Whew! I got out around 118. After getting as high as 119.48, it closed at 115.80. It appears that model of cycling up to the 50% median line followed by failure is holding up. At least even if it continues on up I won't feel bad. The risk of holding is too great for a swing trade.
I don't have time to get the official print, but my iqfeed is showing that we at least touched 118 00. That is another 16 tick minimum trade on a 1 lot if you had stayed in. Once again, I didn't hang on as it was way passed time to call it a day. 8 ticks is more than enough. Bottom line, conservatively trading a single lot and getting out early, yesterday was at least a 500 USD day. Just stating this figure to give newbies a rough idea of what is possible. My exact figures are a little different as I captured a couple of small 2-3 tick trades. My total round turns yesterday were 5. 5 rt's borders on over-trading for me, but these special inflection point times are rather difficult to pass up. Passing up a projected time would be like not casting a line out when you know there are a ton of fish right at that spot in the river.
I'll say that again. Whew! We are at 110 and change today. My take on Frank Dilernia's model is that this cyclic move down should last for approximately 3 days. I have 106.50 as my first target. In any event, I've given a lot of thought to the broader equities market and as much as I would like to say otherwise, I do believe now would be a safe time to park a quarter to half of one's assets that have been sitting around waiting, into some of the equities on one's wish list.
18 April 2008 Just an FYI. Over the last week I found myself trading a little more frequently than I had planned. I wanted to post this as an observation that it is really difficult to not take a profit when it is presented to you. I know that I said I'm shooting for more than my previous per trade (1 lot) goal of 4-6 ticks but this market (the ZB) is simply bending over backwards handing out 4-6 tick trades many times throughout the morning. It would be impossible for me to post those trades here. To give you an idea of how much over trading I'm doing, I had 10 round turns yesterday, looking at over 1100 USD per 2 contract (pair) of ZB.
I'm not going long here, but if I were to go long, I would go long now, and stay long through about 0925. I would have a stop nearby, probably at this most recent low. Oops. Looks like the market is getting away from this post.
A break above 116 even is very important. It is probably safe to be long through 0940 but certainly you should be completely out by 1000 hrs. Something is going to happen around 1000 hrs.
OK, that is it for me. I'm looking for a trade somewhere around 1005 and the trade shouldn't last more than 25 minutes. My best guess is it will be a short. Note that it could happen as early as 0940 but I'm banking on 1005.
0855 should give us a clue as to what to expect for the larger trade at 1005. 0855 today is an important cycle time based on calculations completed following yesterday's activity. Suffice it to say a lot of "work" was performed yesterday.