ES trades the overnight session. NQ trades the regular-session opening range. RTY, the E-mini Russell 2000, trades neither. This system watches for a coil instead: a run of bars overlapping inside a narrow band, tight enough that the market is compressing rather than trending, and what happens on the bar that finally breaks out of it. No fixed session window, no time-of-day box. Charts below are interactive. Click Play on any setup to watch the signal bar fire and the entry, stop, and target draw themselves, computed live from the actual candle, in the 0.10-point ticks RTY actually trades in, not cents.
“Check the box width against the coil checker on this page, not by eyeballing the chart. A range that never actually compressed doesn't earn this setup's odds just because price eventually broke one side of it.”Jason Parker · Founder, TradeScalping.com
RTY shares a point value with ES, $50, but not a tick size, and this system trades a different shape of setup than any other system on this site. Click one to see what it means.
Wait for the signal bar to close, then buy if price on the next bar trades one tick, 0.10 points, above the signal bar's high. The close confirms the signal. It isn't your entry price.
Wait for the signal bar to close, then sell if price on the next bar trades one tick, 0.10 points, below the signal bar's low. The close confirms the signal. It isn't your entry price.
Stop goes one tick past the far side of the signal bar. Target is half its range. Identical rule to every other system on this site. What's different here is the tick itself. RTY moves in 0.10-point increments, not the 0.25 ES and NQ both use, and a point on RTY is worth $50, the same as ES. Run that math and a tick works out to $5, which happens to be exactly what a tick is worth on NQ too, even though NQ gets there with a coarser 0.25 tick and a smaller $20 point. Two contracts, two completely different tick sizes and point values, the same $5 riding on the smallest move either one can print. Coincidence, not a rule that extends to a fourth contract. Run the actual number for any new instrument in the position-size calculator before assuming it matches either one.
Play with the numbers below. The default reflects a typical coil breakout bar on this system, eight points of risk for four points of reward.
≈70% is the break-even line once spread and slippage are priced in, not the raw number the math alone gives you. ≈80% is doing well. ≈90% is among the best scalpers running a system like this.
Four different jobs, same math once the bar closes. A coil breakout bar closes near its own high, clean through the top of the box. A coil breakdown bar does the same thing pointed down. A failed-breakout bar wicks past an edge and closes back inside, rejecting its own extreme instead of confirming it. A continuation bar shows up after a breakout already fired: instead of pulling back to retest the broken edge, price pushes straight through in the same direction on the very next bar and closes near its own high or low again. Whichever one fires, entry is one tick past the signal bar's own high or low, stop is one tick past the far side, target is half the range.
One honest note before the setups. This system's hardest sessions aren't the losing trades. They're the stretches where price never actually compresses: bar after bar prints overlapping ranges wide enough that nothing about them reads as a coil, and any move out of that mess is just the next bar in a noisy sequence, not a compression finally letting go. A box that was never tight to begin with doesn't earn this setup's odds just because price eventually broke one side of it. Check the coil width against the checker below before trusting the breakout.
Same system, same rules. Only the box width and whether it's actually broken change across these three. Click through and watch the verdict flip.
Illustrative examples built to test coil width and whether a break actually happened, not the setup itself, or volume. Not historical RTY prices. The 6pt mark is a rule of thumb for this contract, not a law anyone enforces, and it would need rescaling for a different futures product entirely.
Each chart shows the setup forming. Hit Play and the signal bar fires, then the entry, stop, and target draw in, computed the same way you'd compute them live, straight from the signal bar's own high, low, and close, in 0.10-point ticks.
The pattern: a handful of bars overlap inside a narrow box, none of them extending the range by much, then a bar finally closes clean above the top of it.
Long: a bar closes above the coil high, near its own high, after at least three bars of genuine overlap inside the box. Buy the close.
The pattern: the same idea, pointed down. Bars overlap inside the box, pressing on the bottom of it, then a bar finally gives it up.
Short: a bar closes below the coil low, near its own low, after at least three bars of genuine overlap inside the box. Sell the close.
The pattern: after a tight coil forms, a single bar wicks past the bottom edge, thin liquidity pushing it further than the coil itself ever moved, then the same bar closes back inside near its own high. The failure is the signal, not a reason to sit out.
Long: a bar wicks below the coil low, then closes back inside near its own high. Buy the close, trading the failure back into the box.
The pattern: a coil breaks with a clean close outside the box, and instead of pulling back to retest the edge it just broke, the very next bar pushes straight through in the same direction.
Long: a coil breaks to the upside with a strong close, then the next bar closes even higher, near its own high, without pulling back into the box. Buy the close, trading the continuation instead of waiting for a retest that never comes.
Illustrative examples built to show each setup's shape. Not historical RTY prices.
A futures account isn't a stock account with a different ticker typed in. Margin, overnight risk, and contract specs work differently here than on any equity system on this site. Run your own numbers in the position-size calculator, or head back to risk management for the account-level rules underneath every system on this site.
Common questions about trading this specific system, answered straight.
It's a 3-minute E-mini Russell 2000 system built around multi-bar range compression: four setups (coil breakout, coil breakdown, failed coil breakout, expansion continuation) that all share the same entry, stop, and target math once a signal bar closes: entry one tick past that bar's own high or low, a stop one tick past the far side, and a target half the bar's range away.
By checking the box width against the coil checker on this page, not by eyeballing the chart. This system's hardest sessions are the stretches where price never actually compresses: overlapping ranges wide enough that nothing about them reads as a coil, where any move out of that mess is just the next bar in a noisy sequence, not a compression finally letting go. A box that was never tight to begin with doesn't earn this setup's odds just because price eventually broke one side of it.
Because tick size and point value are two separate numbers that happen to land on the same $5 tick for two different contracts. RTY moves in 0.10-point increments and a point on RTY is worth $50, the same as ES. Run that math and a tick on RTY works out to $5, exactly what a tick is worth on NQ too, even though NQ gets there with a coarser 0.25 tick and a smaller $20 point. It's a coincidence between these two contracts, not a rule that extends to a third. Run the actual number for any new instrument in the position-size calculator before assuming it matches.
Trade