There’s a lot to learn about being profitable with emini day trading. It can seem overwhelming, all of this learning. So, you’ll very likely profit mentally and financially from knowing some of the important ideas and methods that already successful emini day traders employ to make their profits and minimize their losses.

First, many emini day traders wonder about the strategy they hear of concerning the use of “gaps”. Well, opening a position gap up or down actually is an emotional move. Remember, you never want emotions dictating the way you trade. Thus, you can consider looking to gap trading not “trading a gap” but in fact “trading into a trap”. Gaps of less than four points on the SP Future, for example, are typically filled the very same day, especially if you’re talking Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Turns will manifest in less than 40 minutes after the gap opens, meaning for that you should be looking for reversal the moment the early momentum is lost. Now, you actually can make use of gap trading if you use your rationality and fade into a good support or resistance zone–I.E., enter into a position that’s opposite of the gap’s direction. This means that if the gap indicates a downward trend, you would be entering a long position for the sell-off. Use stops that aren’t more than one point on other side of a support or resistance zone.

Another strategic question is: should you as an emini trader wait until your hard stops get hit before you exit a trade? This proves too risky for many traders, actually, even though it sounds like it makes perfect sense. Many traders who prefer to be in control simply observe to see what the market does, and if it fails to do as anticipated they don’t wait for their stops to get hit. When a high probability situation has collapsed, they exit and then immediately start observing again. This is in line with the principle of only trading high probability/low risk situations.

Now, what about the best times of the day to be trading? Are there any? Many traders would say “yes”. Indeed, there are some old guideposts that profitable traders have often used with regards to this matter. “The Minor Time of Day” rule says that if the market opens higher, there is a high probability of a pull-back in 40 minutes or less, and if this is weak, there is then a rather high probability of a rally continuation into the early afternoon, while if it is sharp you have likely observed the day’s high and you can start selling the up and down “pings”. The “Major Time of Day” rule concerns the period of time between 2:20pm and 2:40pm time frame. Within this time, traders who have been holding their positions all day long have a strong tendency to get impatient and begin mass movements that lead to strong trend reversals. This is not the way you want to be, but you need to know that this is how people actually behave. These “sheeple” traders mean that there’s a very good probability of their being sharp trend reversals in the last 90 minutes of the trading day. You can take advantage of these predictable reversals.

Keep these tried and true strategies in mind with your eminis.

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