Who We Are...
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Hi, I'm "Trader Joe". I trade the Emini-S&P exclusively, and have been since about 2008. I'm just a normal guy, not a trading guru, and I don't claim to have found the "Holy Grail" of trading. EminiEdge.com is my creation to showcase what works for me while trading the Emini. I'm proud of my successes and happy to share what I learned with fellow traders here... This website is now, and likely will continue to be a work in progress for some time, so bear with me. It took me about 10 years to hit my stride daytrading. If I had known it would be so hard and take so long, maybe I would have become a plumber instead of a trader (I know, Joe the plumber, right?...). When I first started I purchased about every indicator and every strategy I could afford and still nothing worked for me. I needed to find something that was uniquely my own as my own psychology kept getting in my own way. Who knew that I'd end up being my own worst enemy? Once I started getting serious about transitioning to trading full time, I decided to strip my routine, clean off my charts and simply stared at my screen and watched the price action, on only one market, day after day. After some time, I began to notice a pattern emerging, and started to get a "feeling" when things were about to happen. I took this one pattern and started searching for it historically and noticed how real time prices consistently reacted to it. Support and resistance zones were now born and this was the "where" I started looking for my one and only price pattern. I watched for this one "setup" only at this one place (S/R zone) and started trading it. Some days I never placed a trade, but that forced me to reinforce my trading discipline. After continuing to trade only this one pattern at this one place, I started to notice more repeatable patterns and trade those as well. This continued to where it is today. I finally became educated on reading the markets bare price action. I had a few colleagues ask me questions and found that if I had to explain it, I really became accountable for what I said and did, so EminiEdge.com was born. This gave me a forum, a place to keep evolving my trading strategy. This gave me a good reason to start documenting what works for me (in a trading manual and a trading blog). Once fellow traders asked questions, it continued to help me as much as it helped them. If you notice in the EminiEdge.com logo, you'll notice an odd type of sword and this isn't random. This is called a "Katana" sword and was used exclusively by historic Japanese Samurai warriors in close-combat warfare. Trading kind of reminds me of a close-combat sport and reflects my mental state and style when trading, darting in and out applying my edge with precision and discipline. This logo reminds me everyday that trading is a close-combat battle, and only those who continue to hone their craft will survive. OK, that might be a little deep, but you get the point. Trading is a lot of work and is a very hard way to make an easy living... I used to live outside Chicago and visited the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) on occasion. This was when they still allowed visitors and when the pits were still active. The pictures on the sidebar here are actual pics snapped while I was there (and actually I'm in one of the pictures). What a sight this was. I can imaging the Samurai warriors would have been impressed seeing an active pit session, but I guess we'll never know. It's a shame that this is gone as this was probably one of the defining moments for me as a trader, it really gave me a boost. So why do I offer up what I do on EminiEdge.com you might ask? So often I see questions on blog posts like "...if XYZ is profitable, why doesn't he just trade instead of trying to sell stuff on his website?" I asked the same thing once, so good question! In my opinion I think there are a lot of people in the trading community knowingly trying to peddle a lot old stuff that at one time might have worked. If you're reading about the same tired breakout trades, 1-2-3, or flags and pendants, sorry to say you're likely going to become chum for the sharks. Years ago for instance I was struggling like many traders out there and figured I just needed a boost to "push" me over the edge. After exhaustive searches and finding trading plans for $3,000 - $5,000 (US) and indicators that promised to tell me where to trade without thinking, I settled on a few along the way and plunked down the money figuring "this would be it." How simple would this be! What I usually received were pages of black and white, photo copied material with great trading information... if you were trading in 1983, or indicators that were lagging moving average crossovers of some sort. When I would contact the author for clarification or additional information or to just plain old ask for help, I'd either be asked for more money, get a cryptic response or worse... silence. Once I learned what works for me and slowly became profitable, I vowed to try and help others in the same boat I was in by offering current information, simple and easy to interpret indicators using unique information and would personally correspond with traders with questions, all at a reasonable price. And to be honest, trading is a solitary business. I typically trade alone, away from noise and others most of the time, and it's nice to have correspondence once in a while with those who can relate to this lifestyle. This correspondence also helps me become a better trader because keeping my edge and not becoming sloppy is a continuous job onto itself. Having to explain technical details to someone else makes me accountable for what I'm saying and makes me articulate things that may have unknowingly only been "in my head" to this point. And as my wife, Mrs. EminiEdge often reminds me after I comment on something I watched or read, that there is usually something that is useful regardless how trivial I may think it is at the time. Some of the smallest details in trading can turn out to be that one small thing you were missing to make you more profits or profitable at all. So what I've put together on this site is an outline of how I trade. If you're serious, what's offered here can likely help... and if you have questions, feel free to ask. So take a moment and browse what I have put together on EminiEdge.com, I appreciate you getting this far into my rambling. Hopefully you find something that "clicks" for you, like I did, and it takes your trading to where you want it to be. Please take a lesson from Albert Einstein who said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". Like I said before, this is what works for me but you have to find your own path... Trading is very, very hard work. Work at it, keep at it, don't get lazy, and continue honing your craft like the Samurai warrior going into battle and you'll be victorious. Don't, and sorry to say, you will fail. Remember; Sometimes the market kicks your ass. Trading successfully is not the absence of losses, it's the ability to deal with them that counts... If you have purchased our trading information or indicators and still have questions let me know, I want you to be successful. If you're willing to put in the hard work required to truly learn, I'll do my best to help. Drop me an e-mail and I will get back to you. Be advised though I don't have time to answer a lot of e-mails from people who aren't serious and don't really want to put in the work or just wanting the easy answer, so I may not get back to you. (Just setting expectations here :) Good Trades and Good Luck! -Trader Joe |