Treat this as poker - - what hands are they holding? retail and pros; - what is the story of today? - what price action has validated/negated the previous story? - if the previous story was negated, how valid is the next story? - timing in the earning cycle? - what is the overall 'great plan'? - the valuation context With the above in mind, the story unfolds like this: - the sell-off from the end of Jan, to the first arrow, was driven by the 'inflation' fear. The severity of the sell off was somewhat expected due to the sentiment change among retail... at the end of Jan, https://www.dailyfx.com/sentiment the sp500 was close to 50%, while in 2016-2017 it was mostly in a long/short ratio of 10:90. - on 2/9, the low almost reached the 10/27 gap. This was worth a gamble as it was already the 2nd leg down, and the first test is likely to hold. The fundamental reason is worth mentioning though - price does not hold without a reason. The pros managed to leave in the dust those who sold before 10/27... wouldn't want to give them a 2nd chance to get back on the train. - The new high made on 3/12 negated the 'inflation' story... so it was a bogus story. This gives less 'credibility to the next story'... which was - the trade war. The timing also made sense, as the April earning season was still far away.... so here we had another sell off in March. - By early April, time was about to run out as the typical earning run takes 3 weeks. So it's time to pull up again. The earnings were really strong, yet the price action demonstrates the will of the professionals to shake more apples off the tree. - There was, of course, a 3rd sell off in late April, but the line in the volume window indicates that sellers are running out of gas - or in other words, weak retail hands have been mostly cleaned up. - This is further confirmed by the 10 days or so in the circle - the dry up. The pros achieved 2 things - to collect a few more chips, and to confirm that it is now safe to pull up further. So, trading is not that easy, but after some practice the above thought process becomes automatic. I had some good buys that I posted in a different forum, for the last few months of volatility, as well as past sell offs in 2011, 2015, 2016. The market is not fractal, it breathes in a certain rhythm.... Trading takes the least effort when you breath in the same rhythm. Good luck.
Why start a thread title as Trading is easy and then go on with a complex price action analysis of hindsight market to then say the following quote below... Which one is the typo error ??? Simply, is trading easy or not easy or why does it matter for you ??? Regardless, everybody is different...trading may be easy for someone but not easy for someone else just like most other things in life. wrbtrader
"Trading is easy"? Of course. Just click your mouse. Tading well, making money, and protecting your capital? That's different.
CORRECTAMUNDO! IOW... Trading well requires you have the proper "bias"... the same one as the market's at any particular time.
Hindsight is easiER... But that's not important... what's important is how YOU can apply this going forward.
I thought you said trading was easy? Wait, wait... now I see: Trading is easy. Being a winning trader is hard!
If you want to convince me how easy trading is, don't tell what the market did last week, tell me what the market will do next week.