But its neck and neck competition right now (yellow is the level you are positing out, but there is that level below which would indicate that the final lower high, if there is to be a lower high, has yet to trade out.
I have always thought that these one way trend days to the upside contained a fair amount of short covering activity. But I do not have any material information that would confirm that to be the case. But the buying has to come from somewhere, and it is doubtful that that much panic buying comes from institutional buy side traders. The information is probably out there, and probably not too difficult to track down, e.g.large trader short positions, changes in positions, net shorts, etc. I guess I just have never been interested enough to try to shake that all out - but it is an interesting question.
From January there were so many rallies that pushed the market higher and higher, and along the way there were plenty of bears that mis-read the market and kept shorting the market as in their mind market should go down not up, for whatever their reasons are, so they kept shorting and shorting until the market reached new height again, then they really need to cover their shorts, and they also desperately tried to push the market down, however as recently we all observe the market is so resilient and never go down for 20% as they wish, so fearing the market is going to all time high again, they would seek chance to cut down their loss and this fuels the rally; in addition, so many companies like Apple are spending billions in purchasing their shares back to regain their price levels.
"The human mind is hard-wired to bet on reversals." - Hersh Shefrin, author of Beyond Greed and Fear Most buy stocks that are going down and sell, or sell short stocks that are going up. When stocks are going up, buy them. When stocks are going down, sell them. Most won't or even can't do this because the human mind is, in the words of Professor Shefrin, "hard-wired to bet on reversals."
Also today a lower high on the $VIX as it makes its way for yet another sojourn <15 which means tough sledding again for we day traders (remember how much fun April was ... yeah, me neither). As far as I'm concerned, speaking as a futures spec only day trader, the only thing that matters about the $VIX is whether it is <15 or >15 ... when V>15 life is very, very good.
So you're down 45 points. $2250 on one contract. Almost half your money depending on which broker I guess. At least 35%. Did they close your position yet? Another 60 point day and the broker starts losing money right? I don't think they like that too much. You must keep a lot of dry powder in there Izzy to be able to use a 131 point stop. That's all I can figure. The Sheik of Dubai.