 Welcome traders. We're going to get started here in the next 30 seconds or so. If you can, if you can hear me and you can see the welcome screen if you just type of why in the chat box so that I know we are good to go. Okay, that's 1pm UK time. Welcome to today's introduction to the E-mini and micro S&P contracts in today's session. I'll be introducing you to the instrument structure and advantages along with highlighting some unique market mechanics that enhance the trading information for this product. I would also introduce you to my core strategy for trading these and demonstrate how you can consistently use my pre-market analysis to reap consistent returns. Before we jump in, just so that you're aware, I'm going to run through this presentation. If you have any questions, if you can just make a note of them, and then at the end of the session I'll open up a Q&A and I'll cover off any queries you may have. Okay, so for those who are here for the first time, a brief introduction to myself. After I graduated from King's College London, I joined a city PLC consulting firm. I ultimately left with some colleagues and went on to successfully coast, found an exit, a consulting startup focused on C-suite's executive search for technology businesses. So I had a front row seat to the dot com bubble, witnessing people make and lose a fortune in the markets, sometimes quite literally overnight. So I decided to explore my curiosity for markets with some capital to play with and some time in my hands I started day trading the S&P 500 or more appropriately day gambling after some early beginners luck. I racked up some pretty solid gains. However, as is often the case, my beginner's luck ran out and as the market phase changed, I began to average down, giving back all my gains and ultimately experiencing a significant six figure financial hit. To say this was a gut wrenching and sobering experience is an understatement. I really had to stand back and figure out if it was feasible for me to make a living from the market. So I decided to get serious about trading and sort out a mentor with an excellent trading track record. Working with my mentor for a period of 18 months to two years. I was wondering which I was not just my technical game in terms of developing a strategy that crucially suited my personality extensively back and forward testing strategies, all of which were underpinned by a rigorous risk management approach. But most importantly, during the period of mentorship, I significantly developed my mental game. And probably most importantly, I made the watershed shift from being a highly goal oriented individual focused on financial gains to becoming purely process oriented. So what does that actually mean? Well, it means I have stopped focusing on what I could make from the markets and start focusing solely on managing my mindset to allow me to consistently execute my trading strategy. Oftentimes in the face of the negative feedback from the markets in the form of losing trades. But once you do become process orientated and you have a professional trading mindset and you understand the true nature of trading as being a numbers game in which you're simply playing the probability. You really lose the emotional investments and that hellish emotional rollercoaster of living and dying by the outcomes of individual trades. So I'm no longer concerned with the outcome of individual trades or even a small stream of trades. My focus on the next 100 trades, because I know if I focus on excellence and execution, my edge will demonstrate itself over an extended series of outcome. My multi strategy approach has delivered profitable annual returns since 2008. Since 2013 I've also been managing investor capital through a managed accounts service delivering annual positive returns. I'm currently responsible for managing multi million dollar portfolio. Since 2010 I've also mentored hundreds of private traders of all experience levels from complete novices to form a CME floor traders in developing the technical and mental skills to read consistent returns from the markets. In addition to my fund management and mentoring, and also a resident market expert, exclusively providing market and trade analysis to tickmail. My other passion project is leading trader education for a premier trading education brand called FXcareerswap.com. At FXcareerswap, we offer development and funding to retail trading talent. We don't just develop retail traders market and trading strategy knowledge. We work on mindset development through our structure program that culminates in managing the firm's capital at zero personal financial risk on a profit share basis. So that gives you a flavor of where I'm coming from. Let's jump into today's material. The E-mini or ES or the minis or the spools is a futures contract that tracks the S&P 500 stock market index. It's traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or the CME via their GLOBEX electronic trading platform. Trading is 23 and a half hours a day, five days a week using the contract symbol ES. Future contracts are available on a wide range of US stock market indices, commodities and forex. However, when traders refer to the E-mini or the E-minis or the spools, they generally refer to the most important one, the futures contract that tracks the S&P 500 stock market index. Even if futures were originally launched in September 1997 to attract non professional investors into trading index futures. Obviously the only game in town have been the large S&P contract that had become too expensive for the little guides trades. So the CME created the E-mini contract, which was one fifth the size of the large S&P futures contract and required only one fifth of the margin to trade. The mini became a huge success, not only with professional traders, but sorry, not only non professional traders, but with professional traders too. The micro E-mini futures contract is the same as the regular S&P 500 E-mini contracts in every respect, except importantly here, it's one tenth the size. That is each one point move in the S&P 500 index is worth $5 per micro E-mini contract compared to $50 for the E-mini or ES. And obviously the margin to trade a micro contract is one tenth the size. So what are the benefits of the E-mini product? Well, it's equally easy to go long or short, you either buy or sell the current E-mini contract and there is no uptick rule. It's 24 hours trading, which makes the E-mini attractive to traders around the world. Overnight moves in related equity markets like the DAX or the FTSE can be played with one trading vehicle. The electronic trading platform means that your orders are entered instantaneously and when executed you are notified instantaneously as well. Changing and cancelling orders is trivial, no phone calls required to brokers anymore. It's a level playing field, the Globex electronic trading platform means that large and small traders have equal access to the market and trades are executed in the order they are received. So that pit trading futures of old, the backroom game and some of those boys are over. It's got a tight bid and ask spread because so much volume is traded through the E-mini that difference between the bid and the ask price is only ever one tick or 0.25 index points, which is the minimum movement in the market. The large depth of market, again because of the liquidity, means there's plenty of volume either side of the last traded price for large orders to be filled with minimum slippage. It's volatile, yes, but not unmanageable. The E-mini is active every day, which gives the trader plenty of opportunity to trade. Remember, a sleepy market is impossible to day trade but the E-mini volatility is also manageable, except around major tier one announcements or geopolitical surprises or market shocks. The low brokerage rates, broker commissions for trading E-minis continue to fall, this excludes exchange clearing and regulatory fees and when you factor those in, your round trip or in and out brokerage commission is very attractive. There are no margin requirements to open a day trading position with tick mill, for example, you only require 1000 US dollars to open a micro account. Remember, these are the absolute minimums you should be trading with much more capital behind your position ideally. Lower tax rate than trading forex or stock income from trading E-mini futures is taxed as a capital gain. So there's no trade by trade accounting. Another advantage of the tax treatment of the E-mini futures is that the tax reporting requirements are minimal. In particular, like I say, no trade by trade accounting is required, only the net profit for the fall year is needed. Okay, so now we understand the instruments and the trading venue. I want to demonstrate some of the unique aspects that the E-mini has as a derivative of the S&P 500. It has us to access some really unique information commonly referred to as market internals. Market internals are often compared to the instrument dashboard on the car, giving indication of performance and alerting the driver to any issues occurring under the hood. So let's take a look more closely at what market internals are and how we can incorporate them into consistent trading strategy. The first volume as unique features of trading the exchange traded derivative as opposed to a contract for difference or forex volume data. Forex volume is notoriously incomplete as there is no central exchange and the banks who dominate forex trading don't share volume data in real time. We get a true reflection of actual volume which is shared directly by the CME available to all market participants in real time. I use volume as a tool to confirm breakouts and opportunities to fade the market. Spikes in volume will often be companies by intraday profit taking and we'll be looking at some examples after we've walked through each of the internals here. The second and really important tool that I use is the NYSE, the New York Stock Exchange tick index. This gives us the relationships of stocks ticking up versus ticking down. Ticking is an extremely useful tool for intraday traders. For example, if there are 3,000 stocks trading on the New York Stock Exchange and 1,500 trade higher from their previous price and 500 trade lower from their last price, tick will read plus 1,000. But you might ask, well, what about the other 1,000 stocks? Well, they would have been unchanged from their last quoted price. So when using the tick, we are looking for extremes to enter or exit a trade. Tick readings of plus 1,000 or minus 1,000 are considered very strong and we typically trade between 1,000 most of the time on the New York Stock Exchange. Tick readings with plus or minus 400 indicate sharp and we ignore them. On a range day, you can look to fade ticket streams. I apply a moving average, so it makes it easier for me to see the distribution or trend of the tick. Note that extreme tick readings for the day are really important to pay attention to. When we get a high tick and a high in price at the exact same time, this more often than not indicates the higher of the day is probably in. When a high-tick prints without a simultaneous high in price, we can continue to make new highs until a new high tick is reached. Obviously the reverse is true for low ticks followed by new lows. The next tool I use is the advanced decline line or AD line for short. It's the second most important of the internals. This indicator tells us the net sum of advancing stocks minus declining stocks. There are roughly 3,000 stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange and 3,000 on the NASDAQ. An AD line reading of plus 1,500 is very bullish and a reading of over 2,000 is extremely bullish. On the flip side, readings of negative 1,500 and below are very bearish and readings below 2,000 are extremely bearish. Extreme readings are indicative of trending days where once the market opens, it continues to trend all the way into the clothes. So we look to the AD line in conjunction with our final market internal, the breath ratio, to confirm these trend days. For example, a day with 2,500 advancing stocks and only 500 declining stocks would yield a net positive of 2,000, which is extremely bullish reading. As I said, it would take a large catalyst to shift the market direction with a reading that's this bullish. If on the open you continue to see the AD line moving plus 500, plus 700, plus 900, this is a sign of broad market strength. If, however, the market is moving higher, but the AD line is moving lower, this divergence could be a sign of a market turn or reversal. Last, but by no means least, the breath volume ratio. This is composed of volume flowing into upsocks versus volume flowing into down stocks. The breath ratio is expressed as up volume divided by down volume. The reading is important in relation to where it has been, especially where we are now compared to where we open the day. So for example, if at 10am, we have 10 million shares moving up and 5 million shares moving down, the resulting breath ratio is two to one positive. The volume is flowing into up stocks as down stocks. But if at 10 30am the market has sold off, but we still have a breath ratio that's positive, either two to one or three to one. This is a signal that markets are actually becoming stronger, and it's time to look to buy a pullback so looking for a long set up. So now we understand the market internals and the unique insight they provide. I want to briefly walk you through my trading strategy. By understanding the market context in which we're trading, I'm looking to execute two types of trades. Firstly, a mean reversion trade in arranging environments, and secondly momentum trades in trending environments. All of these trades are underpinned by the market internals. Every day, prior to the market open, I plot pivotal support and resistance action areas that are derived from multi timeframe market auction theory and volume profile analysis. This allows me to avoid engaging the market in areas of heavy rotation or chop support and resistance action areas have three purposes. They can act as entry levels in mean reversion setups in directional or trend environments. The action areas act to confirm momentum entries. And then lastly, they are used for targets for trades. I also note additional key data from the prior days action. These levels are often important to define the bias for the day, the previous volume point of control, the highest volume price from the previous day. This is where buyers and sellers perceive the price to be fair value for the day. I confirm the current market context. This confirms the dominant side of the market. I look at the overnight trade and look at the trend on a one to three day timescale, a one to three week timescale and a one to three month timescale. But because there are times when neither side is dominant and it's important to assess how the cash trading session develops because you can only access the market internals after the New York Stock Exchange open. The market internals are only relevant for the cash trading session. I also highlight quantitative probability plays based on where the cash or regular trading hours session opens in relation to the prior days, either above below or within the range, based on these key levels and the probability of price testing these levels over an extended data set. This can prove useful for trade entry exit and management. This can be known as volatility or range analysis, as this helps to inform current context is market adaptation to current volatility. We equally we can confirm the market answer balance, and this can inform the bias as we head into the cash trading session. It also helps to inform trade execution and trade management. I'll give you a few examples of how the combination of the action areas and market internals and data deliver an edge when trading the S&P. So this is an example of pre market analysis for the cash, the cash trading session. You can see here that price trades as we know 23 and a half hours a day. This is the period the overnight period refers to this is the globe x period, and you can see that the internals are not present during the globe x session so the internals like I say are only relevant for the cash trading session. When the New York Stock Exchange opens at 230 UK time. When we came into the day. The primary high probability player highlighted in my pre market analysis was was for a test and reversal from the initial resistance action area, as long as we had negative internals. So the market opened up we traded into the initial resistance zone. We had a negative tick distribution. So we were trading below the zero line for the tick. We were trading below the zero line advanced decline line, and we were trading below the zero line in breath. So that immediately sets up an opportunity to short the market. If we short the market from the primary resistance, the area we're looking to test here is the globe x low or primary support. So in this instance we'll trade bear in profit for 18 and a half points. Next setup here. We came into the day. So if you look here in the market context, we were bearish on the overnight session, and we were very well we're neutral to bearish on the one to three day perspective, but we were bullish on the longer time frames. And so what I highlighted here was that as the market opened in, like, as I say in bearish context in the near term, we saw strong buying volume straight out of the gate. So we have the tip developing positively. We have Brett coming from below the zero line and developing positive is as well as well as the ad line. Sorry, their breath is here. And so, as I discussed, once we get that signal from the internals, that gives us the go ahead then to look for long positions and the long trades was through the primary resistance into secondary into secondary positions, and that gave a 10 points, 10 point trade to the upside. Next one here, market context bearish. Oops, one second guys. Okay, so the market context the overnight was bearish the near term one to three days bearish obviously bullish on the longer term time frames. So, what we were looking at here was the potential to play a break off the primary support to the downside. And we just wanted to see how the internals opened up and we can see that they were weak we have negative tick distribution. We have very weak ad line and breath deteriorating so that gave us an opportunity to short into the primary support for a continuation of or trend trade. And when we actually got down to the secondary support zone, there wasn't actually a signal at that stage from the market in terms of an exhaustion signal so a new low in price with a new low or tick screen reading. So that allows us to move our stops to entry on the original position, and then we traded into the secondary support zone. So, the risk there using the continuation stop I highlight using market volatility, what stop size, you should, you should use. So in this instance, for the continuation trades at seven health points, and I actually gave a trade there that profit potential of 28 points to the downside. So in this instance, again, another reversion play here as we traded into the primary resistance, what were the internals telling us well breath was deteriorating ad line was below zero and rolling over, and we had a negative tick distribution so this instance, we wait for the test of primary support to set short positions, and we were bearish during the global session neutral bias of the one to three day timeframe. And so, surely sell the test of the primary resistance and target and move down into the primary support giving a 16 point profit target there. So set up here another reversion play for us will bearish on the bearish on the overnight session bearish on the near term. And so what we're looking for was a test of the primary resistance with negative market internals so what do we have we have the ad line, trading well below zero breath below zero and a negative tick distribution well below the zero line of tests. And so that gives us the signal to get into that trade on the short side and market fellow way went through primary support through pro and into the secondary support and that trade depending upon how you manage it off of 30 to 40 points of profit there. So that just gives you a brief outline of how I, how I address the market how I consistently use the internals for trade setups, what I'll do now is as an example in real time as we'll jump into today's charts, and I'll walk you through what I see the potential for as we head into today's cash session. Like I say, the, what I'm looking to do here is identify the current market context, and I want that I want to then use the cat the cash opening and seeing where the internals are to confirm the trade setup so at the moment for me heading into today, I'll be looking for long positions through 434850. And what I want to see at the open is positive breath, positive, sorry positive breath positive ad line and a positive tick distribution to get long through that 434850 the initial outside target then is going to be 435850 up to 436275. If we don't get any exhaustion signals so as we train into this area if we're making that new high in price of the day, and we don't have a ticket stream or a new high tick for the day, and that gives the signal to one, take the risk of the table stops to entry and hold the trade then to play from the secondary upside objective, which is 4371. So that's the primary trade I've been looking at that's the highest probability setup, heading into today. On the downside, and I'll just actually this is a good example yesterday we came into yesterday we were bullish on all timeframes. However, I, and what I was looking to do yesterday is basically the same plan as today was to buy a break at that 48, sorry 434850 for an upside, but I highlighted to the the guys that we had very weak internals at the market and what I actually was looking for was that if we got through the primary and secondary support was to put in a short position through 4315 targeting a move down to 4308 so yesterday, there was a seven point trade on offer using my pre market analysis. But similarly today I wouldn't be looking to get short this market unless we can take out 4305 to the downside. And if we do get if we take out that 4305, like I say I want to see really weak internals. So yesterday with the breaches rolling over negative ad line negative kick distribution so I've been looking through 4305 initially targeted move down to 4298 to 4296 and again if we don't get an exhaustion signal so we trade down into that area, and we don't get a new low in price accompanied by a new low tick for the day that we can hold that trade and look for a test of the 4389 to 438550. So that's how I'm setting up for the day. As we trade it as waiting for the cash open and some and that's the high probability plays going to be the long, but if we start to roll over, it will be through 4305 on very weak internals to trade to the downside so I'm not taking a huge amount of trades as there's an average day there's one or two setups I'm looking at, and I just wait then for the market internals to confirm those, and I take the trade so it's not, it's not that there are, it's not a scalping strategy this is more of a position type trading strategy. And so it's very easy to put new traders, once you grasp the internals to apply this to your own accounts. And finally then I would like to extend an offer to join the tickmail futures and options strategy group. This is where I deliver this pre market analysis. It actually comes in the form of a short video each day that's that's delivered to the group. It's actually two to four minutes long just highlighting the setups for the session ahead, and then I give updates during the session as to as to what the opportunities are, and share the trades that I'm running and managing all through this group. I also provide some institutional insights from some of the big investment banks so we have an idea what what they're looking at where their footprint of the market is what their assessment of current trends and strength of trends. So I've shared through this group, which like I say is a private group I also provide other insights as well. Share trades that I'm putting on in other futures markets as well, one of which you can see up here at the top the VIX, I've been running very comfortably over the past few sessions so this is, this is a group where I share my analysis, the trading strategy trading updates, and you are all, you're all welcome to take a trial of that for the next two weeks. What I actually do is I'll put the link here into the chat, let me just do that for you. And then you can request access through that link that I've just put in the chat. And with that, I will open up a brief Q&A, if anyone has any questions, you can either type them in the chat box, or I think we also have a Q&A box there yes we do. And, and I'll cover off any questions you might have. Equally if you don't have any questions, just typing in the end in the chat box is useful so that I know we can, we can actually wrap this up here. I can't see any questions coming through. So I'm going to hope that I've done a reasonable job of explaining all that stuff to you, and you've been able to take it on board there will be a recording of this posted through my LinkedIn, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I will message me if you do think of any questions afterwards. Okay, I'm going to wrap this one here then guys thanks very much for your time and I hope this helps.