Trading System Signals on 03-13-2026

It was a short selling market early followed by a Liberation NQ trading afternoon. Earlier today we released the NQ Liberation trading system that takes advantage of choppy afternoons. Market structure since last April 9, 2025 seems to have changed and there is a strong interest by institutional option sellers to keep the stock indexes range bound.

NQ Liberation was developed to synthetically participate in a 0 DTE short selling strategy without shorting the options. Today it went 3 for 4 and was up +$2,395 on hypotheticals.

Some of the Dogs of Capstone (if you are familiar with Dogs of the Dow) did well today including Open Range NQ capturing a short for +$7,840 and Momentum Reversal NQ for +$5,655.

The accelerated trailing stop loss on the short side really limited our gains on V-Reversal. It was an ideal signal to hold until the end of the day. We have seen so much hyperventilating dip buying for so long, it is difficult to hold shorts, but we are starting to see the market "soften up".

The market was in a downtrend before the geopolitical conflict. Even without geopolitics in the headlines, the market should have had a bigger correction by now, based on my calculations. The market is being contrary to geopolitics when other fundamentals related to the software space started the downtrend.

One thing to consider based on the last two trading days is how the stock indexes traded lower in the afternoon, and the morning lows did not hold up.

There are two other clues we are in a down trend based on market behavior.

The last two years the net gains for the uptrend have been in the overnight session while the day trade session has been down to sideways. March has shown a significant down trend in the nighttime session, which could be indicative of the overall trend. With option selling keeping the market more range bound intra-day, does the night time trend reveal the real trend?

The other clue is based on the idea that: "markets go up slowly and down quickly". The reason for this is based on the fact that markets go slow when moving with the trend and fast when moving counter trend. We have seen a very slow sell off lately. The downward price action has been very slow, similar to the speed of the uptrend when the trend is up. The rallies (countertrend moves) have been fast and brief. The direction of the slow moves as compared to the fast moves could be another behavioral trend indicator when pure price is less clear.

Many times, the markets will trade in ways that it never has traded before based on structural changes. A very slow sell off would be unique and stealth. The fast selloffs get mean reverted, but a very slow selloff without any panic would be a more effective and "draining" bear market.

Hypothetical Trading System Signals on 03-13-2026

27 System Portfolio NQ = -$2,445

Diversified Portfolio 57 (NQ Only) = +$3,795

Seven System Portfolio NQ = -$3,815

Stock Index Portfolio 37 = +$1,745

Stock Index Portfolio 18 = +$10,065

Two System Portfolio NQ = +$245

Silver Portfolio = update later

50K Portfolio (Micros) = update later (without Gold and Silver)