in charts or real free markets. markets don't go up or down in a straight line. but in manipulated markets price just shoots up shoots down and no profit taking , no pullbacks. nobody buys or sells lots of deadzones... price goes up like a rocket. or stick up. prices drop 50% in one day etc .and gaps up on no volume gaps down on no volume gaps up on no volume. too many gaps in this market. very strong indication of illiquidity. normal market technical analysis don't apply to manipulated stocks and markets. since supply and demand is false data.
Solution...don't trade markets you think are manipulated or open a position and hold it prior to the manipulation shows up and then hope the manipulation goes in your favor too. Also, you meant to say "gaps on low volume or little volume" instead of saying "no volume". Mark
Beliefs in markets being unfair through alleged manipulation, conspiracy or whatever hinders rationality. Rationality is an absolutely essential basic in mastering a market; markets are technical. If I take Fridays CL (Oct 1 2010), the session's gyrations produced 6 swings at 39-40 points minimum span per swing. So from 9am that was 86 down, 93 up, 102 down, 107 up, 53 down and 65 points up. Very nice play for traders utilizing the days maximum offer of 506 points. You take what you can from those sequential swings. Of course you will apply a reliable methodology to carry out your daytrading mission each trading day.
Thats a cheesy response. If Markets were rational, you wouldn't be making money. You would be eliminated from the Market altogether, an artifact. It's naive to congregate around a theory suggesting that logic and rationality are the basis for trading. Reflexivity wouldn't exist, and efficient markets theorists wouldn't have been blown out if Markets weren't irrational, among other things. If Markets were rational, the payoff of every strategy at every minutiae of time you specify would be correlated to the risk free rate of return, and Markets would never, ever crash..