Volturon and Nexum refused to trade today because the session never met their strict entry criteria for a clean trend or momentum signal. Our incubating 'magnificent 7' divergence strategy did make a trade, since it isn't armed with any VIX protection, and so it hit its daily max loss on its first trade. It went on to regain ground on 2 more trades and cut its loss in half, but still, it was down overall. Here's the quick breakdown of the market today: - The market opened around 25,156, briefly pushed to 25,250, then sold off steadily to a low of ~24,773 before closing near 24,843–24,978 (down ~0.6–1.1%). That looks directional on the surface, but it was classic post-open chop followed by a news-driven drop — no sustained, high-conviction momentum breakout that Volturon and Nexum's trend/momentum rules require. - The 8:30 AM high-impact data (Jobless Claims, Productivity & Unit Labor Costs, Import Prices) created an immediate volatility spike, which kept filters active in both strategies. - VIX held steady in the 21.7–22.0 range (up ~3% on the day), which triggered Nexum’s VIX logic to pause all trading. These filters are designed exactly for this kind of elevated-volatility, geopolitically noisy environment (ongoing Middle East tensions + oil volatility) to prevent whipsaw losses. They don't always avoid trouble, but today the conditions were all there. In short, today was the textbook “sit on hands” day those two systems are built to recognize — no clean edge, high risk of false signals -- so they stayed flat and preserved capital. That’s exactly the protective behavior we want in uncertain conditions like this. We'd like to know if you experienced anything different. Please sare!

Volturon had a solid day, several more winners than losers. I had one morning trade with Nexum - a winner. So very green day today! Anyone else?

This past week in the E-mini Nasdaq 100 (NQ) was the kind of price action that makes even well-designed automated trading strategies bleed. Not because the market crashed, and not because it rallied — but because it did both, repeatedly, with no follow-through in either direction. For algorithmic traders running momentum, trend, or mean-reversion systems on NQ and MNQ, the week of February 23–27 was a masterclass in why "choppy" is the most dangerous word in futures. That said, our strategies weren't hammered, they just didn't shine. That was especially true for Nexum, which responded to the price action by doing nothing much at all. Turns out, though, staying on the sidelines is sometimes the best decision a strategy can make. A Week of Whiplash Monday opened with an 821-point plunge on the Dow as dual shocks rattled sentiment. The Supreme Court's Friday ruling striking down President Trump's IEEPA tariff authority sent shockwaves through global trade expectations, and Trump's immediate response — raising the replacement tariff to 15% under Section 122 — compounded the uncertainty. Meanwhile, Anthropic's announcement of AI tools designed to automate consulting and analysis work triggered a broad "AI disruption scare," sending IBM down 13% and dragging software stocks like CrowdStrike (-10%) and Microsoft (-3%) lower. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1%. Tuesday saw a sharp reversal. Software stocks led an AI relief rally, the Nasdaq bounced roughly 1%, and AMD surged on a GPU deal with Meta. Traders who shorted Monday's weakness got stopped out. Traders who missed Monday's short entirely watched their long signals fire — only to face Wednesday's trap. Wednesday was Nvidia earnings day. The stock rallied into the close as the broader Nasdaq gained 1.4%. Nvidia beat on every metric — Q4 revenue of $65.56 billion crushed estimates, EPS came in well above consensus, and forward guidance exceeded expectations. The textbook "buy the rumor" played out perfectly. Then came Thursday. Despite the blowout results, Nvidia dropped more than 5% — its worst session since April — dragging Broadcom, Applied Materials, Lam Research, and Western Digital down 6–7% each. The Nasdaq Composite shed nearly 2%. Investors, already in "prove it" mode, punished the stock over lingering concerns about China exposure and the sustainability of AI capital expenditure growth. The broader S&P 500 fell 0.54%, while — in a cruel twist for NQ traders — the Dow actually closed flat, meaning the carnage was heavily concentrated in exactly the instruments algo traders most commonly trade.

No Nexum trades as of yet….

Due to multiple power outages and intermittent data stream disruptions—possibly the lingering effects of the huge storm we had here—we made the decision not to go live with our automated strategies in today’s session. We spent the day honing the incubating algorithms. That said, we'd appreciate hearing about your experience today: - How did overall market conditions feel from your perspective? - Have you found recent market conditions challenging? Your feedback helps us continuously refine both the strategies and the operational safeguards surrounding them. Plus, it makes the Skool community a little more interesting!