7-29-10: Friday -- Buy Response Last Day of the Month

7-28-10: Thursday -- V Bottom Reversal Whip

Today's gap fill range extension beyond initial balance had both heavy volume and delta -- structure a trader can intiate shorts on without worrying too much about trade location. Yet, daily moving averages brought in responsive buying at 12:00 eastern, driving price back up to the initial balance lows. So you have to be NOT too late to the party.

Today was one of those days where, if you got stubborn, you got run over. A V-reversal off the bottom printed two significant intra-day trends -- both up and down.

Quote

The serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

The serenity prayer of trading:

"The key to trading success is finding the patience to capitalize on those things you do know and the wisdom to accept what is uncertain." --Dr. Brett

7-22-10: Thursday -- Mechanical P Formation

WHIP! Up down and up and down. Today's gap and open-drive print today makes some sense. If for no other reason than it was opposite action versus the last couple of days. Even the late day break of the VWAP on +50k volume had no follow through.

Today was an example of how this market follows technical levels. This whole game is so computer-driven.

7-21-10: Wednesday -- Yet Another Double Distribution

One of the hardest daily patterns for intra-day traders to capitalize on is the double distribution. Where a large part of the morning session balances and then breaks out in a violent/high volume manner, streaking to new value. Then the rest of the day balances at the new value level. It requires a true gear-shift in thinking and the ability to identify quickly the huge volume coming into the market as value is rapidly re-priced.

Today's structure offered more than a couple clues before the 11:00 breakout (and the programs hit it exactly at 11:00). Big clues were also printed that allowed the astute trader to jump on and ride the "wave".

Pre-Break:
1) Overnight session took out the stops above yesterday's highs and closed the overnight session near the highs.
2) Perfect and high confidence open drive A period didn't look back and formed a multiple single TPO excess tail. Shorts are trapped.
3). The A period excess tail was never challanged as price could not exceed the B period highs.
4) A period printed a high negative cumulative reading of almost 40K on above 45 day average volume. Clearly, sellers were in charge right from the get go.

Break:
Heavy +50k volume in the ES printed right at 11:00. Volume figures like this during balance are unusual. And this information, coupled with the contextual negative structure listed above, said "go short".

7-19-10: Monday -- Layup Trades for the Astute Trader

Sometimes the market gives you so many clear signals and quantifiable structure to back a trade decision that it flies in the face of my personal default mindset: "that trading is hard".

I document two "layup" trades today.

6-16-10: Friday: Letting the Bears Run For a Day.

Not to hard to figure out: They just let the bears have thier day in the sun at this swing down reference area.