Swing Trading Momentum: The Game You Should Be Playing Right Now
Momentum swing trading is like surfing—you catch a wave, ride it for as long as it runs, and then get off before it crashes.
That’s the goal, at least.
Grab chunks of the move without overstaying your welcome. You’re not holding for years like a long-term investor, and you’re not flipping positions every few minutes like a day trader. You’re in, you’re out, and you’re moving on to the next setup.
But here’s the problem: most traders get caught playing the wrong game at the wrong time. They try to force trend-following in a choppy market or play mean reversion when a real breakout is happening.
That’s why I use market regimes. Know the regime, and you know what game to play.
Right now, for example, the S&P 500 is in a Bull Quiet Regime, which means stocks are trending higher, but there’s enough chop to shake out the weak hands.
Considering Spu’s have traded in a sideways range since November, you can see that simply trading the regime and not a system would’ve been choppy.
So, if you want to trade momentum effectively, you need a proven system that lets you ride the strongest trends while managing risk. And that’s exactly what Momentum Systems are built for.
The Momentum Approach
A Momentum System isn’t about guessing tops and bottoms. It’s a systematic approach that focuses on:
Strong momentum assets – We trade stocks, futures and cryptocurrencies already making big moves. No catching falling knives, no hope-based trading. Just price confirming what’s already working.
Tight risk management – Every trade has clearly defined risk management, a well-defined profit target, and a structure that ensures the reward is always worth the risk.
Time-tested signals – The system has been backtested across multiple market regimes. Whether it’s tech stocks, commodities, or futures, the methodology works because it adapts to volatility.
Multi-day to multi-week holds – Trades last a few days to a few weeks, depending on momentum continuation.
Market regime awareness – If the market is giving smooth, trending action (Bull Quiet/Bull Volatile), we ride it. If the market turns choppy or Bear Volatile, we adjust.
Swing Trading Strategies That Actually Work
Each week I send out the Sunday Setup email covering the different market regimes, trades we are in and what we are keeping an eye on in the upcoming week.
If you haven’t read this week’s email yet, you can get it here.
Let me break it down step by step and show you how I use our Momentum System to trade these markets.
First, I start from the top down: what regimes are the different sectors or assets in.
- Indices: Sideways in a Bull Quiet regime, NQ broke out and started trending higher, expecting ES to do the same
- Metals: Gold in Bull Quiet, silver, copper and platinum in neutral – very volatile action last week.
- Energy: Neutral action.
- Currencies: Bear Quiet after Bear Volatile regimes signal potential reversals higher.
- Bonds: Bear Quiet turned to Bear Volatile regimes.
- Ags and Softs: Corn, wheat, and soybeans have been attempting to break out higher. Coffee up over 100% in a year. Cotton trending down on low volatility.
- Crypto: Long Bitcoin, flat on all altcoins.
Right away, based on the market regimes I know that I’ll be looking for longs in Equity Indices (and potentially individual equities), Gold, Ags and Bitcoin.
Now that I know what game I’m playing with the proper assets I’m going to be looking at I can apply my trading system to it.
It’s super easy. In the Bull-Quiet market regimes, I want to trade trend or momentum long systems.
Let’s start with our original example of the S&P500 (ES). I’ve applied the Swing Beast Momentum System to the chart, and you can see there was a long trade back in September that exited in mid-December…right before everything went choppy. Also, note that it has not gotten long yet.
This is how momentum systems work. It gets you in for the directional move and keep you out of the sideways crap.
As long as it remains in the Bull Quiet regime, if there is a daily close above the horizontal line above, currently at 6162.25, that will trigger a momentum buy signal.
Here’s the system results going back to 2007.
- 77% Win Rate
- 3.66 Profit Factor
Let’s have a look at Nasdaq (NQ) right now.
Similar to ES, it was long from September and exited right at all-time highs in December, waiting for its next setup. Unlike ES, NQ already got the long signal last week when it put in a daily close above 21,968.
Gold was next on our list. Back in October 2024, the system fired a long entry, but the momentum died out and traded sideways until our exit in late January 2025. Then, almost immediately, we got the breakout buy signal at 2758.70, and it’s currently trading at 2943.
Corn was one we recently got long in December and again at the end of January, which we are currently still in.
As for Crypto, a market that is all gas and all breaks, it’s volatile to say the least. I use a different version of a momentum system built specifically to catch the parabolic moves in the different cryptocurrencies.
There is a time to be long crypto, there’s a time to be long Bitcoin only, and there’s a time to trade altcoins (everything that isn’t Bitcoin).
In the chaotic world of Crypto trading, using the same principles, we have been able to stay long Bitcoin and dip in and out of altcoins when they were set up to perform. And more importantly, we’ve avoided all of the chaos that came after.
There’s no guessing “wen alt season,” no getting into mega billion-dollar scams like the Argentina thing this past weekend…WE DO NONE OF IT!
Bottom line:
- Identify the market regime in the different markets
- Identify the appropriate strategy for that market regime
- Swing Beast Momentum System for stocks, futures and currencies
- Crypto Momentum System for cryptocurrencies
- Wait for the signals
- Manage risk
- Repeat
If you want to trade for the long term, you need an edge. It’s not about predicting markets. It’s about reacting to price in a structured, repeatable way.
That’s how we win.
