It’s usually easy to predict where the futures are headed next, at least over the short-term, but leveraging this knowledge can be diabolically difficult. Two traders comparing notes in the chat room yesterday afternoon picked their spot to get short, but all they got for their trouble was aggravation when the futures took a tortuous path lower rather than the path of least resistance.
Now, early Wednesday morning, we see quite clearly that the futures will fall to 1683.25 if they take out a midpoint support at 1689.00 with which traders have been playing toe-sies for more than an hour. The camo short from that number should work nicely for night owls, since the futures seem to deliver most reliably at hours of the day when there are relatively few traders around to take advantage. Even then, the diligent night owl might go bleary-eyed trying to reap the maximum gain here. If it helps inspire you, ‘the max’ works out to around $300 per contract — a good night’s work, even if it means having to fight off asphyxiating boredom. ________ UPDATE (10:12 a.m. EDT): It only took ten hours, but the futures have finally fallen to our target this morning, yielding a profit of about $400 per contract if you were able to get short as advised. The actual low so far has been 1281.75, a small overshoot of our number that has bearish implications going forward.