We clobbered 1273 overnight. That is the level to hold for today. 1280 and 1285 (the recalibrated pivot #) on the upside.
I hate these days that open at or near pivot sold off before the market opens then grind back and forth in tight ranges. These are the days that are easy to lose. These are the days made for position trading holds. That is keep your shorts on (No pun intended). Anyways my pivots were off a point. The range was constricted, and my patience wore thin. Yes I'm a spoiled trader so what?!? Nothing tonight.
4 minutes later the 9 am turn did happen. Then, we did break 1273 into lunch. Then the turn happened after the weak leftover selling was done. You gotta be able to distinguish the trend day versus the bipolar day. The 9 am turn was tested twice and on the 3rd strike it broke through (not an uncommon occurrance). In any event I'm done with this thread. I am hoping somebody got something out of it. It was an attempt to help newer traders learn stuff that took me along time to figure out. Good Luck
FWIW Today's open would be described as a fade the gap into yesterday's close. With the rally started @ 8:42am CME time (Chicago) when a "buy program" kicked in.
Note the obvious slowdown in activity as the market has moved from top to bottom of the overnight bracket and traders are trying to figure out if they should buy 'em or sell 'em for the day. The 1st half hour to 45 min in the spoos often sets the day up as well described in many books (like Clayburg's DDF line)
Looks like the window is back. Still waiting for the break-up before the breakdown. But these mini-macro calls are self-defeating in so far as my time frame is minutes to hours for futures. Still I look at quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 15 minute 5 minute, 1 minute, then tick charts in that order and weight of relevance. Obviously the longer the timeframe the more powerful the significance but also the slower for the action to unfold and therefore the "topping" and "bottoming" behavior witnessed over days and weeks versus minutes and hours. The recent volatility looks more "bottomly" than "toppy" and with options expiry approaching and a relatively firm bottom in place with any strength monday I'd bet on higher prices this week followed by a rollover with lower prices after options expiry into april and perhaps beyond. Good Luck
Look at the time stamp on the post--- 6 minutes after 8:42am CME time. As you can imagine I was busy for the first few minutes after the buy program was confirmed but settled in to let this one ride for the morning session. Wish it was always this easy. Although not just a few traders got caught after 9:00:31 am selling into the jaws of a trend day up adding fuel to the rally.