Posts Tagged ‘retracement’

Continued downside in the Market Index’s

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

2-23-11;

Today, we saw continued downside in the markets as I thought we would, but after a bottom was reached right to an area I had marked out in previous training video’s with my group, we moved up and started a retracement move later in the session.

In today’s trading, I took three trades, the first one was a counter trend trade and flat. The next was a 1.25 point gain and 1.25 point loss and the third was a 1.25 point, 2.50 points and 3.75 point gain. Trading time was around 35 minutes for the session.  I tried to hold the last trade a little longer and did, but there was more in it that I left on the table. I wasn’t mad about it, just happy to reach another modest goal with little struggle.

I have some notes on the chart if you care to see and read. I am out of town and will have to keep my post today short, so until tomorrow, good trading.

Fibonacci Level’s holding at 62%

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Hello everyone, today is Monday May 3rd and the market has been moving.

We saw a very nice rally today on Wall Street with the index’s moving back up off there recent lows from last week. I think today’s rally surprised a lot of traders. They may have been thinking another big down day, following through from last weeks wipe out. The market rarely does what the majority expects it too.

I traded very little last week, as I made my way to the S.F. Bay area to visit family and friend amongst other things. I made up for any lost opportunities with Fridays and Today’s gains. I had a real smooth day on Friday with all gains. Took 5 trades with two scaled out trades. The market was moving pretty big on Friday and caught some nice moves. Today was the same, mostly all gains, 9 trades, eight profitable and I did catch the big move that took traders by surprise.

I have a equity chart of Fridays session below and today’s trades below as they were taken. I took a couple of counter trend trades in my scalp screen today, so it may not match up exactly with trade indicators, but most of them do as I was trading out of my T-2 screen as well. In addition, I don’t trade the indicators, I trade the price and the indicator follows.

If I think the market is going to be contained or choppy, I will trade for only small moves, 2,3,4,5 ticks or what ever I think I can get, but small bursts of movements. My risk is also contained to averaging a one to one ratio or better. If the market is not going my way and struggles or I feel I have lost the edge and or momentum, I will get out with a break even or small loss, one or two ticks, while I am trading with a safety net of 1 point or 4 ticks. If I am targeting 3 or 4 ticks on the S&P, which is 12.50 per tick x the number of contracts traded, 5, than each tick is $62.50 and it takes 4 ticks to make up one S&P point, so 4 ticks is equal to $250 dollars.   One point can be had in minutes or less.

Key area’s to watch are Fridays session lows and also Fridays session highs on the S&P futures, 1207 and 1182.  I feel that both of those numbers are very important to watch and should tell us more about the markets real intentions. We are in very tricky spot right here. The market looks like it is on the right side of the chart and that is why I am sure a lot of traders were thinking after a slight retracement of Fridays sell-off that the move would resume short. So, this market could be setting itself up for a pump and dump action for Wednesdays session or there could be some additional juice left in the glass for this market to move on. We are still at this 62% market retracement and the longer the market hangs out in this area, the bigger the move.

Its to bad, I wont see the new sentiment numbers on Wednesday morning as they are released. I wait until Thursday night and get the delayed readings. A lot could happen in Wednesday and Thursdays session, but I will be watching both of those numbers especially the lower one. If 1182 gets broken and soon there after another key number traders will be watching is 1177, I can only see lower prices from that point. Until then, it looks OK, but extreme caution is in order right now.

With today’s big move, I believe it will spur only additional optimism as that has been the trend over the last weeks. A rising level of exuberance is being displayed and more and more investors and traders too are feeling better about this market. That is when you need to be careful and at least be aware of the opposite taking place. That way you won’t get caught up in the excitement of a rising market. Last week we had some big sell-offs and even in the face of that sell off, the sentiment went slightly higher. If tomorrow session stays in the upper end of today’s trading range, that is going to have an effect on the professional news letter writers that forecast there opinions on Wednesdays market open.

We could see a spike to over 55% mark which is traditionally the trigger point for a market reversal. Currently we are at 53% and change and in position for this setup. So, you can’t say you didn’t know if it hits. The significance of the market making it all the way back up to this upper end retracement level is high, meaning highly significant. This too is a key area that traders look at and could in-fact be that Fibonacci retracement trigger point as we break the two numbers I mentioned above. Fibonacci numbers are nature rhythmic area’s that the market likes to move into as it makes it way onto higher and lower destinations. I can speak more of this another day soon.

I see the volatility increasing and that is a good thing for traders. When you see large market swings, that is a time to let your profits run. I teach and talk a lot about scalp trading, because that is what I do, but when you see market moves for extended points like on Friday and even today, I feel traders should have in there bag the ability to take advantage of that. You don’t have to trade that way every day, but if you train yourself to catch the large moves when they are happening  it can make up a lot of ground in a hurry for days you may not have traded and or making up for past losses.

The thing is don’t be enamored with the big moves all the time, it will cloud your judgment on other trades. The market only trends about 30% of the time with the other 70% confined to trading ranges etc. Keep that in mind and be careful, but do not trade in fear.

Good Trading to all.

S&P Futures Contract Roll Over Day

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Today is Sunday, March 14th and this post is for Fridays market.

The market was very slow in trading volume, one reason was that it was roll over day. That is when most traders stop trading the past contract month, which was “H” and roll over to the new, “M”. So your new symbols should be ESM10.

Here is a way to get some of your data to flow, which can be a problem for some. With the new contract month, you don’t have very much past data to go by and it can make it a little hard to get a feel for the market rhythm this way.

Adjust your charts to @es and you will see continuous data. If you are using tick charts, range charts, volume charts or any other type of trading chart, it will bring back some of the data for you to trade off of. It is the same prices as the actual contract month, so you should not have any problems there.

Friday I had a small loss on the day. Trying to do to much and my head was not in the game. I was only down not even 1 point but commission make a little bigger. I will make up for any loss and then some this week. It is time to rack up a few points, I hope we have some volume to go with that order. We will see.

This week will be an important one. The market is basically at a double top with the S&P and Nasdaq markets and the Dow Jones is still lagging. The nasdaq has actually out performed pretty nicely and is up against some pretty definable resistance. A pullback would not be a surprise at these levels. I will put a chart of the S&P futures along with a cash chart of the Dow and NASDAQ markets all in a daily bar chart. You can see for yourself how things have fared over the last week. A pull back to support would not be abnormal from here as traders will be looking for any good reason to sell at this previous high. For prices to come down to the 1127 level would not be out of the question.

That is going to be it for tonight. I can see that the futures have what appears to be a head start on a retracement right now, but anything can change until tomorrows opening.

Stay alert and trade safe;

Will Dow Jones Industrial support hold?

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

This post is for Fridays session, October 30th.

The market sold off like fiercely on Friday and took the Dow down about 250 points. The S&P was off about 30 points. I did think that a re-test of the Wednesday and Thursdays low would come, but not so fast. I thought we had at least one more day to top out for the counter trend rally. There was news that came out on Friday, not really sure what it was to tell you the truth, but I could only imagine that it wasn’t good and the market reacted to it. It is to be expected.

Let me tell you, that in the month of September and October, the general public has become bullish. The last two months has only produced paltry gains when compared to the gains of the previous six months. That is where all of the money has been made. The general public is always late to the party and I don’t imagine that this time is going to be any different.

Mondays session is going to tell all, at least for now. What I mean is as I was telling you last week that the Dow has been outperforming the S&P and that was a problem. Well, it is not only the S&P that it is outperforming but the other index’s, but in a bigger way.

Based on my experience and I did not see this or hear this from anywhere, but years of seeing price action at work, the institutions are lightening up their riskier positions and reallocating equity assets in the high quality Dow Stocks. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, if I remember correctly. That is pretty typical at market tops

The Nasdaq Index is at a double bottom from its most recent pivot point low, something that the S&P is thinking about doing, to follow suit. The Russel 2000 Index has already overwhelmingly broke its most recent pivot low, by a wide margin. The Dow on the other hand has not broken down yet at all, but is sitting right on a major trend line support.

So, the Dow is the strongest, next comes the S&P 500, then the Nasdaq and lastly the Russel 2000. If the Dow holds and moves higher, the other indexes will only be making a counter trend rally, but will still remain in a down-trend, stopping at overhead resistance. Once the Dow does break down, all of the other Indexes will only go down that much farther and faster. There is a lot of room for the market to move back to the middle of its range of the last 8 months.

The last thing I will say about all of this tonight is, “Earnings”. I don’t follow this much either, but just the big picture. The projected earning that Standard & Poors are putting out for the S&P 500 for next year are a bit of a fairy tale. They have been constantly wrong and now they are painting a wonderful rebound of large proportion in earnings. Anything is possible, but I doubt it. I had heard, according to Bloomburg, that the S&P has had declining earnings for 9 straight quarters and only this last quarter have they been able to increase earnings. Those increases are from very depressed levels, not that hard. The increase in earnings in my estimation is coming from cost cutting in various forms. You can only cut cost so much and for so long, before you can not cut anymore. Where are the increases in sales going to come from. No one is spending and no one is lending and money??? INTERESTING.

That is why, the market is going to adjust itself to reflect where it is going to be in 6-9 months from now, probable lower. Just now the S&P is turning their earnings, like this month. If you invest in these companies now, you are going to pay way to much. But that is what the public does. You needed to be invested at least 6 months ago to be able to enjoy some of this rally, not two months ago, like I talked about at the top of todays post.

We need to see what the Dow is going to do in Mondays session. If it to breaks support, then all of the indexes will have downside momentum working for it. But if it can hold, there is now room for it to clear 10,300, a complete 50 retracement from it’s all time high. The S&P numbers for the same retracement are 1120. We got close.

The sentiment numbers backed off just a little last week. It is sitting at 48% Bulls. A reading of 55% is considered bearish. We only got as high as 51. One last push to the numbers above could push the reading to 55%, the big word in there is COULD.

Friday’s session was incredible. So many great clear signals all day long. I only took one trade and it was split up, what I call a “T-2″.   The first half for +1 point and the second part for 3 1/2 points. I was in the market for less than 1 minute on the first part and 4 more minutes for the second part. I really only had my screen open for 15 minutes, start to finish. There will be plenty of other trading days to capture higher point returns. But my daily goal was meet, no struggle, no fuss, no mess. Just the way I like it.

Until tomorrow

 

Investors Intelligence suggest higher prices ?

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Today is Thursday, October 22nd and what a rebound we had today.

I have some interesting insight into today’s market action. There was no following through to the sell off from yesterday and that does not surprise me. I tried not to form a opinion about direction today, because I thought it could go either way. initially the market continued its sell off, but found support and started its come back, up about 12 S&P points for the day, more than most people thought would happen, I am sure. The shorts tried to establish a foothold and got slammed hard. They ran for cover as the buying came back into the market pretty much all day long.

This is the volatility I thought was going to show up and it has not disappointed. There is a lot of uncertainty and money managers don’t want to underperform. They are being forced to make a decision to hang in there or start lightening up. If they don’t start scaling out of there positions as the rally continues, there is going to be a mass exit for the door once we run out of gas, but that could be from higher levels.

In the past I have mentioned the Investors’s Intelligence weekly survey of market timers. They give their opinion on market directing in there newsletters they write. They, as a whole are usually wrong and the numbers prove it, time and time again. Very interesting developments here. The sentiment numbers have been going down for the last 3 weeks as the market has been making slightly higher ground. What do you think that is saying?  Well, I will tell you what I think. These guys are getting nervous and are expecting a drop and so they have become more bearish. That is really good news for the bulls because that says that there is still GAS IN THE TANK, for higher prices. Usually, you will find the numbers at bullish extremes right at the top. If this were the top, these guys for sure as a group, would get it wrong. That leads me to conclude higher prices on the index’s for at least a little while, what do you think?

I know we will be coming into some important resistance pretty soon, (10,300 Dow / 1122 S&P ) but that is just the first area of resistance. If the market can get through that the 62% retracement area would be the next major area of resistance. I only entertain the idea and say it is possible, but we will need more time for the chart to move a little sideways, this will clear a path for higher prices if  the support holds.

I will say the next move for tomorrows open to me looks like it will start off to the downside. The S&P support should     come in at 1084 or 85 and the Dow around 10,000. “If” we get a pull back to the middle of the todays range then we will then again have a couple of key turning points established for the next move, which ever way it comes. A break of todays low and or todays high, will see big moves in the directions of the break. We may consolidate inside this range for a day or two which will only add to the built up pressure that will form. Strong positions will be established on both sides. Now all we have to do is wait.

For those playing the smaller swings inside these ranges, as I do, we will have no problem seeing which way to trade, we let the market decide and ride the emotion that builds on both sides. There were a lot of nice trades in todays market action. Some for 6-8 points if you rode any out. It is days like today and yesterday, that can get a trader to abandon his trading plan. He see’s so many available points ripe for the picking and gets anxious, saying, that today is payday. ”DON’T SAY THAT”, that is a no-no. You only create more problems for yourself.

You need to enter the day, calm and relaxed, confident but cautious. The way you start your trading session is very important. The days I rush into it, I notice I tend to stray from my own trading method. It is clear as day, but we all at times can be deceived into thinking beyond our trading plan, call it human nature. I strongly encourage you to take some extra time to get yourself in tune with the markets. Do not form to strong of a bias and just read the price action against your trading plans or method. If you do this, you will not have to fight the markets or yourself. You will be flowing with the rhythm of the price action. We see it every day.

The markets move and they rest. After the rest, often comes an assault on the move to take it down. After the assault, it to will rest, until either more troops come to continue the assault or it is overtaken by a whole new army of buyers that decimates the attackers and new high ground is taken. Be sure you are on the winning side.

Within every chart, no matter the time frame there is an equilibrium, a center point. Traders need to find the center and trade in the direction of the winning side. There are very clear and precise turning points where this happens each day. Once the decision has been made by the winning side, prices often move quickly away from that center point. These points are constantly being adjusted through out the day and battles are won and lost in these areas.

More on this another day.

http://www.screencast.com/t/GicDJVFb9H8                     Today’s turning points in a higher time frame, no sound

Will we have an “October Surprise”, time is running out !

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Today is Monday October 19th and the bulls took over with a very nice rally today.

In my last post, I said the S&P needed to stay above where it was and only had a few points of room before a little pull back was going to be initiated. The future’s market pulled down to that level  in the after market and it suddenly blasted off. I guess the traders saw that same support area I was looking at and decided it was a good area to buy off of and they did. They Dow closed up 96 points and the S&P up over 10 points.

It looks like the top of the channel has a little more room in it before it meets up to the overhead resistance present by the rising long term wedge formation. The last few days gave it a little more room to move up. We are getting closer to that 50% mark for both the Dow and S&P. Once we get to those numbers, something is going to happen, that is for sure. I know that there are a lot of traders watching those numbers and I would bet they will be looking for an excuse to lighten up. Even if the uptrend stays intact, the volatility is going to pick up.

The month of October has traditionally been the worst trading month of the year by all historical standards. So far, we are getting through it OK. There are 9 trading days left in the month, lets hope we can get into November without any major damage. As a trader, it does not really matter, but for the investment community, I am sure they feel the way I do.

Below, I have a chart for you to look at. This is a monthly chart of the S&P.  I believe the March bottom was an immediate reaction to a natural retracement level of 62%, a Fibonacci number. From the lows of 1982/83 to the highs of October 2007, a 25 year bull run, the market pulled down to a natural support zone and bounced straight up and has not looked back. This bounce has created in my opinion a sort of V bottom. By rushing the bottoming process, to me sets the stage for a pull back to the middle of its range, somewhere near 900 area. It is still to soon to make that call since the market is still climbing, but once this rally objective has been reached, traders will be looking for a whole new set of objectives.

Earnings season has started and usually last about 4 weeks. We are only into it the first week. I really don’t pay much attention to these numbers as they are all built into the price. Reading price action tells all. So far so good. I wonder if there are going to be any surprises though, let us just hope it is not the scary kind, if at all.

http://www.screencast.com/t/IIjKrI2VKRos             Monthly S&P 500 cash chart

Daily chart of Dow Industrials with commentary

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Today is Tuesday September 29th and we had a consolidation day today. There was not a lot of movement during the day, other than marking some time and drifting sideways. That actually serves a purpose, in that it can bring in rotation. What I mean by that is, weak hands are getting out while stronger hands are getting in.  With this move as extended as it is, others would call the late comers as, Johnny come lately.   These are the people who are just now convinced that the rally could be for real and they want in.

There is still room to the upside but it is getting squeezed by some strong overhead resistance on the daily chart. As time is moving forward, the momentum is slowing. The resistance overhead on the Dow has hit an upward sloping line eight times and each time it has been met with a move off of that area. This one is very clear on the daily chart. The bottoms have been rising at a faster pace but not by a whole lot. What is developing is called a rising wedge and this happens to be in a up-trend. Do you know what happens when you have a pattern like this? What is the next move when the pattern is broken? Well, the pattern is by no means broken yet, and from the looks of it, has a little more room to the upside, but not much. Looks like 10,000 will be a likely target for the upside, something I have been saying for a while.

The bottom of the rising wedge would put it at around 9300, but that would be if it just fell off a cliff and went straight down, not to likely, but that is where support comes in at the bottom of the pattern. It will likely bounce at least once off of that level once it gets there and it will get there, that is for sure. As time passes, the support level will rise, eventually choking off the low, until it is broken. The tops have found resistence at a slower or lower trajectory and what you get is a rising wedge.

When it is all said and done, the pattern will break and at that break, you can expect at the very best case scenario, a move back down to the middle of the march rally. The low on the Dow was around 6500 and let us assume that the high is going to be 10,000 so a move to around 7900 will bring it to a little more than a 50% retracement. That will be the best case scenario. That will take place when the lower support is broken and again that is currently as around 9300 and rising.

I did just see another rising wedge in the context of the bigger rising wedge that I have been just discussing. That is inside the upper leg of the current move we are now in. Is is getting squeezed and has bounced off of that level with yesterdays low of 9640. So that is the where we are right now. If this small rising wedge gets broken to the downside it is going to more than likely move over and or down to the lower rising wedge that I had been discussing above.  That is the major support for the whole move.

With all the talk, I will now have to post a chart of what I am saying so that you can see now with your eyes what I am saying in words. So check below the Dow chart and see the notes that I have made on it to see if any of that makes any sense to you, hopefully it does.

The bullish sentiment is down to 46% and that is 1% lower from last week. This is going in the right direction and allows for more room on the upside for the bulls if they can muster it. A reading of 55% is considered extreme and we are well off of that right now. It is interesting to see what will happen. I will leave the possibility open that the upper line that I discussed where the resistance was coming in at multiple times, that is that can get broken to the upside, then you may have a new pattern that could form and that would a parallel channel. The lower yellow line will become exactly parallel to the new location directly on top of the highest peak. We can look at that if and when the time comes. We have plenty on the plate to watch and see develope.

Thats it for now.

 http://www.screencast.com/t/WAe6CAPyqO               Daily chart of the Dow

Early pullback but market closed slightly higher

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Today is Monday September 14th and the markets pulled back but the pull back started on Sunday evenings night trading. From Fridays close to the session lows, was over 12 point, but the market started its recover and at the open it just continued all the way back up and then some. The S&P close up about 6 points but as I write this the aftermarket is off 4 points and now is very close to being flat for todays session. I think we may still have some downside coming, but again I will leave an open mind and just read the charts. Today we did hit a 50 % retracement point from not the all time high but a significant turning point (1433),  close to the all time high, that is being watched by numerous traders and investors across the globe. I will be watching closely for a downside break. Todays action put in a very large pivot point that if broken will send prices at a minimum back to the middle of the range. Tomorrow I will show you a 60 minute chart of where prices are likely to go when and if we get that break.

I wanted to make a comment on an article that I saw, about an Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz. He said that the problems in the banking industry are now worst off than they were in 2007 before the crisis.  In the U.S. the to big to fail banks have become even bigger. He also stated that we are going into an extended period of a weak economy. This guy was the former chief economist at the World Bank. I am not easily impressed by credentials but this news also confirms similar reports that I have come to hear, about the same thing. There is trouble brewing out there and it will spell trouble for the S&P and there forward looking earnings projections. Keep your eyes open and be careful.

Below are some of the trades my method generated today. You can see the up and down arrows at key turning points. This is out of the 233 tick chart and most of them are in the up direction because that is what the market was saying at the time. I did think that we were going lower around the 10:30 am area, but the market quickly reversed and blew past overhead resistance to continue higher. I did see the trade at 11:30 pretty clearly after a long waiting period. Initially it did look short, but quickly saw things differently to adjust for the breakout.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day, because there will be a lot of news coming out which should bring in the volume, always a good thing.

Last point for today, the market sentiment numbers for last week softened up a little at 48% bullish. That is off about 3%. If we are going to go higher, this easing off is a very good thing. We were getting close to being to optimistic and that could be signalling the top, but that did not happen. If we are able to pull back over the next few days this would set the stage for yet another easing in the numbers. When the bulls take back control, there will be room to the upside for the numbers to adjust themselves to the upside, giving us the signal, but at higher prices.

That is it for now.

http://www.screencast.com/t/2CeF6TyV             Turning points for part of the session

Target Call Complete, with 940+ On Today’s S&P

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Today is Monday June 1st and the markets had a big day, completing the call made 5 weeks ago.

There must have been news out to move the markets in a sustained push to the top of the range. The market jumped on the open to catch up with the future market which had extended its move from Friday’s late push up.

Since the open of pre-market on Sunday afternoon, other than an initial dip, it’s been up and away since then. The Dow closed up 221 points and the S&P plus 23 points. Usually there is a 10 to 1 ratio from Dow to S&P points.

Well, this move does not surprise me in the least. We were pushing up over every significant pivot point with the last one at around 880 and holding. With today’s action up, that takes us right to the upside target I had called for at 940 five weeks ago.  Initially, we came up a  little shy on the previous rally, (930) , but with today’s finish, I would call the target of 940 on the S&P complete.

Where do we go from here?  There is resistance just above this number and we will have to see how the market handles its recent gains. If it can consolidate at these levels, that would be good. But it is going to take a lot of buying power to get it over this level. Sideways to slightly down would be normal price action from here, but take it as it comes and trade accordingly.

In today’s action, I traded very small initially on the open. I missed a couple of nice moves in the direction of the predominant trend but other opportunities presented themselves soon enough. I did have a slight bias short, which I really don’t like, but as the day moved on there were trades in both directions.

I do prefer to see trades in both directions when I am scalping for small targets, but when you get strong directional moves like today, it can pay to wait. That was another reason I traded small. I knew there was going to be a gap opening and prices can tend to be erratic until the futures and cash markets come back together. It was in that rejoining that a nice continuation pattern developed about 5 minutes after the open and turned out to be a real nice move.

I wanted to trade for small targets today, after last week going for bigger point gainers, which did work out that well when all was said and done for the week.

After the grind higher in today’s action, I saw what looked like the top of the move and at 11:06 a.m. went short, as it bounced around above and below my entry for just a moment, until it fell  for a 6 and 7 point gainer right to bottom where I covered. That was nice to be able to see the pattern and formation developing.

Earlier there was a rising wedge that developed, but it only had a small retracement to it. The upside resistance area continued to keep a hold on the move up, while the bottoms moved up more quickly, forming an even larger rising wedge, I saw it coming together and waited for it to come to me. That is how I like to play the bigger moves. Tomorrow I will look to start out with the small targets contract size until we see what the market is saying.  I will show some of my trades taken in tomorrow’s session.

Since I started trading on the open earlier in the day, I had noticed that I was not as sharp as I was when starting later in the session. It has been an adjustment for me getting up earlier, still not sure I am there yet. Getting up at 5:30 am has not been easy, I am trying to get my mind clicking on all its cylinders before the open. Trading with smaller contract size can take the pressure off, because with only a small downside daily loss stop, you can run into it quickly.

It should work out fine over the next couple of weeks. Another issue was trying to run two screens on one computer while I had so many other applications running. Last week there were missed opportunities for me, but others in my group were able to capture their points without much problem.

That is all for now, we will see what tomorrow brings and go from there.

http://www.screencast.com/t/A3sYdPZj Today’ equity chart

Day Trading Requires Focus and Discipline

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

Today is Friday, March 20th and the major indexes continued to back off.

The Dow was down 122 points and the S&P was off by 15. We will likely continue the retracement over the next few days as the market posted a back to back weekly gain, something it has not done since May of 2008. I have a daily chart below of the Dow and S&P and you can see that after redrawing the outside line, which I was off by a little originally, it is now lined up straight and the market traded right up to it. It also happens to be the broken support of a few months ago. I mentioned it yesterday, but you can see it today in the chart below. Support when broken will then become resistance when tested. That is what we have seen the last 2 days. The Dow also lines up, the same way.

I had a good day trading today. It was slow going in the beginning. I started late, during the slow volume time of day, and could not get any traction. I was splitting my trades when I would have done better with, all contracts in, all contracts out. After a slight draw down and the passing of a little time, the volume came back and I got myself on the right side of the trend and started putting it together. My equity had very little draw down after that, almost straight up. I settled the day out with $+1629 dollars after commission costs and had over 20 entry trades.  Still traded small for the most part and have not yet made any changes, like I was talking about yesterday.

I have one small video of a trade I put on and a still shot of the trades just after that. I backed off on the size again at the end, which is really a good idea. If you have solid gains and you decide to keep trading, you have to have a point where you will lock in your profits for the day and give no more back, if you fall below that point. If you start to over trade and make mistakes, you can give back what you worked hard to get. That is the reason for backing off on size at the end of the day when you already have your daily goal and good profits. You will be a conservative trader with this approach.  This is about money management as well.

Do not let greed creep into your mind and find yourself shooting for the stars. More is fine when it is the appropriate time. I would say that if any one is just starting out and you do not have anyone helping you through the process, you should only be trading for a small daily target. I recommend about 2 points and not really any more than that.  The reason is, you do not have enough experience to deal with all of the changes the market will throw at you. Eventually you will get taken out. That is the hard cold facts.

We all like to think it won’t happen to us, but that is presumptuous on on our part. Being honest with yourself is the first step to victory and that victory can come in the form of two points a day. If you can pick that up, consider it a big victory and try and do it again tomorrow.  A common scenario is, you will pick up a few points and think it is easy, then let your guard down.  The market then gives you a read that you have not seen, or are not familiar with, and the gains are gone. You then say, “Iwill get that back,” and don’t exercise patience having already lost your focus, because you are thinking about the money and your losses increase.

You have to be able to stop yourself, if this is happening and walk away. Clear your mind and when you take your next trade, don’t be thinking about anything else, other than the process. Are you doing the right thing based on the method? Don’t be thinking about getting even with the markets. That has been called, REVENGE TRADING and it can do a lot of damage, not only to your account, but more importantly to your ability to have confidence in what you are doing.

By losing your focus and discipline, trading like this, you only join the ranks of so many others who thought they could. The battle is greatly in your mind. That is why I have some very good books on my web site to help you with the process. If you have not read any of them, I recommend that you do. Some of them are not even related to trading, but it sure does apply and can help with many other areas of your life as a bonus.

http://www.screencast.com/t/MHjVQ0SI8L              Today’s equity chart

http://www.screencast.com/t/qBfXqtoGBXq             Live trade video

http://www.screencast.com/t/ITUh0ylJ                      Still shot of some trades, end of the day             

http://www.screencast.com/t/M4FpJW2M8kx          Still shot of Daily S&P