Live Trading System Signals on 04/23/2025

The massive gap up in the stock indexes slowly made new highs intraday, then proceeded with a choppy sell off, with frequent hints of bouncing higher only to continue to roll over, giving back about half of the overnight gains.

The One Million MNS started off the week strong but gave the gains back today in one of the more contentious market environments I have seen. All of the volatility filters were within tolerance from yesterday's close (Zig Zag and CVIX) and to start the day with the Pre-Market Average Range. Today was the first day in a while that I did not receive a notification from Tradestation about higher day trade margins.

Towards the end of the day, the Zig Zag reached 34 and CVIX reached 1.23. We will check the Pre-Market Average Range tomorrow at 9:30 am EST to determine if we will trade tomorrow's session.

The One Million MNS was down -2.2% on the day while the 250K Portfolio was down -$5,100 in live trading. We came into today up about +1.6% on the week in the One Million MNS and +$4,000 on the 250K and up on the month. It was one of the more frustrating sessions. The market went into a risk on mode when it moved higher during the overnight session on a gap up, generating a positive trend with most trades of the day trades on the long side while the market traded against the trend during the day session while at the same time stopping out initial short trades such as V-Reversal.

V-Reversal Stopped Out Near Highs

We are ahead of Sibilance NQ hypotheticals for the week by approximately 0.1% in the One Million MNS and 250K Portfolio. Sibilance NQ v24 (1 Emini) is in a 30K out of 42K max drawdown or 1.2% risk to worse case drawdown on the One Million MNS. The equity curve for the hypothetical Sibilance NQ with the Pre-Market volatility filter added is shown below going back three years as well as three months to "zoom in" on the short term.

Three Year Equity Curve

Three Month Equity Curve

Sibilance NQ was approaching equity peaks yesterday morning but went into a rapid drawdown the past 1.5 days when churn came back into the market yesterday afternoon.

The constant news cycle trading for the past 6 months has been unusual and challenging as well. The cycle of favorable price action was against us today while the strength in the portfolios has been towards the end of the week on Thursday's and Friday's. We will work to go positive on the week and month during tomorrow's trading session if the Average Range in the pre-market is within its threshold.

Since the beginning of 2024 it seems 0 DTE options have a range bound affect on the market intra-day. You can see from the graphic below that while the market makes some moves intra-day, nearly all the net gains or losses are during the overnight session 4:00 pm EST to 9:30 am EST. The "smart money" sells these options which has a way of containing the market moves intra-day.

We saw this yesterday when we held several long trades and the market pulled back into the close before the inevitable gap up that we anticipated. Today was similar and I wouldn't be surprised to see another gap up tomorrow as the liquidity seems to be in "risk on" mode.

Based on some of this data, option selling is a strategy we want to consider and combine with what we are currently trading.

The Portfolio Calculator Web App has been updated with the latest results through 04/23/2025.

The hypothetical results for the portfolios are below and inclusive of $25 round turn slippage and commission per E-mini. Use 1/10th of the results for Micros.

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| Portfolio | Combined Daily P/L |

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| Sibilance NQ v24 (E-mini) -$18,730.00

| Stock Index Portfolio 11 -$6,970.00

| 50K Portfolio $2,925.00

| EMINI NQ 2 System Portfolio -$2,050.00

| EMINI NQ 3 System Portfolio II -$2,645.00

| EMINI NQ 4 System Portfolio -$2,645.00

| EMINI NQ 5 System Portfolio -$4,525.00

| EMINI NQ 7 System Portfolio -$445.00

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