Author: Scott Hoffman

Trade ideas are sparse this morning.  Friday showed lots of markets with range expansion that ended in doji bars; the Taylor Trading Technique is of limited use on days like that. There are also no economic reports today;...

December non-farm payrolls rose by 103K, soft versus expectations of around 150K.  That was somewhat offset by upward revisions to previous months which added 70K.  This ends up meaning that there’s not a whole...

As an “upstairs” trader, I find it suits me better to have a longer holding period for my trades.  Scalping worked for floor traders who could buy on the bid and sell on the offer all day, trading off the order...

The Taylor Trading Technique (TTT) puts a big emphasis on the previous session high and / or low – I refer to them as reference prices or pivot points.  They are price levels for traders to watch to determine market...

Did we step through the Looking Glass?  A weaker than expected Chinese PMI report was taken as bullish as traders said it helps China to appear in control of inflation. A statement by a Chinese Vice Premier that they will...

China raised interest rates on Christmas Day; how the markets react today will be interesting.  Equities and commodities were lower but there hasn’t been much follow through from the open.  There’s no...

Sorry this is late; I upgraded to Office 2010 and I’m wrestling with formatting.  The US tax bill passed both houses of Congress; getting it done removes one question mark from the economy.  A live fire artillery...

Earlier today I wrote a blog post about a breakout setup and trade in the sugar futures.  One of the points I wanted to make was that when trading these kinds of breakout setups I look to take profits relatively quickly; to...

I’ve been bullish on sugar futures for some time.  A few weeks ago they were consolidating around the blue dotted line I drew on the chart below, trading back and forth over the Fibonacci retracement area at...

As I wrote about yesterday, the move to electronic trading has its good and bad points.  In many markets it has made for better liquidity and trading for smaller traders.  On the other hand, I think electronic trading...