Back To Trading

I have been on a break but back now. Time to get to business. Going to start the night checking out a a sector map here of the S&P 500.

Back to make a plan of attack in a little bit.

Scalping Takes A Lot Of Focus

Sorry I could not write more this morning. It’s been a somewhat chaoppy day. At least in the way they we reversed direction a few times. I cought on to this early and went into scalping mode. Scalping takes some serious focus so it’s hard for me to write these entires at the same time.

I was just checking in on the 1:00 time frame. Not much of anything. So I will break again until 2:00. Market Profile wise it look s like we are provoking trade at the meaty volume area from last Thursday. And right below us we have some meaty volume from last Wednesday. on the daily chart we did hold over our 12820 number but I expect a pullback early part of this week just to relieve some pressure. I am going to stay in scalping mode the rest of today since it looks like we will trade around the high volume profile areas.A move down I would target 12922. Anything lower then that today would be a significant win for the bears.

Missed That One

Took a long break and come back to a huge move during lunch. No worries tho .I never get upset about missing a move. Like I said, another move it right around the corner. The last half hour I have been looking for a failure to possible set up a short. But the bulls won’t give in. As you see from the last few candles I really cant even think short right here. I want to see the YM contract trade below 920 for me to feel like we may actually get a drop. otherwise I think it’s just a pullback.

Oh the good news tho . If you recall we had been watching the 12820 number very close. on the daily chart. Well it looks like we may get a close above that area again. That’s going to set us up for some bullish thinking in the days to come. We will see.

Trade Update

We held the 864 level a bit but I am still not long yet. Waiting to see less strength in the TLT ETF before confirming. If TLT continues to show strength then this is showinmg it’s just to choppy to make a trade at this time. kepping my eyes peeled.

TLT saves The Day

So we mentioned last pot that we would continue to look short if the price action stayed below 12742. It however did not. Once we had intrest above this number this was a soft signal long for me. It was confirmed when the qqqq, broke over its opening [rice at almost the same time the TLT ETF broke to new lows. After all this and still no big price move it was high probability that bulls where going to make an attempt. They did, when the YM broke to a new high it was a long signal. Had you taken this trade up to R1 you would have been good for about a 50 point move. I sold half at yesterdays high on the ride up as that could have acted like more resistance then it actually did.The chart below shows the QQQQ getting above the opening price. Notice how I draw the opening price right away and watch it very close in the first hour or trading. It is a paramount flip point as set forth in this morning trade.

A decent morning so I am taking a break. I

The failure point on the YM future contract that I am watching is 12758. This is not only the opening price again but also lines up very close with the 61.8 retrace of that last push up. Having these two levels at the same area on the map is a very high probability flip point.

Gotta Know When To Hold Em

The only way to make profit in trading is to let your winners make you as much profit as possible. This morning is an example of how I failed to do this. Recall wwe where long QID off of opening price momentum. I was nervous by the low volume and choppy price action right before the typical lunch time so we closed the position. took a small profit, but was this a good trade. Looking back I would say no. Yes we made some money, however as I had mentioned the sectors list was still very week and we had not taken out our flip zone(more on this later) yet. Well lunch volume never really settled in untiull later and we missed about a $1.00 move in the QID trade. So was this morning trade a good one. Not really . What I am more pleased with tho is the fact that we panic and go chasing it.

Oh, by the way we did fill that gap from friday so thats finally off my mind hehehe. Below you can see the numbers fill in on a market profile chart. The m prints are friday’s high and you can see today’s H period just touched them. That will act as strong support so keep an eye for a decent pullback to the long side here and maybe for the market to start looking for its next level of “fair value”

Red All Around

ok so it’s been really choppy coming out of lunchtime. We saw some strength but are now back below the opening price which has been acting as a good pivot in the Dow futures.Looking at a sector list here we see a lot of red still present. We just got a blast of volume dominated by buyers so if this little bull grasp slips I will short the failure.

Some YM Numbers For 4/21/08

Some folks know I hardly use traditional indicators during my intraday trading. Typically I do with what I like to refer to as Key Levels that I identify as support and resistance. The U.S. markets open in only 6.5 hours from now so I better get some sleep. But here are some quick Key Levels for the YM (mini-dow) that I will look at during the day

12901

12857

12813

12769 – 50%

12725

12681

12637

Why these numbers? It’s really simple. 12769 is the 50% retrace of the range on last Friday’s trading. The range of the last 5 days is 177. So I divide the 177 by 4 and get the 25% number at 44. Now take that 44, add it on top of the 12769 number and we get 12813. I do the same thing from the 50% line to the downside and get 12725. Continue to stack these 44 on both sides and you get the numbers listed above. Now, will I trade at these numbers. Not exactly. I will look for these numbers to overlap with numbers I am getting through intraday price action thus confirming a key level. How to trade around them at that point is a story for another time. It’s kinda late to post it now but do the same thing here on the weekly range 50% and you will get another set of decent numbers to have in your arsenal.