just came back and saw those spikes in the es - couldn't find any news that could have caused them. any ideas - just some heavy buying during low volume periods?
I got caught with my shorts on YM :eek: Lost 11 pts in the time that it took me to send a market order and cover my shorts -FastTrader
Here is a basic lesson. When trading slackens in volume (See a low volume comment elsewhere) making the market and having indicator signals goes into a different modus. People here in ET tell you quite often that when they have been in a trade for a while and they begin to make money, they take an action. This action is to "tighten" stops. It is a sophomoric reasoning process that lets them to that. Experts will tell you that in a slowing markt you need to loosen stops to no get taken out on an anomoly. beginners follow the myth of tighening stops. They did it today duirng midday and love volume activity as you can see. Who werethese folk who did that. You look at chart and say "this guy is full of shit" Look closer the three times it happened. these were people who were going short before 11:45 or so; again at the usual 13:00 which begins the pm and again at 14:00 plus. When people who were short brought their stops in closer than 2 points to get Tighter, they triggered a cascade of protective stops going off. Scalpers were there around the top of the spike peaks as usual. Run the T&S and see what a cascade looks like. oh, the morning started the same way for people who were long on the open. you can check the cash indexes for a calibration as well; the futures swings around the cash. when it goes from lag to lead you are seeing cascading happen.
BKX was the weak index last week (note the lack of a breakout when sp broke over 1000), this morning was pretty much a flush out after an extended drop in the financials. The problem for the bears was that it took a 3rd day of heavy selling in the financials to break down out of the range in the SP -- by then the BKX was due for a bounce, esp in light of the bonds rallying hard. And the nasdaq never fell below its range. And so they cover. And cover again. IMO, all Saddam's ultimate capture will do is add some volatility, but the market will go up or down no matter what happens there. The last time the 2 sons were caught it seemed like the news sparked a huge rally, but at the time it was likely the market would have made that move anyways. Today, all it felt like was that 975 broke, then bounced back above that level -- you're bound to get a couple vacuums as technical funds chase down then rush to cover.