weekend ed (1)

September 12, 2026

The Chart I Check Before Every Nasdaq Trade

by Tony Rago

Hey Trader,

I got a good question in the Golden Setup room this week.

I trade the Nasdaq. Every level on my chart got built for the Nasdaq.

So a trader wanted to know why I spend half my morning staring at the S&P 500 instead.

Here's my answer. The ES tells me whether my NQ setup has a chance before I ever click the button.

Wednesday showed you the version where the answer is no.

The NQ was behaving beautifully, and then it just sat there and chopped while everybody watching got frustrated with it.

Elizabeth Copeland came on with me and said it plain. The NQ wouldn't pop, and she hated it.

The problem was never in the Nasdaq.

"NQ wants higher. ES is like, 'No, I don't think so.'"

I want to walk you through what I looked at on that ES chart. It takes about four seconds once you know where to put your eyes.

Thursday gave me the same read with the opposite answer, and the trade that came out of it ran 600 handles.

Get this right and you'll quit handing good Nasdaq setups to a tape that was never going to pay them.

P.S. Everything above is one check I run before I click buy on a Nasdaq trade. Don Kaufman built a version for options.

Five checks, sixty seconds, and you run them before the order goes in.

It covers the five-second question that separates traders who stick around from traders who blow up their accounts. It covers why the stop-loss order you were told to lean on can quietly fail you on the exact day you need it most.

There's also the silent cost that bleeds out of your position every day even when you're dead right about the stock, plus the ten-second check that catches it.

Don was Chief Derivatives Instructor at thinkorswim and Director of the Trader Group at TD Ameritrade. Normally $29.97, and it's free today.