The premisce is "that I know" but what if you go out of your premisce ? Floor traders are professionals and among them there are mostly scalpers which are basically countertrend traders.
Not in a bull market.. resistance will surely get taken out.. First Identify the market condition before placing the trade... In sideways chop markets... buy support and sell resistance.. IN a trending market.. buy the breakouts... Right now we are in uptrend mode.. so buy the breakouts... Do you want to continue disputing this? Look what has happened to every high volume breakout from a base in the past few months? --MIKE
No problem for me. It's just that many people think that swing is the unique and easiest way opinions differ depending who you ask a scalper or a swinger see for example the chat log on ET: http://www.elitetrader.com/ch/transcripts/scalping_equities_chat.cfm "Vito Sisto (May 7, 2003 4:40:43 PM) We are amazed at the popularity of swing and position trading methodologies which require holding stocks for hours or days in this unpredictable market environment. Vito Sisto (May 7, 2003 4:40:57 PM) In a market with lowered opportunities, the professional trader MUST keep risk very low, and the longer a trade is held, the larger the risk of the trade. That is why we believe this new market remains a scalpers market. "
They think I am an Allien and are after me so I catched them before they catch me and put them in a box I will eat them when I'll be hungry
If we were in a bull market, all of this would be true. But we are only in a bull market if we were in a bear market from December to March, and another bull market from October to December, and a bear market from August to October, and . . . Yes we are in an uptrend if you focus only on the last 10 weeks, but we are not in a bull market unless you characterize each leg of this trading range as a bull or bear market. If we break out of this range decisively and stay there, then, yes, we are in a bull market, and, yes, it will have begun in March. But there's no way of knowing whether or not any of that will happen until it happens, regardless of whatever indicators one chooses to look at, because there will be another equally persuasive set of indicators that will say the opposite. Watch price. Watch volume.
Valid points.. Let me again clarify further... in my definition... since I am a swing trader... A bull market is a rally that last longer than 1 month... and usually sees a gain of %10 in some of the major indices... A rally is a series of higher highs... The opposite is true in a bear market. --MIKE
For a long term trader... what I said is totally irrelevant.... Its specifically relevant to only those that swing trade... What happened in the late 90's is a grand bull market.. which i doubt will ever happen for a long time.. But there will still be 1-6 month bull and bear markets in stocks.... And most of the time.. they will be stuck in ranges going no where...