Hey friend,
We got the official jobs numbers this morning.
And the numbers were bad…
With total jobs added coming in at 29,000 – compared to the expected 84,000 and last month’s 162,000.
The unemployment rate also ticked up slightly to 4.2%.
However, as you’ll see below…
The effect on the markets was counterintuitive.
The Daily Direction
Note: Indexes closed slightly higher yesterday but gapped up higher this morning on the jobs data – as it would likely reduce the chances of further rate hikes.
The Daily Nugget
Chop makes you overmanage good trades.
A choppy market doesn’t just make entries harder.
It can mess with what you do after you’re in.
You spend all week watching breakouts fail…
Seeing green positions reverse…
And getting stopped out of trades that looked fine a few hours earlier.
So when you finally get a clean winner, you don’t trust it.
You take profits too quickly.
You move the stop up before the trade has had room to work.
Or you bail on the first ugly red candle because you’re convinced another reversal is coming.
That can protect you from some losers.
But it can also train you to cut the exact trade you’ve been waiting for.
The goal isn’t to ignore the market environment.
If follow-through is poor, managing risk more tightly can make sense.
Just don’t let a week of chop convince you that every move is about to fail.
When a stock finally starts acting right, give the setup a chance to prove it.
The Traders Agency Team
