time. So this is a trade I alerted to the chat because our app is actually connected to our discord. So anytime I send something on the app, it's going straight to the discord as well. This is a QQQ 362 call for a day trade. This is a zero day, I believe. And here's the exit price with the game. We made 25% on this. So if you're green nine EMA right here, just like I showed you in the previous examples, you also have your yellow 21 EMA right here. So this is the nine and 21 combo that I mentioned we would be covering. You can see that QQQ is actually pulling into the five minute nine EMA and it consolidates off of it for at least 20 minutes. So you have a nice consolidation period here. You even have a little downtrend line if you drew one right there. And the fact that it's not breaking down and refusing to flush to the next moving average is not flushing down to go to the 21. That's telling us this is a higher low and a pretty solid back test. So you have a hold on this candle right here. You have a close over it right here. It's still holding. You have a small flush under it right here, but then falls through back up with a close back over it. So this is your 20 minutes of consolidation. This bar kind of puts it back in place and that's when we pop up. It looks like we entered at 1240 and then we took an exit at 1246. So pretty much just in this little function right here impulse move. And then we just use the general area of high of day for the price target. So this is your high of day. And then we exited just about, you know, the general area. You don't always want to go penny for penny because sometimes you can get faked out and then you don't want to be too greedy in these markets. They're just very volatile. And then you can see afterwards, actually it kept holding the nine very cleanly, really nice action here. Just holding consolidating off it and then a really big impulse candle off of it actually went higher. So if I would have held some runners on this, I could have made a lot more, but I'm mostly just scalping. I'm looking anywhere from 20 to 30% on day trades. That's what I found works best for me. That's how I stay somewhat consistent and not getting too greedy because I've had problems with, you know, getting too greedy in the past in the beginning of my journey. So find a threshold that fits with you. That makes you feel comfortable. That's going to ease your psychology because trading is all psychology. So you want to be as comfortable as possible, be a little bit patient as well and mix that in with good risk management and you'll do well. All right, on to our next trade breakdown. This is a spy 435 call, but this is a swing trade actually. So this is a higher timeframe analysis. And this is for expiration date 1117 2023. So our trade entry was at 808. So you're paying about $800 per contract. We entered at the one day nine EMA. You can see this is the nine. This is the green to nine. Yellow is your 21. We got 435 calls 1117 at 800 a contract. And for the entry on the asset price, you can see it's at 431 85. So it's going to be, you know, right about this area where it closed. Here's our gain. We sold the very next day. So this is a nice back test. This is about a 20% trade. It was a weekend swing. So I took it on Friday and sold on Monday. So the thoughts behind this spy is pulling into the one day nine EMA for a back test after it was already trending over it. So here's your price trending over the nine and 21 for multiple days. We finally pulled in, had a nice back test. And then another thing, both indexes spy and QQQ were both closed right at or above the EMAs, indicating that the trend is still in order. So we used a little bit of QQQ as well, since they kind of moved similar. But we're using, you know, broad market analysis to read the trend. And I'll show you that in the next screenshot once we get through it. So held very well, closed maybe just a little bit under the nine. You could see the nine was right here. And this is the close, this little area right here. So just briefly under it, but the fact that QQQ was closed and holding over both very cleanly kind of gives you confidence that there's going to be a broad market rally and this is a really good, higher load to add up. And then all we did was just sell at the next major 437 resistance point. That's going to be like right here. And we're kind of still right at that as we speak right now. Pretty strong resistance. Once we get over that, there's going to be nice upside. So like I said, QQQ also had a similar setup and was able to hold the nine and 21 EMA combo. The only difference is QQQ's nine EMA was crossed over the 21 and spies. Nine EMA is still trending below the 21. So this is the nine. Here's the 21 spies is still trending just a little bit below. So maybe once we actually get the cross over the nine over the 21, that could indicate a nice trend shift. QQQ's nine EMA is already crossed over the 21. It has been for a couple of days. So here's QQQ's one day chart similar to the spy back test. You could see pulled in right here. This is your yellow, it's your 21. Green is your nine. You can see the nine was already crossed over it at least three or four sessions ago, but you can see we were trending over it very nicely. You got about one, two, three, four, five bars trending over. We pulled into it really nice back test. And then the next day instantly caught a bid really nice run up. So that's all you're doing. You're making sure that price is still trending over it. Once it pulls into the moving averages or the nine and 21 EMA combo, you can try to add there. It'll try to act as a higher low. Sometimes it'll just flush through, but that's why you set stop losses. Keep your stop losses under the moving averages. If it starts breaking, then, you know, you can go ahead and stop out. But this gives you really good eyes in order to buy dips in order to add at higher lows and trade trends, because most people, they're trying to short into these, you know, on these red days and then they get blown out of the water on puts because they're adding and shorting right at the moving averages when it's just trying to make a higher low in order to go higher. So the nine and 21 EMA combo is just really powerful in that degree. All right, for another trade breakdown here, let's go over spy 424 put. This is on 10, 6, and this is also a day trade. So our trade entry was at 238 a contract, so $238 a piece. We entered at 934 and it looks like I just marked this as a scalp. So I was looking to get in and out. Looks like we got a nice exit with a pretty nice gate, about 25%. So the thoughts behind the spy was actually reacting very negatively to the non-farm payrolls or employment report. So this big red candle was economic data dropped at 830. So we already had negative sentiment. We already had a bearish bias because the jobs numbers came in really high. And a lot of people thought that was not good for federal reserve policy because they thought, you know, if the labor market is not coming down, they're going to keep raising rates until it comes down. So we had established that there was a negative view already, at least for the first hour and then after the first hour. And you know, the market will kind of sometimes it'll try to brush it off or create a new trend. It just depends. So you can see the previous two candles were already showing resistance at the five minute 21 EMA. So this is our entry at the five minute 21 EMA 424 puts 10, 6 at 238. This is our exit at 2.97 or 25%. So here is the two previous candles before our entry on this bar. You got resistance closing under the 21 here. You got a rejection here off the 21 on this bar. So you got to you got about 10 minutes of resistance at this point. And this little top week kind of gave me a signal that maybe, you know, this could flush down real quick. And it did. It worked really nice. This was just a nine and 21 EMA back test, but it's to the downside. So we were already trending under the moving averages, as you can see. And then once it pulls back into it, you can go ahead and assume that I could find resistance. You can go short. You could take a scout and, you know, keep your risk off above the moving averages, because if it starts breaking over them, obviously the trend can shift. Like I showed you to the upside and other examples. So that's all you're doing. Just using moving averages as back test points, using it for support or resistance. And then you kind of have to make your own price targets. But you can also use moving averages as price targets as well. And I do have an example of that pretty soon here. And like I said, we can assume that the market will reject the five minute 21 EMA back test after it was already trending below it. So it was already trending below it all morning. It finally pulls up into it. This is the first initial test since dropping. So we can assume that there's already a negative sentiment in the air. And we can go ahead and try to go short, try to get some downside. And it worked pretty good. And you can see multiple times it tries to get over it here, but it just keeps chopping at this and rejecting. So the nine and 21 is actually very powerful. And I really recommend it on the five minute or 15 minute if you're day trading. And then for price targets on this trade, I just used option premium as the price target. So instead of stock price levels, I was aiming for $3 on the contract or $300. I was looking to go from 238 to three. And this is only a three minute trade. We entered at 934, closed at 938. So four minutes, which is not bad. I mean, it's almost $60 a contract, you know, in a couple of minutes. So if you had 10 of those, you make $600. All right. And our last example is actually from today. So this is a trade I took today and alerted. So this is a spy for 33 call 1017. This is the date today. This is a day trade. You can see that we entered at the 15 minute, 200 EMA. So this is not a nine and 21 EMA trade. This is a 200 EMA trade. And we entered at 129 a contract or $129 a contract entered at 945. And we ended up exiting at 1009. So just in this 15 minute bar, we, you know, we exited around this area. And here's our exit price with the gain. And like I said, this is on app.xtrades.net. If you put at M, it's going to fill you at market price to whatever the exchange is offering in real time. It's going to give you real time data. So you can't fake your entries. You can't fake your exits on our app. If you're trying to track your own trades or if you're trying to help people make money and post your own trades, you can't fake it. If you go too far with the deviation, the box going to know. So just put at market price, give people an actionable trade, and they'll be able to, you know, see the actual price that you got filled at, or at least around it. So spy gap down very heavy today, I believe it was just from retail sales. There's some economic data at 830. But the cool thing is, is that it actually, the first bar on open was already catching a bid off the 200 EMA. And then we had a nice little dip on this 15 minute bar at 945. This is when we entered. You can see we entered at 945. And then usually there's a big 10 o'clock reversal, at least lately. There has been these 10 o'clock reversals have just been huge. So sometimes it's good to wait the first 30 minutes because there's a good chance that the market will dip below your entry price just because there's a lot of volatility the first 30 minutes. People wait for a range to get formed. And then after the first 30 minutes, 10 o'clock will come and you'll see a big push sometimes in the opposite direction. So another thing we were looking at is very extended under the 9 and 21 EMA combo. So here's your moving average cluster. This is a 50, you get a 9, or I'm sorry, a 21 and a 9. So this is your 9, 21, 50. We're trending under all of them, but we're very far extended below it. And when that happens, if you get too far below it, a lot of times price will try to catch back up to them and it'll reverse, go for a mean regression, come back up and test them. And that's why you can use these. If it's very far extended below, you can use these as a price target because you can assume that market's going to try to come back up. It's going to have a mean regression back to the moving averages. And then maybe you reject about there. So all I did was just use the moving averages as a price target because it was so extended below and then I can't really, you know, expected just a break over them right away. And you can see there's a little bit of resistance as soon as we got to the moving average cluster, you got resistance here a little bit, a little bit right here and a little bit right here. So just a little bit of a stall out. But then once we got over here, you can see it ripped even more. So I could have made way more money on this, but I wasn't willing to bet that this wouldn't reject and go lower because it was trending below. I hope that makes sense. So this is a counter trend way to use moving averages. If you're buying below your nine and 21 combo, if it gets extended below enough and you know, you have 200 EMA support like this, there's a good chance it'll try to bounce off the 200 EMA, which is your longer term support and head back to your shorter term moving averages for a back test if it's trending below. Another thing about this, there was a large gap to be filled. So we went ahead and took the risk and used the moving average clusters as a price target, simple as that. You got a big gap. It's likely going to get filled. Another thing I was looking at the ES futures, so that's just the S&P 500 futures. Those were also at an intraday pivot, which could help us bounce. So is that S1, which is the traditional pivot, held that up. Also had the 15 minute 200 EMA on the spy in multiple areas of confluence. And we are very extended to the downside. And like I said, once it gets too far under the moving averages, there's a good chance it's going to try to, you know, have a mean regression and a rebalance back towards them and try to reject there if it's trending below like you see here. So I hope you guys got some value out of this. Make sure you like comment and subscribe to Xtrades YouTube channel. I'm going to go ahead and try to get some more educational videos out and still put out my trade ideas list every single week, every Sunday, every Saturday, whatever day I decide to do them, but try to get more strategy videos out there as well. So love you guys. Like I said, make sure you like comment and subscribe. Go to our app.xtrades.net. Hit the link in the description. I got an invite link there. Come check out this app or I showed you my entries and exits and where I alert on our platform. So go check it out. Love you guys and I'm out.