Time to time, there are signaficant price gap between Island QQQ price & Amex QQQ price. When Island QQQ bid price higher than Amecx QQQ ask price, people with information(brokers,institutions,future traders) aggresively buy QQQ using Island. And the QQQ upside move goes up quite a while.
All IMHO 1. First, Tony is a great trader. Long ago he was a regular on this board, where I first swapped posts with him. 2. You MUST have a grip on the fibanacci numbers on this one. Most often, the NDX / Q's obey the fibs on the comp more tightly than than the ndx itself. There was a time when you could pick fib support on the Q's and have it be right to 1/64th repeatedly. What a wonderful time that was, since you could set some mighty cheap stops 1/8th out on swing trades of 3 points. But that was then, this is now. More volatile on the turns. Give it about 15 cents of running room on the turns. 10 cents on slower turns. If you calculate $xx.50 as support, count on seeing $xx.45, but count on not getting filled there. 3. Keep a close eye on slow stochs with 5 period settings. For those operating on the cheap, believe it or not, bigcharts.com's slow stochs settings are perfect. The NDX and other indexes are real time. The QQQ is delayed. Look at the 5 min, 15 min, and 60 min bars. Get `em all lined up for a swing trade of longer duration, and work down from there for trades of shorter duration. BTW ... the slow stochs crossed up today, so for THAT duration, its long time. 4. Run 20 and 50 simple MA's on the 15 min bars. If price crosses above the 20, buy for a swing trade. 50 is resistance, but if busted it runs. 5. Tony's always excellent advice notwithstanding, forget about the level 2 screen. Its a distraction on this one. just open the island java book viewer and watch the tape, with your support and resistance price targets in mind from fib numbers. And just eyeball those chart settings to be sure things are lining up at your targets before pulling the trigger. 6. IF all those things line up, put in the order as a limit on your targets, with stops ASAP. You can save 15 - 20 cents on entry if you let price come to you, rather than you chasing it. Once it turns, it does it fast and its hard to catch. That is ONLY true if you figure your fib targets accurately. If thats not your bag, you can easily have price go a quarter against you working solely from stochs and the like, so adjust accordingly. Look at this and its easy to see how, while a good expensive system is always better and easier to use, this is one stock that can be traded effectively using freebie sites like bigcharts and island, and your basic online broker. That may be ONE reason why the trading volume has exploded on it, and its less predictable on price targets than it once was. regards