Wednesday, August 17, 2011

False breakout and another move down to support

We started the day with a small gap up which held eventually. The 1200-resistance in the ES-mini's got taken out, but it appeared to be a false breakout. From there on we went down all the way towards the 1180-support level. Support held and a minor bounce followed. Intraday a head-and-shoulders pattern is forming in the charts, but the right shoulder does look a lot like a bearflag... (see picture below)
Most indices are forming spinning tops on the daily chart, more signs of indecisiveness.

Trades
In the beginning of the session, the market broke the 1200-barrier and then pulled back slightly. I bought some SPY's, but in hindsight, the pullback was too far away from the moving average (too shallow) and maybe we already ran up too much.


The better (best) trade would have been to short when a double top formed together with a big red engulfing candle on huge volume (red arrow). Unfortunately, I was still long biased and it felt like going against the (short-term) trend. When the 10.10 low got taken out, the downtrend was confirmed.
It brought us all the way down to the 1180-support in the ES-futures (as mentioned before). A huge volume spike marked the bottom (green arrow). I waited for a higher low and went in near 119.30. Market went up slowly and I got out, making just enough to compensate for my earlier loss.

If today I traded a little more on instinct, the missed short entry (red arrow) and earlier long entry (green arrow) would have made for a very nice gain instead of finishing the day just above breakeven.

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