The Unemployment Rate Went Down And That Is The Bad News
August 8, 2026
Labor force participation fell to 61.4%, a 5-year low. Here’s why that matters more than the unemployment rate right now.
Labor force participation fell to 61.4%, a 5-year low. Here’s why that matters more than the unemployment rate right now.
Hey Trader, The U.S. has now been in conflict with Iran for over five months. Every time a “deal” gets announced, oil prices fall. Every time a ceasefire or pause breaks down, oil prices climb. You might be confused and wondering a few things, like I am. Why does anyone believe a deal is viable when it looks like nothing more than rhetoric, or worse, manipulation of the financial markets? Why would Iran even consider going back to the table when every time they have tried, they get bombed again? Why does the U.S. keep trying when Iran won’t make the concessions it demands? There are a lot of questions right now that don’t have answers. Some of them may never get one. Since I love analogies, let me float one your way. This “deal,” the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and the negotiations around it remind me of a prank
Hey trader, 0DTE options can be a lot of fun to trade…and profitable…but only if you know HOW to use them correctly. It’s fine to treat them as lottery tickets. However, you need to be prepared to make adjustments to limit risk based on market conditions. Let me give you an example. Tuesday morning yielded a breakout trade setup. I bought two 0DTE XSP calls Tuesday for 33 cents each once I got a buy signal… …and then nothing. The tape just chopped. That’s NOT what I wanted. Every minute that ticks by eats away at the value of my options. I had two choices: Sit there and hold it, hoping like a doofus something would happen Adjust to the market conditions I went with option #2. By selling that higher strike, I cut my cost to $3 per contract, while still giving myself a chance to profit on a
Hey Trader, I’ve shared in past writeups that when I was in a younger body, I practiced martial arts with full contact sparring on a weekly basis. I learned a lot about reading an opponent’s subtle moves, the mechanics of my own body, and how to handle pain in the middle of a bout. I never fought in a tournament or a paid match, but I think there’s a lot to learn from that training mindset, especially in this volatile summer. Let me start with the fighter to set the stage. If a prize fighter has a bout and loses, what do they do? Do they quit because they lost? Do they say, “I got knocked out, no more fighting for me”? Do they count their bruises and tell all their friends how much fighting sucks? Do they blame their loss on the referee, their trainer, the media, their friends?
Hey trader, 10% Club had a FANTASTIC morning all thanks to gold. The yellow metal shot higher this morning. A beautiful setup formed…but it wasn’t quite right. So, I waited. Minutes later, a second setup appeared. We took that one, and it paid out handsomely. The difference between the two setups came down to risk vs reward. No, the market doesn’t care about my entries or exits. However, I choose when and where to take my stand. And today’s setups are the perfect examples that illustrate this point. Let’s walk through them so you can see how my trade selection process works. Because in my years of trading, nothing is more important than risk management. So, let’s dive in. The yellow metal came out swinging Gold moved hard overnight. A lot of that came from tariff headlines, including talk of 250% tariffs on Canada. By the time the bell rang,
Hey trader, A trade can move your way, reverse, then stop you out for a loss. That one stings worse than a clean miss. You read the direction right. Your account still shows red. The fix lives in your stop. Move it at the right moment, to the right level. Without that step, a winner rolls right back to breakeven. That one habit decided a green morning on the NQ today. This issue hands you the exact beacon rules behind it. You will learn where to enter, when to slide your stop to the beacon, and how the first trade booked $150 after it reversed. A second trade is still running risk-free toward a target worth over $485. Here is how it played out on the tape. The setup nobody expected on a Friday Friday mornings tend to drift. The room has a name for the dead ones, Freaky Friday.
Hey trader, A breakout that fails is where good accounts quietly bleed out. The entry looks clean. The target sits right there. Then price stalls, rolls over, and a loose stop hands back money you never had to lose. This morning was built for that mistake. The clean winners got away early, and the pull to force something into a stalling gold breakout was strong. I did not force it. Gold handed me a textbook failed breakout, and because my stop was trailed tight to structure, the reversal cost me nothing. Let me walk you through where the stop went and why a break even counted as a win today. The Breakout That Would Not Hold Gold broke out of its consolidation. I went long at 3999. The signal fired at 4001. By the time it posted, price had ticked back to 3999, so the fill came in at 3999
Hey trader, Stop losses are supposed to help you manage risk…right? But what happens when price blows straight through the level you picked…yet, somehow you are still in the trade, watching the loss grow by the second? A member ran into exactly that this morning. His stop was sitting right where it should have been. It just never got him out, and a small loss started turning into one that actually hurts. It turns out he made a common mistake I’ve seen countless times: mixing up the “type” of order. You see, he assumed a “stop” was simply that. But it’s not. A stop is a wait condition, not an actual order. It’s the action it triggers that matters. Once that clicks for you, you can build a stop that actually does its job when price reaches your line. Let me walk you through what your stop is really doing,
Hey trader, I’m not much of a sports fan. I’ve had my seasons of following teams and going to games, but somewhere along the way the games themselves stopped holding my interest. The statistics, though, are a different story. I don’t watch the numbers to handicap a game or place a bet. I watch them because they teach one of the most counterintuitive lessons in trading: being right is overrated. Here’s why. The best in the world fail more than they succeed Look at any sport and you’ll find the same pattern. The greatest players of all time, the ones we consider the best to ever play, are wrong more often than they’re right. In the NBA, the league average field goal percentage is around 47%. In the NFL, only about 40% of possessions end in points. In Major League Baseball, a career batting average of .300, getting a hit
Hey trader, Think back to the last trade that went green and then slid all the way back to your entry before you closed it. It makes you start to question yourself… …was my profit target too far…did I forget to take a profit? Chances are the stop was tied to the one number that does not matter to anyone but you: the entry price. That habit quietly turns a good winner into a scratch or even a loss. Fortunately, there is a better way to manage risk I’m going to show you today. You see, the market never really sees your entry. It’s buried underneath It only cares about order flow and what’s on the charts. That’s how you should set your stop and profit targets. Now, I’m not saying you should ignore the balance of risk and reward. But that defines whether you take the trade, not HOW
