Posts Tagged ‘head & shoulders’

Possible Inverse Head & Shoulders Setting itself Up

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Today is Friday June 4th and what a ride Wall Street had today, as things seemed to be sliding all day and into the close.

It looked like someone was anticipating the reaction on the street as 3 a.m West Coast rolled around, the market started selling off in a big way. After the open, we saw a bounce after first dropping 30 S&P points from the high. The unemployment numbers did come out and they were good, but not good enough, as much of the gains came from short term Census jobs.

The S&P was off 40 points, the Dow off 325 and the NASDAQ off 64 points, roughly around 3.5% across the board. This was a big sell off and with only two more trading days before the new weekly sentiment poll to be taken this coming week  after Tuesdays close, the market may now work itself into a larger bearish position, as more of the Street will become bearish and we may finally get the market extreme I was looking for.

Currently the level of bullishness is at 39% and had dropped over the last three weeks straight, with last week staying the same. It is going to be interesting come Monday and Tuesday. If the market can contain the selling into those two days, there is a chance we could see a real surprise rally over that 1107 figure that I have mentioned two or three times. In the night trading last night just before the selling began, the S&P emini futures went 3 ticks over that price at 1107.75. It quickly reversed and went straight down from there. That goes to show, that the 1107 number is a very valid and strong number, that if overcome with conviction, will prove to be a trigger point that will ignite the short covering to kick in at a higher level. Just remember that number as we go forward. If we continue to sell off, it won’t matter, but there is a lot of worry out there and rightfully so. There is a total mess when you look at the big picture.

Going back to what I said a moment ago, if the market can contain any selling that may come in Monday and Tuesdays sessions, don’t be surprised if you see a massive reversal of all the losses from today and a whole lot more. Just realize that it is possible and that a complete wipe out from here is not a for gone conclusion.

I don’t talk a lot about patterns and technical analysis, not because I don’t follow it, but just the contrary. What we could be looking at is an “Inverse Head & Shoulders” if as mentioned we can contain the selling to no more than say 1150 on the S&P Emini Futures. Take a look at it, it looks just the same as an upright “Head & Shoulders Pattern” but in reverse. We could be working off the right side of the shoulder flushing out all of the weak hands that allow themselves to be overtaken by Fear. Once those traders, investors and everyone else have gotten shaken out, the market will then reverse back up, leaving them in the dust.

In addition, this Head & Shoulder trading pattern, has a tendency to exacerbate short covering rallies. The initial rally once it takes hold, usually is very fast and catches many by surprise. If things take shape as laid out, I would expect the blast off point to come in some time next week and as early as Wednesdays session. This will give time to sell the last hold outs that we are going down, which in turn will cause the market to bite them as they get left behind.

This is all conditional, in that the next two trading days we will need to hold, giving up no more than -16 S&P points and or -160 Dow Jones Industrial points. So, it can still go down and it would even be better if it did, getting the last of them to take the bait.

On the other hand, I too can not become sold out to my theory, because I to could be taken by surprise if the market were to crack the 1036 S&P lows. For me personally, I don’t hold any positions overnight and only day trade the short term market swings, so it is not going to effect me that way. I do hope my theory plays out, because it just means that there is more time before the market crash that I do think is coming. I can not say when that is and it may not happen for a while as things get strung out, but if I had to guess I would say September or October this year. Anything can happen and it could be now, but I say the odds favor later in the year.

Going back to the possible Inverse Head & Shoulders trading pattern that may be setting itself up, investors need to be prepared. If we do see that breakout and it is confirmed by the breaking of 1107 with conviction, that will be a pretty good spot to buy and hold stock for at least a little while.

In my own trading today, it only took me 30 minutes and 5 about trades to take what I wanted from the market and I was gone. Click on the chart above and then click it one more time to make it larger if you care to see the trades I took from today’s session. I could have traded for more and probably made more, but I had already done my extra work early in the week posting big gains. The last three days I have just been cruising and playing it safe. This is all apart of good money management for me.

Traders often have there biggest losses right after they have had there best gains. It is important to not get overconfident and let your guard down as you start to see some success. Once you have made it, the money is yours, it is not free money, you earned it. You need to guard your equity and not let it leave your account the same way it came in, but do not let fear hold you back from putting on the trade either. Trade what you know and leave all the rest.

Good Trading to All !

Trading Lesson: Part Three

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Today is Friday June 27th and we got that day like I suspected we would, consolidation.

Yesterday’s blog pointed out the fact that after a day like we had the previously, we often get a consolidation day. The downtrend has been confined to a new parallel channel which broke out yesterday, now we have been making a move back up to the middle of the range. A late rally brought us very close to a 50% retracement, but no staying power and it fell back.

One very interesting observation I saw today was that the S&P was making one move ahead of the Dow. After the S&P made a move, the Dow would come up behind it and duplicate the move the S&P just put in. The market since yesterday midday has been just moving sideways consolidating the earlier gains. It has formed a new parallel channel of which the S&P broke out of first late in the session, while the Dow just moved up to the top of the channel, but no break out like the S&P. From there it was one move behind.

When you see things like that it can help you get a glimpse into what is coming next. Next week is going to tell us a lot as far as which way the continued trend is likely to go. The support came in exactly where I thought it would on a parallel channel support from the dailies and has moved up 32 S&P points since then during the last 4 days as I originally called.

What to look for this week. It would appear the the move back to the middle is not yet complete, so I would first look for some follow through to the upside of 5 to 10 S&P points on the cash market. Once that is completed, that is where you are going to have to keep your eyes open. If the market stalls, what we have in place is a real nice pivot point for a continued move down. If that pivot point gets broken to the downside, you are going to see a lot more selling come in and lower prices.

On the other hand, if the market acts strong and can move past its mid level retracement point and push up close to the old highs, it will start to challenge and possibly break out over it. That is what we don’t know. We still have what looks like a “Head & Shoulders” formation brewing, but that can all be washed away by renewed strength back to top of the range.

The market sentiment numbers are not giving any real clues as they are currently in the neutral range. We have to remain open minded as far as direction is concerned. So keep what I said fresh if you are trying to figure out short term direction on the daily charts.

I will pick up where I left off on the training. These were the three things I was talking about and discussed the first two already. These are some of the biggest reasons traders fail to become profitable.

1)  Place trades out of fear of missing a large move

2) Reaching for trades, trying to make up previous losses

3) Create a mental directional position that makes it impossible to trade against when the market turns against you.

If you tell yourself that the market is going to go up, based on whatever it is that helps you determine that and you are strongly convinced, you will blind yourself to any future price action that says differently. Not a good idea. You will repeatedly get stopped out of your positions, because you will not allow yourself to see both sides of the market.

This is a real big one and not to be taken lightly, as are the other two. Your subconscious mind will not allow you to take a trade in the opposite direction because it will go against everything that you hold to be true, so you become blind to the real price action before you and repeatedly get stopped out, wondering what just happened. Only after the markets have closed and you look back, will you see what was happening and tell yourself, “I can’t believe that I did not see that”. It happens to traders all over the globe every day.

How do you avoid such foolishness. Answer:  Keep an open mind to direction and always tell yourself to look at both sides of the market. If the move is up and you are in it, fine. Look at the next two higher time frames (separated by a multiple of 4 or 5 – I use 4) and identify the status of their trends. If it is unclear, you can always trade out of the middle time frame and let the other two stand idle for a while until it becomes more clear.

At this point you need to trade the price action alone, not what you think is going to happen or what should happen. Forget about it. Trade what you see and not what you think. What until you see a solid base trade setup and move on it.

The other point is, if it is not clear, again, forget about it. Leave it alone, take a break, walk away, give it some time. Don’t allow yourself to take more than two stop outs on any one move, it is just not worth it. Let the action finish up and then you will see where it wanted to go after all, but you can learn from the price action and be better prepared upon the next directional move.

Now doesn’t all of that make sense?  Sure it does. The next question is going to be, do you have the self discipline to do just exactly that? Only you can answer that, but if you are not sure, you need to get sure, FOR SURE. You need to know yourself pretty well to answer these questions. If you have doubts, you need to start going over it in your head ahead of time. What are you going to do if you find yourself in this situation? Force yourself to answer the question and don’t leave the table until you at least have the answers.

Next, you need to find the will to follow through with your conclusions. One way is to play out the script in your head over and over. Repetition has a way of cementing the ideas into you, so that when you need  ”memory recall”, you access  the hard drive of your mind and bring it up. If you write out the process even better. That is like adding 4 gigs of ram to your system.

So much more to say, again not enough room here. I will recap these 3 training points, maybe over the weekend if I can slip it in, ready for Monday trading.

Have a great weekend !

Trading Lesson: Part One

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Today is Tuesday June 23rd and the markets did have that follow through to the downside on the open, like I  said in yesterday’s post.

Just after the open the markets sold off, but nothing too outrageous. It was contained. The day’s trading action looked like a mess. If you were looking for another big trending day, it did not happen. We got a full blow CHOP SESSION, very contained on the upside and downside.

This is pretty typical after a previous large down day. Tomorrow will tell us a lot. The markets are finding a little support at the blue parallel line that I drew on yesterday’s charts. It will be interesting to see if in fact that area holds because it looks like it had hit it today and it held, so tomorrow will again tell us if that area is real or not. If it goes down any further it will look like a full blown “Head & Shoulders Top” and that would not go well for any further upside momentum and future break out above the latest highs.

We are already towards the end of June. Wow, time is going fast. I am looking for a market top somewhere in September/October. There is a chance it could come a little early, late August, but will not know until we get closer. I feel very strongly about another sell off of large proportions, so whatever my advice is worth, BE CAREFUL around that time. I have additional information on the subject, but I don’t want to publish it here. If anyone is interested to know more, send me an email and I will tell more.

I did not trade today and may take the rest of the week off to help settle some of my loose ends. This last week was very unsettling and I need to get back into the right frame of mind.

This may be a good time to give my readers a few things to think about if you are currently trading. This is very, very sound advice, so take it in and think about it. It is not rocket science but things not to forget, so here goes.

*** When you are trading one of the first things you need to remember is to protect your account. That is your Life Blood and if you bleed out, you die. So you need to be mentally alert at all times if you are potentially going to take a trade.

*** Some of the biggest problems traders face are as follows, I will number them and comment later.

1)  Place trades out of fear of missing a large move

2) Reach for trades, trying to make up previous losses

3) Create a mental directional position that makes it impossible to trade against when the market turns against you.

I believe those three things are I the biggest reasons why traders fail to put it all together consistently. When you place a trade after analyzing the market for direction, you see the possibilities and start clouding your judgment.

You don’t want to miss the trade because you have said it is going to be a big one and you jump in too early, STOPPED OUT. The trade looks good still, you convince yourself that you were just a little early and jump in again, stopped out again. The trade never does go and you may even go through this process a couple more times until it is clear that you were wrong. Bad idea.

If the market does not make the move after your second position attempt, let it go. Don’t chase it and don’t feel bad that you missed it. This is where the problems start, in your head, so keep it screwed on tight at all times.

Maintain control and discipline. You are trading against some of the best traders in the world and they are not going to make it easy for you, so be smart and stay in control. Let the move finish out and don’t be anxious about missing it, there are more moves coming, be patient. Think of yourself as a professional with complete confidence in overcoming all obstacles no matter how great or small.

One more idea on how to break this strangle hold. This may not be for everyone, but for those who can, I recommend that if you find yourself in a situation like the above or a similar situation of difficulty, that you do the following. If, after you take two stops in a row, you stop trading for a few minutes and do at least 10 push ups. I know this may sound funny to some of you but, there is a reason for this and I will explain only a point or two of the reasoning.

You need to break any mental block that you are forming and get rid of it quickly before it does you more damage. You are taking a positive action in response to a negative action that just took place, for starters. Second, you are getting the REAL BLOOD pumping and flowing through your body and with it, oxygen. With more oxygen the better your brain functions and with greater clarity. That is what trading is based on and many forget that.

Clarity, focus, and timing. If you are lacking any of those, your performance will suffer. You need to be at your peak in order to compete . These are just a few reasons for taking the action I mentioned above. I know that maybe only 2 out of 10 people (80/20 rule) who are reading this will take this advice, but I challenge all who are capable to do it. All I can say is give it a try, you will get therapeutic benefits from this none-the-less.  I could write a lot more about this subject alone but I will end it here for now.

I will comment on the other points in tomorrow’s posting, so come on back and see what I have to say. Until then, Trade On.

Where does the market go from here

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

This is for Friday’s post May 22nd, which I did not write.

In Friday’s trading, I did not have a very good connection, I was traveling and not in my home office and my data was freezing because of that, so I elected to just make a few calls on direction but not trade at that time. Later in the session, I was able to link into a faster data connection and took a few trades to a get double daily goal.

I was trading small, but picked up my points with no problems. I remember taking 9 trades and only had one very small loss of  1/2 point. I had some split trades in there, half the order comes off first and the other half later (T-2) , usually at a better gain.

The market sold off on Friday during the last 15 minutes of the day, another close at the lows of the day after trading higher through out the session. That again should have an impact on Tuesday’s opening market.

Trading Lesson:    Generally, when the market sells off early in the session while it is in an uptrend on the daily, you can often see the market come back and close at the highs of the day. The same is true when we are technically in a down market. You will see the market rally early in the session, only to close at its low of the day. We have been seeing exactly that the last three trading sessions. It happens all the time, so it’s one of those things to keep in mind. If you don’t know if we are in an no trend or downtrend, you have work to do.

Where do we go from here?  Since last week, we had broken the wedge that was forming to the upside, that I had been talking about for weeks, but we do not yet have a lower low from our most recent pivot point. Some of my daily indicators are pointing down and some have yet to turn down. From the price action that has recently taken place over the last three trading sessions, I had become bearish on the daily, but with caution.

On Wednesday I stated in my blog, the short term top was in and lower prices were coming off of the price rejection I saw that day and hitting the adjusted outside purple line that I had talked about for a month. All of that has happened and now we will have to see if the last pivot low is going to hold. There are things happening that say it can hold and at the same time, there are things that say it will drop down and break the low, which will bring in more selling. I don’t know which one it will be yet. Pure price action says there is no violation yet, while momentum says it should break. I am going to have to let the market decide and you should too at this point.

We have come off 50 S&P points from the top at 930 to Thursdays low of 879. A month ago I had said 940 or so would be the top of this little run and was off about 10 points. I just needed to re-adjust my lines and last Wednesday I saw that.

Anyway, let’s just let the market decide. If it does break the low, we could see a move down to 847 to 850 on the S&P. It’s not too steep but it would naturally find initial support there at a parallel channel taken from the most recent tops. That lower end of the channel comes in at around the level I just mentioned. Again, we will have to see what happens first. It would appear that is what is going to happen, but if price action changes to reflect something different, I will look to re-asses. With the Gov looking to take control of GM, that could tip the scales south for now.

The financial networks always try and come up with a reason why the market did this or that, but fail to realize that much of the price action would happen that way regardless of the news – just a personal observation.

Last week I was talking about “Price Action”. I wanted to clarify one thing, the difference between price action and price patterns. I believe I was pointing out a “Head & Shoulders” formation that developed in a 5 minute cash chart of the S&P from Wednesday’s sell off. Anyway, there is a difference between the two and I wanted to make that clear.

Price Action is a collection of price movements based mostly on support and resistance. Prices are pushed above and below their mid point.  While price pattern is the collection of price movements that cluster to form identifiable patterns. When those patterns are broken, you can draw a conclusion that will yield a highly predictable outcome. Price action is what takes you to the point where you can see the formations coming together. It is almost like, which came first, the chicken or the egg?

In this case, price action comes first, then comes price patterns from the price action. I hope that helps clear up any questions you may have had about that. If you were not even aware of the difference, you now have it explained.

http://www.screencast.com/t/lcQ9oHq5q Friday’s equity chart

Day Trading Lesson, A Big One

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Today is Thursday, May 21st and the market is reacting to yesterday’s call for a sell off.

So far so good on the call, but each day stands on its own. The S&P sold off about 24 points (equal to 240 Dow Points), straight down with a little come back at the end of the session. It went right to last Friday’s close and stopped dead in its tracks and moved back up about 9 S&P points, still off 15 points for the day.

I have said that Friday’s close was the line in the sand, and I am not the only one who realizes that represents a key turning point. That was why it stopped going down at that number. We will see how it reacts to that number again. A close below that, will usher in more selling.

Today’s trading was a short session. I traded smaller, only 3 contracts, and only traded up to my daily goal. A smooth morning.

Trading Lesson: I have always said that you have to look at both sides of the market and not get stuck on any one call. The reason, if conditions change, you will not be able to trade against your anchored opinion and you will not be able to see the changes taking place, because it does not match up with your pre-ordained views.

This is SO IMPORTANT, I cannot begin to tell you how much. It can mean the difference to your whole trading endeavor. That’s right, that is how important this point is. Things change fast during the day and you have to be able to change your position, long to short and vice-versa.

In a predominantly strong down day, it can pay off to only take the short trades and just leave the long ones alone. The same is true for a super strong up trending day. There is nothing wrong with that, but those days only come along about 2 to 3 days per month. That leaves about 17 other trading days that the market is grinding itself higher or lower, with plenty of ups and downs along the way.

Those 17 days are when we need to remain open minded to overall direction. You can have an opinion based on the next higher time frame you predominantly trade, but keeping an open mind basd on price action is again THE KEY to success.

Most people trade better from the long side of the market and that alone can be a stumbling block to overcome. Get it in your mind now, if you are going to day trade, you need to see both sides of the market and be able to handle yourself equally based on price action. Don’t gloss over this trading advice. If you take your trading venture seriously. I would like to see more small traders handle themselves proficiently while going up against the big boys on Wall Street.

Knowing how to read chart patterns is one of the key elements to understanding price action. Look at yesterday’s S&P 500 cash market on a 5 minute chart. You will see one of the most perfect HEAD & SHOULDERS patterns around. Look closely at the last 5 days from start to finish and you can clearly see a break on the right shoulder as clear as a bell The time is 12:10 or so and the price break is at 912.

By going short at that price and holding through to today at the same time, 12:10 or so, you would have picked up 29 S&P points, from signal entry to signal exit. I would not personally hold over night, but we are just looking at the pattern. If I traded options or some other instrument, I may consider holding it, but I don’t trade that way.

The point is, that is trading price action at its finest. Those moves happen in all time frames, down to the small micro moves of the 100 tick chart of the E-Mini. Understanding how prices ebb and flow is critical to coming out on top at the end of your trading day.

Many people think they get it, but I will tell you it takes time to see the patterns over and over again. When you see it, you will know what to do. Buy or Sell at the low risk entry points. It will not come to you by osmosis, or any other way. You will have to learn it.  There is no way of getting around it. The other option is to rely on indicators as a cheat sheet or cliff notes to help you through the endeavor. That can work to help you get started, but you should not depend on it. It could be your “Achilles heel” to trading. Say it isn’t so. That’s what I am talking about. Learn price action and keep going forward.

I love the line in the last Rockey movie, called (Rockey Balboa). One of the lines he uses when talking to his kid is, “Winning is not about Not getting hit, but about getting hit and keep moving forward, keep moving forward, that’s how winners are made”. So true when it comes to trading. You will get stopped out, but what are you going to do about it? Put it out of your mind and look for the next trade move and come back, one trade at a time. Don’t try and eat it all at once. One trade at a time, one after another, based on momentum and solid price action moves.

As a bonus to my readers today, I have below today’s momentum swings mapped out similar to yesterday’s posting. I don’t know how long I will do this, but it’s there today. I can’t show you the other timing tools I use, but I will tell you that they match up to every signal I have posted on the screen within one price bar. Those other tools give the trader more confidence until he learns more about how to map out his price action treasure. There’s that treasure talk again. Go figure.

http://www.screencast.com/t/9Ld4q9Wf Today’s equity chart

http://www.screencast.com/t/7yekZzC2PUy Today’s potential trades as marked, Video, no sound, 2 minutes.

Keeping it simple, in a difficult environment

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

As I stated in my last post, you will see the same patterns every day, up and down. I am capturing small winning trades every day with positive results. You need to be able to open your mind up to the possibilities of taking trades in the down direction as well as the upside. We do not care in what direction the market moves, but only that is does.

It sure is doing that these days with some very large moves. Sometimes I catch these and other times its just a smaller move. The best part about my method is that there are many places and times to be able to get in. There are a lot of great signals in the early morning open. The first 30 minutes of the day is some of the best trading although it’s really good for most of the day, but it can be a little slow during the New York lunch time, 11 am to 1 pm eastern standard time (9 am to 11 am west coast time).

Look again at a few early morning trades I have posted under this article. Also, I have some nice screen shots of a classic trading chart pattern setup that I look for. There are many great trading chart patterns to look for and some of these will include “Flags, Pennants, Wedges, Triangles, Channels, Head & Shoulders” and more. You can learn to trade all of these with no indicators, but with just trendlines, as in the examples I have below. Learning to trade without indicators is really a great skill and I highly recomend people interested in trading take the time to explore it. I have all of this broken down in the training section of my website. For the time being, I will be posting some of this training on my blog. This is not meant to be a complete explanation, but just a small sample to give you an idea of what you can learn.

When trading futures as I do, you don’t have to trade all day because of the leverage involved. The idea is finding patterns that happen over and over and being able to capture a small piece of that move. The key is finding patterns that consistently repeat themselves so you can take advantage of them by positioning yourself in the right spot where small mini panics take place. I have said that before but it is key in understanding how the market works.

A basic way to think of this is, “Support & Resistance”.  Resistance is where there is a barrier where prices seem not able to advance. This is because there are no more buyers at that price and selling pressure ensues to take prices down brought on by profit taking. My method is such that we can easily spot where those turning points are. One of my custom indicators is set up so that a simple change in color more easily shows you that a shift in momentum is taking place. This is just a tool to help you see what is already present in price action. Just remember that “Price always rules”.

Tommorrow I will discuss Support and take it from there.

Vince

http://www.screencast.com/t/F3AdFKR1sE

http://www.screencast.com/t/HjUf8PKeEdI