Posts Tagged ‘reading the market’

Alert – Stock Market at Critical Levels

Friday, October 1st, 2010

Today is Friday, October 1st, 2010 and the markets did a great job in holding up as a lot of bears may be getting a bit nervous holding their shorts over the weekend.

Let me start out right now, I do not know which way this market is going to go with its next move. Many times the stock market has already tipped its hand and reading the move is really very easy.

It would appear that a break is in order, given the large run up and basing we have seen over the last two weeks or so. That has been the markets M.O. of the past and it is certainly possible again here this time around, but let me give you just a moment of pause.

Reading the market many times can not be done until something has happened. At this point nothing has happened that would say the market is going to drop. So the logical conclusion is wait until something has shown which way the future direction will take us over the next few weeks. It is very possible to do this and I have done it in all the major turns of the market of recent memory. Its not that I am so good at reading the market, anyone can do it;  you just have to know the language.

If you go to a foreign country, would you expect to be able to speak and read the language as you get off the plane.  How about after a few weeks or even months?  I don’t think that is realistically possible. The same is true when traders try and read the markets. It takes time. When you see and analyze price patterns again and again, you will see that certain characteristics are present in all of them. Since the stock market is factual in nature, meaning it mirrors the same type of price patterns or behavior across all time frames, you can learn the language that will bring you home, “trading for a living”.  A fractal Stock Market gives opportunities to all participants no mater what their style. The point here is, reading the market will open doors and give you the ability to write your own ticket.

So, back to the point. The market is sitting on cliff. That cliff will either be a stepping stone to yet a higher mountain, or it will be the catalyst for the tipping point over the edge it now sits on.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the stock market having an inside day and that the volatility coming out of that inside trading day was going to produce big price movement. I did mention that we could possibly see two inside days together and that would create even more power and pressure once things got going. We have just seen two inside days but they are staggered. We came out of the first one violently, first to the upside and then quickly to the downside, + 100 points on the Dow and then down -200 points in a matter of a couple of hours. Today we saw the second inside day and yet again creating pressure for the next move.

A break of today’s lows at 1134.50 first and then on too yesterdays lows just after that of 1131.25 will produce a multi hundred point loss in the Dow and dozens of S&P points in just the first few days of breaking those levels. (my opinion only) (this is not investment advise)

If you know what is their, you would understand. What is their is, sell orders. They are parked there like automobiles in parking lot, just sitting there, waiting. If you get a few whales to push it over the edge they are all going to go off and it will induce mass selling.

On the other hand, everyone is looking for this market to roll over after putting in a reversal day yesterday, they are just waiting like it is a for gone conclusion. It very well may be that it will crack and I said I did and do not currently have a strong opinion one way or another right now at this time, but I believe we need confirmation to get this one right for sure, is all I am saying.

Their is a chance we can still rally from here. It sure would catch everyone by surprise. The sentiment numbers still have bullish tones to it at only 43% bullish right now. Also given the fact that the first 4 trading days of the month are traditionally very strong. You can go back to 1930 and see a very consistent pattern of this being true. Call it human nature, but it is a fact that a lot of buying comes in at the first few trading days of the month. So, lets just see what the market is telling us on Monday first before we take the ride down. Once we see it, we will then know what the trading bias will be, in the days and even weeks to come.

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In today’s trading I had a nice easy day picking up a some nice trades. A few small scalp trades and one nice trend trade for 4 + points but only small size. It all adds up and made for a nice finish to a good week. I had good gains all week except one day of flat returns. I have been trying to change up the screen shots I post and am not sure what I will be showing in the weeks to come, but I don’t always want to show the same thing. In the mean time I was just showing my equity chart and not my trades. I am still thinking about how I will post future progress, but today I will show just a clean chart, no indicators in a different size tick chart. I will come up with something new, but don’t know what yet. today’s trades below.

Reading the Current Market

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

This is a short post from Fridays session, February 19th

Well, Fridays session had a little twist to it, in that the Fed had decided to raise interest rates. A good and bad sign. The good sign is in that they would have not done that if the economy was not growing. The bad sign is, that it could signify the start of a trend of increased rates, which could increase into additional borrowing costs for corporations and eventually could pose some interest rate competition to the stock market. Since rates are so low, it is currently not likely that investors are going pile into CD’s or Money Funds. There is not a return there at all, especially when you factor in inflation, you are looking at a negative rate of return. So again, not a huge risk at this point. The market liked it, in that it stopped a slide that had started in the night trading and could have turned into a route.

These are the unseen changes that can come up at any time. That is the reason, you have to be able to read the market and not be stubborn with your assessment of things, trying to force your will on the market, not usually a good idea.

By reading the current price action, you could have seen the small ralleys as they happened one after another. You may have played a short just before 7 am, but looking at the action around 7:20 a.m. West Coast, you would or should have seen that the pressure was on the buy side. At that point, you either wait for a clearer signal, or you go long.  Everything on my charts said buy, all across the board. If you are looking for a short, that was not the place. You could have been tempted at 8:50 am to go short, but you were too early. The topping process as it was finishing up at around 10:20 was a much better area to attempt it for any movement of size. Again, the market said at that time in point that it was getting tired and in need of a rest. It was over-run by the bears, but only temporarily. The S&P index did manage to recover from the pre-market selloff and added a little to its previous gains.

The market sentiment as measured by Investors Intelligence newsletter writers was again suggesting a market rally of some significance could take place. The bearish sentiment rose a little and the bullish sentiment also moved up a touch. It is still sitting around 35 % a very low number, suggesting as mentioned already a rally could come in here. I did comment on that last week, but thought we could get some sort of move back down for a spell. It still may come, but the current momentum is now up in the daily and the shorter term 120 minute charts. Will it continue, it’s currently hard to say, but given the sentiment numbers and that the momentum is up, it may be presumptuous of us to have any degree of certainty that the market is ready for a significant pull back. I don’t currently have any strong feeling one way or another for tomorrow, but would have to side with the current momentum. That would have been a smarter play for Fridays session, than trying to out guess the top the move back up. Either way, try to read the market and listen to what it is saying at the time you are trying to trade it.

Friday, I did not really have enough time to trade and thought I could slip it in. I was only trading small, but I did not like the very slow action waiting for the market to move, was killing me. I was trying to force something to happen. I did not want to wait. The price action from 10:30 to 12:00 on Friday was so slow, it looked like it was never going to move. I took a few trades, but just could not take it. I did see lower prices, but second guessed myself, because of the slow action. I stopped trading at around flat and decided to wait until next week. The conditions for me, were just not right and I could feel it. That is the best thing any trader can do. If things don’t seem or feel right, don’t trade.

Well, that is it for now. More good stuff coming this week to talk about, so until then. The few trades I took below.

Good to get it right

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

It is Friday afternoon, February 6th and I am just thinking that it is nice to get it right.

The markets were up almost 3 % today across the board with an overwhelmingly large amount of the market participating. The depth of today’s move was impressive with 6 stocks going up for every one that went down.

Just after the open today, the market had a real nice trend line break, 4 points across the bottom, forming a declining wedge in short term downtrend, then, BOOM – IT HAPPENED! The market went up so fast like I had said it would, catching so many at their pain thresholds, having to cover in a hurry.

The Dow went up 170 points in less than 30 minutes, as well as all the other major indexes. It kept going up and closed near the high of the day, a positive for a follow through in tomorrow’s session. The daily chart is now positive, with the weekly trying to turn into positive territory, maybe next week. I have a chart of the two below. The weekly chart may turn positive, but I do not think the monthly is going to go positive for a long time yet.

As I was discussing yesterday’s daily price action, I could see that the pattern was a bullish one that I have literally seen thousands of times before. You can see the same patterns in small time frames giving you the same results, time and time again. Reading the markets is not a science, it is more of an art. You do use probabilities and pattern recognition to help you identify areas that have low risk and yield you positive returns, but you have to know what you are doing. The only way that happens, well you guessed it, practice. 

Make no mistake about it, trading is not that easy overall. If it were, there would be a lot more people making money at it and you don’t hear that very much these days.  Having said that, I would beg to differ with those people who say that the average guy out there cannot compete with the professional traders all over the world. I say you can, if you have what it takes. 

You may be asking yourself, what does it take then? And if I don’t have it, how can get it or find it?  That is a question every one needs to take seriously if you plan on being successful. You need to find out what it takes and are you willing to pay the price.  I had to ask myself that question a long time ago and my answer was, what ever it takes and how ever long it takes.

Let me say, I would not do anything unethical to advance myself for the sake of advancement of my goals, but barring that, you have to work hard. If you have a mentor or someone who can show you how to cut down the learning curve, I am all for that.  Without learning from someone who has already done it, you will add many years to becoming successful, something I never had.

First, there are the three things you need to find within yourself to be successful and they are, “Discipline , Focus and Patience”.  Those are the first things you must have. I will go into more depth with these at another time, but these are essential. These qualities are from within you and you may have to dig inside yourself to find out where you stand. There are mental exercises you can do to bring the best of those qualities out.

I say all of this because trading is not only about putting on a buy or sell order. It goes way beyond just trying  to make money. If you are not prepared for the mental side of trading, you will end up doing everything wrong and you won’t know why that is, even when you know better at times. You need a solid trading method and solid mental skills and be willing to be honest with yourself and not think more highly of your skills than you should.  The markets have a way of dealing with people like that and I would call it an old fashioned humbling.

We need to stay thankful for what we can take out of the market each day and resist the temptation of GREED. That word I just mentioned has killed a lot of good traders. The other word that goes with the last one is FEAR. Those two go hand in hand with each other. Again, these are emotions and they need to be controlled or they will control you. You first need to be aware of them to try and control them and that is why I am bringing it up. It takes a lot to become a consistent trader who can take money out of the markets on a regular basis and you just need to ask yourself, do you want to become one of those people.

You can make a lot of money when you can come to terms with the points mentioned above. To control greed, you can come up with a modest profit target that you would like to make each day. That right there, in its basic form, can do wonders for you. An example from today would be taking a small profit of 1 point on the S&P when I could have had 3 or 4 easily. If I let my emotions take over, I will be kicking myself saying why did I take my profits so quickly while I could have had a lot more. Next time I see that, I will go for it. When you talk like that to yourself, you are setting yourself up for something that may not be there and you may be wishing for it. You place the trade it moves up over 1 point and then backs off quickly stopping you out. Then you say, “why didn’t I take my 1 point target.”

It never ends with the mental battles you face unless you come to grips with sticking to your plan and taking what you need for the day, 2 or 3 points.  I guess this story fits well for me today, because I knew I was not going to trade a lot today. I just needed to get my daily goal and be done with it.

I had 4 trades today, +3 ticks, -2 ticks, +3 ticks and the last was split into two sells for +7 ticks and +4 ticks. This got me my minimum daily goal for the day of 2 points after commission in just a few minutes. If you follow my trading plan of gradually increasing your contract size as your profit increases, you don’t have to trade all day to make more money, just increase your size gradually.

I will be increasing my size next week to account for this myself. Also if you learn to pay yourself a little each week, you will come to see that you will be rewarded for your discipline, focus and patience. Starting with only 1 contract and following my plan as outlined, trading for only 2 points on S&P per day can make you all the money you could need to live a very comfortable life. For someone to make that kind of money, you would have to be a top executive, doctor, or other highly educated profession. The one thing that they don’t have is the time and freedom to enjoy what trading can give. In 30 to 60 minutes per day, it is possible to get a modest goal of 2 points and keep doing it.

That is one more reason why I like the way I trade. There are so many opportunities to pick that up in just a short time. If you didn’t get it, you stay with it until you do. The trades are posted below. I’m still doing an introduction to my method tomorrow for those interested. There is no charge. I will be starting at 8 am West Coast time and going to about 9:30.  Email me at vinnie@sniperdaytrading.com . Read my post from yesterday if you missed it and it will explain what to do.

Bye for now. 

Vince

http://www.screencast.com/t/LMfgyPXvu              Some of  today’s Live trades

http://www.screencast.com/t/gv4Xif7zBo              Today’s equity curve

http://www.screencast.com/t/AZAJpcM1              S&P daily chart update