We have quite a number of reports coming this week. Here is a quick snapshot of economic calendar for the coming week.

Weekly Economic Calendar

Date	ET	Release	For	Consensus	Prior
Aug 15	08:30	Core PPI	Jul	0.2%	0.2%
Aug 15	08:30	NY Empire State Index	Aug	15.0	15.6
Aug 15	08:30	PPI	Jul	0.3%	0.5%
Aug 15	09:00	Net Foreign Purchases	Jun	NA	$69.6B
Aug 16	08:30	Building Permits	Jul	1845K	1869K
Aug 16	08:30	Core CPI	Jul	0.3%	0.3%
Aug 16	08:30	CPI	Jul	0.4%	0.2%
Aug 16	08:30	Housing Starts	Jul	1810K	1850K
Aug 16	09:15	Capacity Utilization	Jul	82.6%	82.4%
Aug 16	09:15	Industrial Production	Jul	0.5%	0.8%
Aug 16	10:30	Crude Inventories	08/11	NA	-1114K
Aug 17	08:30	Initial Claims	08/12	NA	319K
Aug 17	10:00	Leading Indicators	Jul	0.1%	0.1%
Aug 17	12:00	Philadelphia Fed	Aug	8.0	6.0
Aug 18	09:50	Mich Sentiment-Prel.	Aug	84.0	84.7

I have received few emails from readers of my old blog asking about if I have given up trading SIMSCI (MSCI Singapore Free Index) futures. Here is an email from Alvin (btw, Alvin, my reply was bounced, since your email address was invalid)

came across yr interesting blog on SIMSCI trades a while back and enjoyed following it. However, you have apparently switched to trading the US e-minis and commodities. Just curious, are you giving up on the SIMSCI trades? If so, any reason why?

Ok, here is the reply. Yup, you are right, I have stopped trading SIMSCI futures. To me, it is part of my plan to move myself to another level. When I first started day trading index futures, I studied few markets to get started with. I did fancy trading US e-minis at that point of time, but my skills and my account size did not allow me to do so. I decided to start small. SIMSCI futures apparently was the smallest and simplest index futures I can get my feet wet. So , I started my 12-min chart day trading strategy on SIMSCI futures. All my trades were posted on my Better Trading Blog, so I am not going to explain that. Well, I was pretty lucky, no big draw down, instead my small trading account was up 40% (this percentage is easy to achieve with a small account , nothing fancy here), and that was during the May and June, an ugly period for Singapore stocks market traders.

I think it is time for me to move on to a bigger and volatile market. I am not sure if I will do as well , I am pretty confident and comfortable with current performance. Work is still in progress.

I might go back to SIMSCI trade when volatility and volume are significantly improved.

The week started slow and flat and ended with positive note. Second week of August 2006, I closed the week with 3.62-R. We had Fed meeting on tuesday, I did not make any index futures trading before Fed meeting. I switched to Gold futures trading, with break even result, 0-R. DJ and Nasdaq had clearer direction after Fed's decision. And dummy trading continues to be profitable for Dow mini and E-mini Nasdaq trading.

Thanks Vince for bringing up currency futures ideas. I am looking into Euro FX now, and I hope I can start some Fx futures trading next week.

This is result of 2nd week of August.

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It is mid August now. So far so good for the first half of the month. August is still considered a pretty decent month for me. To date, I am up 7.49 R for August. This is an encouraging result after I made some changes to my day trading strategy. Keeping things simple does help. Anyway 7.49-R is still too small to be considered good. I am trying to add in more futures products into my trading basket. My current main focus is still on Dow Mini and E-mini Nasdaq. I will stick with dummy trading strategy for the time being, and I do not have any plan to make any change for my trading strategy now. It is good to find a strategy which fits my personality and risk appetite. So, same trading style, expanding my trading basket, increase trading opportunity.

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