11/30/2011 Intraday Watering

[uempel]

If this is a H&S (and not a zigzag) the top could be around 1250...

[rpccharts]

.786 retraces all over - on NO volume.... its a squeeze.

[rpccharts]

Goldman & Central Bank engineered.... sweet.

[tdo722]

Hey everyone. This is my first post. I became a member recently and really appreciate Cobra's work and everyone's contributions. I am watching stochastics and macd. Clearly the technicals yesterday were pointing lower and this caught everyone by surprise. I think this push may go to 1300+ but the entry point will not be easy as tomorrow could be a correction day before the next push up.

thoughts?

stochastics and macd can be useful but price action is the key thing. often people start by using stochastics but find (esp the stock math) that there is a real problem trusting them esp in the longer timeframes. also in a static market slo sto on a 15 or 60 min chart can be very tight--but in a trending market they will keep you out. macd esp the histogram and esp when used looking for divergences (so histogram lower price higher or the inverse) good.

but in the end watching the price very carefully in maybe 2 time frames during the day will keep you pointed in the correct direction. i spent a long time with indicators and found a lot of flaws--at the very least choosing how when and what form to use them is important. just my experince.

Let me know your thoughts. I like the combo of MACD divergences and trendlines. MACD is first signal then trendline is the buy/sell signal. For example, on Friday last week, clearly positive D on 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes and 1 hour. That's the first sign of a bottom. Then we are no sure so we wait for it to break the downtrendline which happened by a freaking huge gap on Monday which I am so disappointed because I was waiting for that.

I hate gaps.

[BullBear52x]

however, here are the “laggards” on a 60min time frame
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=SPY&p= ... =249584508

“The harder the battle the sweeter jah victory.” [Bob Marley, Musician]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jsw_r0h ... re=related

listen to the song, now I have to wear shade.

[Dow Trader]

there is also the difficulty in testing the validity of these patterns as sometimes they don't show up enough to test statistically. if you're looking at a pattern that has only shown up a few times, that's not really testable data.

Patterns that have shown up few times can be "testable data" if enough of them are gathered by going back many years.

IMO, since 2008 this market is for scalper. Don't be greedy all I need is average 4 oints ES each day ( yesturday I shorted 1199 and my order been filled overnight with my target ) you can see the result of scalping in my blog.
before any TA I have to try to read the market makers mind and what they must do, in the same time I always see Vix and ATR as a ruler for the week. bottom line, I think I have to use an easy method with small target or follow the move because waiting on a position in this market is very risky..

[noob]

I know Cobra said money flow only counts at day's end, but it's still negative this morning after on block trades, just like yesterday morning.

[Dow Trader]

just my thought,
the best moves and signals comes in Europian sessions

[alvian33]

what's you blog dowtrader?

[mytarget]

IMO, since 2008 this market is for scalper. Don't be greedy all I need is average 4 oints ES each day ( yesturday I shorted 1199 and my order been filled overnight with my target ) you can see the result of scalping in my blog.
before any TA I have to try to read the market makers mind and what they must do, in the same time I always see Vix and ATR as a ruler for the week. bottom line, I think I have to use an easy method with small target or follow the move because waiting on a position in this market is very risky..

Dow Trader

Agreed!! Too much manipulation and volitilty and many times extreme moves out of the gates, hard to find a trend and stay with it. What is ATR, I feel I should know but it escapes me....
TIA
Posts: 691
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 10:59 am

[soku]

here is the full chart. on a boring day, i am trying to play some politics.
down trend in the chart means usd depreciation / cny appreciation. it looks like a dam releasing water. pegging (horizontal line in chart) most of the time. once dam open, (summer of 2005 to summer of 2008) we saw an 18% water fall. if you make $$$ while spending YYY for the past 25 years like cobra is doing, you lost 25% thank to the currency manipulators.
the dam is opening again. not sure when and where to close. i guess the bottom line for the chinese gov is around 1:6.

[Dow Trader]

what's you blog dowtrader?

http://EasyTrades50.blogspot.com

[uempel]

To everybody who lost his shirt today: Tammy is waiting at home, offering consolation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwBirf4BWew

[Mr. BachNut]

Concerning TA:

It is useful for assessing more continuous markets. I would argue that an intervention day like today is less than continuous. Though Dow Trader put up a nice chart showing how more continuity can be found with after-hours trading in overseas markets. As I like to sleep at night, I try to get more continuity by seeking to play longer, more intermediate trends and their changes. Day trading does not suit my temperment, and I have found longer timeframes can somewhat attenuate the daily noise of trading.

That said, at best what you get from TA is a probabilistic assessment that can give you a modest edge IMO. Consequently, trade and risk management are key. You need to limit losses and have some profits that run to make up for the losses. The TA on Cobra is useful because important observations are made that you won't think of. I have found that some of these have helped me to enter and exit more opportunistically on occasion.

[KENA]

Hey everyone. This is my first post. I became a member recently and really appreciate Cobra's work and everyone's contributions. I am watching stochastics and macd. Clearly the technicals yesterday were pointing lower and this caught everyone by surprise. I think this push may go to 1300+ but the entry point will not be easy as tomorrow could be a correction day before the next push up.

thoughts?

stochastics and macd can be useful but price action is the key thing. often people start by using stochastics but find (esp the stock math) that there is a real problem trusting them esp in the longer timeframes. also in a static market slo sto on a 15 or 60 min chart can be very tight--but in a trending market they will keep you out. macd esp the histogram and esp when used looking for divergences (so histogram lower price higher or the inverse) good.

but in the end watching the price very carefully in maybe 2 time frames during the day will keep you pointed in the correct direction. i spent a long time with indicators and found a lot of flaws--at the very least choosing how when and what form to use them is important. just my experince.

I get bothered every time I see your name and post because my last name is very close "Aagard"

[Dow Trader]

IMO, since 2008 this market is for scalper. Don't be greedy all I need is average 4 oints ES each day ( yesturday I shorted 1199 and my order been filled overnight with my target ) you can see the result of scalping in my blog.
before any TA I have to try to read the market makers mind and what they must do, in the same time I always see Vix and ATR as a ruler for the week. bottom line, I think I have to use an easy method with small target or follow the move because waiting on a position in this market is very risky..

Dow Trader

Agreed!! Too much manipulation and volitilty and many times extreme moves out of the gates, hard to find a trend and stay with it. What is ATR, I feel I should know but it escapes me....
TIA
Posts: 691
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 10:59 am

ATR = Average True Range
you want to know the result of trading ATR just check my trading result in each mondy in my blog

[taggard]

for those doubting TA...i spent all thanksgiving reading several books debunking the idea of TA to get a better assessment of its value...

Jarbo, could I get the title of the books that you're reading? Thanks!

What is ignored by TA aficionados are the probabilities that certain TA setups will fail.

not just that "certain" TA setups will fail. but that ALL TA setups have a fairly low "edge" in terms of success.

chart pattern trading has some major flaws as pattern recognition is VERY subjective (argued as the "art" of trading). trading these chart patterns also has a high failure rate.

there is also the difficulty in testing the validity of these patterns as sometimes they don't show up enough to test statistically. if you're looking at a pattern that has only shown up a few times, that's not really testable data.

Cobra has also indicated that certain patterns have a much higher rate of failure. h&s patterns tend to fail more often then say bullish/bearish pennants. someone else on the board pointed out that slanted H&S have an even HIGHER failure rate than that.
---------------------------------------

Ta can be thought of as either predictive (measured moves) or a way to track action (eg single bar chart reading rather than multi bar patterns). Generally if you only take one idea--trade with a trend--you will get rid of a huge number of mistakes. if you can just avoid screwing up (either most of the time--or only on big trades) you have a serious chance at success over the long haul.

Often people will refer to "subjective" or "objective" and these are very tricky terms. when starting trading (generally) you want to be very cautious about 100% intuitive trading. But after you are skilled intuitive trading works far better than trying to force your views into patterns. please see the next sentence before taking these terms as anything but relative absolutes.

Second much as we would like to think we are objective--there is in fact no clear line at all between "subjective" and "objective" except the subjective line we draw. For example somebody wrote about a dog yesterday and that scared me into thinking long. i have no clue whatsoever how that all worked--it just happens sometimes. If traders and other humans examine their lives carefully they will find all sorts of objective data turns out to be subjective.

another problem is just being wrong a bout the basic meaning or direction of something and being very objective about actions after that. Consider the war on cancer under nixon which tons of money was spent-and many very sharp guys focused on drugs as opposed to the idea that life style is a factor. now many people feel lifestyle is 80% of the issue. the point is these science guys executed flawlessly but were for the most part looking in the wrong place. and it took advances in science to find this was the case--now they can use this data in addition to their previous bias.

i urge traders to be very cautious of what they define as subjective or objective. and even weirder to be cautious about not paying attention to feelings. if someone was going to start doing this the ideal approach (as i found out after taking nice losses) is to keep a very careful record of their feelings and check them. you will find amazing patterns. over time they will show you what you always do wrong in life. also as trading is very important to most of us and we really make an effort--they will show us stuff about life other than trading. life is all about timing and picking your shots in everything from buying a house to who you hook up with. our habits in trading (micro) tell us about how we approach life (maco) and the inverse.

blocking feelings or ignoring them as "shady data" will exclude a huge amount of data. deferring blindly to them generally doesn't work at all. the trick is to become comfortable enough with them to distinguish a (ego) belief from a actual feeling (info from the outside interacting at a level we are not defining as thinking).

i use qcharts--and just annotate every idea in text next to the bars on a 5/15/60 min chart (mostly the 5) over time i have come to see a lot of flaws with my objective takes--and some amazing positives with the shorter term takes. the single most notable fact for me is seeing something and not acting. this happened this morning.

the simplest example of this feeling things--is when you use real time streaming data--the bars "feel" like something. a very strong bar will literally print stronger in your mind. so there is this sense of feeling the move--as well as the visual clue of the size of the bar (long/short/tail non tail etc) and it's relationship to bars close by.

so since everyone here is very focused on charts and many on various predictive outcomes--i would just urge you to consider that all of this is based on a mind we cannot see more than 5-10% of. at the very least "subjective" factors are at work. at the very most they are literally controlling us--while we tell ourselves they don't exist.

ta works best for me if i use it to track what is going on and am less predictive or if i am so--am very clear this is just a concept. in short ta keeps me from being wrong--it doesn't assure my being right.








this isn't to debase TA altogether, but everyone should know some of the opposing views on it.

[Al_Dente]

Take some profit here, let the core 25% run, over expectation run so far.

Thanks Baron…. you can always trust Beyonce, can’t you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gaQIXa ... re=related

Me, I only trust the internals intraday... http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=SPY&p= ... =247748592

[uempel]

what's you blog dowtrader?

http://EasyTrades50.blogspot.com

I guess price shot right through your cloud today

[Petsamo]

Let's drop already!