The capitalization weighting is a "feature" of S&P indices that makes them perpetually go up, unless almost every single item in the indices are dropping. e.g. After old leaders drop 1% on day 1, then day 2 with a drop of 1% on these leaders will no longer reduce the index level by 1% due to decrease in weighting relative to the pool. Thus that myth of the stock market always goes up! Ask those who hold the market leaders back in 1930s or 1960s, many of those stocks disappeared already.
i caught that move trading the SPY. im still new at this though, my risk is really small, i only made $140. i think one of my difficulties is knowing when im right or when im just getting lucky. Im going to write how i made my decision, im hoping one of you guys could maybe tell me if im moving in the right direction, or if im just getting lucky. I didnt fall for the break down because: 1) looking at the tick, testing +600 a few times without getting below around -350 since noon. thats not break down weather... 2) looking at the trin, it was very bearish most of the day, and then it hit a level too extreme to be sustained about five minutes before the failed break down. thats not break down weather either... 3) look at the giant mess below that base on the daily or 60 (from the 6th to 11th), looks like support to me, where is it supposed to go if it does break down? any further move down at that point looks like just more wiggling around in the swamp and not a quality break down. I did take the break out because: 1) HUGE bullish bar moves right to the top of the base. 2) tick goes around +1000 very fast during the huge bar. I've been taught that +1000 ticks usually means a move is running out of gas, but when it just slams up there instantly like that its more of a confirmation of mass participation. the trin also fell like a rock at the same time... this this is break out weather, more like a break out hurricane. something was happening... didnt know what, but I could just hear that annoying bald guy screaming buy buy buy in my head. 3) failed break down probably took out some long stops, fewer sellers in the form of profit taking on the way back up, maybe even more buying to get back in. there were probably also a lot of trapped shorts, that was nasty too, im sure some shorts got browned if you know what i mean... with stops maybe at the top of the base, going to buy to cover at the break out if it happens. more fuel to the fire i suppose. 4) all the above gave me the impression that the little high at around 11:30 wouldnt do squat, it fit my trading plan & risk, so i went with it, played it like a pretty standard text book breakout. the volume i saw helped me stay in when things looked shaky. I was only expecting it (SPY) to go to like 135.10 but i got an extra 50 cents out of it... so anyway, thats just what i was looking at and what i was thinking, any thoughts?
I like to apply "the attitude" toward my trading. In other words I don't care WHAT the market does. I only care that I'm able to recognize what is happening soon enough to extract some gains. The market doesn't "know" what my position is or where my dinky ass little resting orders are placed. It's human nature to want to blame "them" ( I still do it from time to time) for surprises we didn't see coming but at the end of the day the only one we have to blame for success or failure is ourselves.
Al from Oz, is it just me? or is it totally absurd that everyone is turning the gasparino report to some kind of technical purpose to buy? if anyone reads about what has been going on in the credit markets and the difficulty the mkts have had on the upside, they'd understand this is huge news. the mkts aren't going anywhere w/o financials...and this was the news the mkts needed to give impetus to buyers to step in. techinical analysis?? pfff... anyhow, g'day!
only thing i can tell you is that when you heard gasparino was going to report on the ABK bailout, you should've bought everything as big as you could. all this other stuff you mentioned is nonsense. best thing to do sometimes is to keep it as simple as possible!
thats nonsense. In other circumstances the same news could have as well caused a 3-point pop in ES followed by more selling. Market conditions where ideal, triangle broken, support broken, weekend ahead, everybody who wanted to sell stocks had already sold them when it happened, no sellers left any more.
TA traders that saw the turn & went long pre-news release benefited from the lift, what happened to news traders? They were like what's going on, what's happening, has Fed cut the rate or have we captured Bin Laden? I don't think anybody sensible would argue that reversal strength was/could have been based on news, but you can't deny that build up was seen via technicals before news hit the wire, I posted charts to specifically show OP what I saw happening and acted upon (recorded in ES journal). Why the heck argue about things you do not understand?
Q: I wonder how the heck do these fundamentalists manage to time the market without referring to technicals? A: They have 100 handle stops.