Some of the things I look at were telling me to go long at that point, but I find that staying with one course of action especially on full point move days is the best course of action. Getting stopped out of the 114 08 or 114 12 trades will tell me that I should quit for the day or look for longs. Either way, the original shorting from roughly the 114 28 area and all the other shorting I've done this AM have made this an outlier day for me. I've more than bagged my daily limit and the only reason why I'm still here is that it is only 0900 CST.
0932 CST The price action from 0830 to 0930 tells me to be very cautious about taking on a short here at 114 08. If I'm going to trade, it will be small size. It looks like the bulk of the move for the morning is done. It looks like we will have our classic 2 - 4 hours of a 4 to 6 tick range.
0945 CST In retrospect, a buy at 114 04 was in order between 0915 and 0930. In any event, I'm done for the day. I don't have time to work another short trade here at 114 12. Good trading!
1705 CST Take a look and review my above last three posts. Those observations are very important if you want to trade the second half of a "V" day properly. First I mentioned that something was telling me to go long. If you believe that the market simply must fall, and instead it consolidates around major support (114 00), then you need to re-think your short bias. Second I mentioned that being stopped out at 114 08 and 114 12 would tell me to quit for the day or look for longs. Third, my "in retrospect" comment says it all. If you look back and see that you had a solid trade earlier, in this case 0930, and you have the first two observations, then time to go long on a pullback. What is the worst thing that could happen? You get stopped out? So what? If you had gone short at 114 08 or 114 12 you would have gotten stopped out as well. Then the only sane course of action would be to go long. Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again. How many people kept shorting on the second leg (up) of the "V"? After all, the market was down a full point in the AM, it has to go back down, right? And the stock market is up sharply since 1400, so we must go down in bonds, right? Uh, no. Not at all. Don't try to understand days like today. They will mess with your mind. Label this a "V" day and look for signs of the next one. BTW, at 1130 CST my hourly system gave a very strong, clear cut buy signal. The entry was 114 16. That was a solid 16 to 20 tick trade! I quit trading per my post, but I wanted to share how I would have mapped out my plan, had I continued.
Sometimes I like to imagine doing something like the above and netting a full point. Of course had I done the above, I never would have held to 115 and change. I would have gotten out at 114 12 for sure and probably 114 28 at the highest. There would have been several trades to that level, instead of one trade.
Daily for key S/R. Hourly for key S/R and buy/sell signals. 4 min for various market geometry reasons. 1 min for specific entry/exit. The bulk of my visual aids are S/R, price behaviour, and cycles. If I had nothing else, I could trade with a one min, a 4 min and an hourly, using only S/R and a specific way of calculating pivots. I only have three lines on my chart at any given time.
0800 CST Possible targets of 116 04 to 116 08 on this run. Not saying these are a given. Just that for today, these are possible targets. I have some closer levels I'm looking at currently.
0830 CST In at 115 285 which was one tick above the 0800 high and stopped out at 115 265. Small order due to entry and where we are in the run.