Trading the ISM Index
From Briefing.com :
The market continues to advance in the wake of the ISM Index at 10:00 ET. The national gauge of manufacturing activity checked in at 55.2. That was slightly below the consensus estimate of 57.7, but it is at a level that is still indicative of expansion. Following the data, bonds eased a little bit. However, the 10-year is still pushing 4.90% - a level not seen in almost four years. Separately, the February Construction Spending report was released at the same time, and it came in at a stronger than expected 0.8% (consensus 0.5%).
Well, I don't know if the ISM index being lower than consensus is good news or bad news, but market sure reacted in a positive way to the news and after being range bound for the past two days, it seems poised for some action. I wasn't particularly bullish, but nevertheless, my training as a day trader just told me to go long, reasons ---> 1 price is above moving average and gapped open this morning. 2 you can see that the mid-term MACD is trending beautifully upwards, 3 market has a slight bullish bias since last week. Immediately after the ISM announcement, I bought one contract at 1730.5, price went up to 1732 and suddenly plunged down to 1728... but when it rose back to 1730, I bought another contract. I set my stop loss at 1725 and my profit target at 1736 ( exactly 10 points from today's low of 1726 at 9:45 am) I can sense that market is still weak but a ten point movement was still possible and I was not going to get greedy by setting my profit target higher. At 10:45 my target was hit and I was out with $230 in profits.