Are you buying the dips at open given the poor outlook from CSCO and expect the market will bounce after 2:15pm?
i would wait for 3-5 mins after the fed makes the announcement. Last time they announced, the markets took a quick dip and then took right off....never sold off, ran up straight into the close.
My strategy is this... I would wait to see how the market reacts going up until 2:15. An unusual bearish sentiment going up to 2:15 could turn explosively positive while an unusually bullish sentiment might backfire. I would form my thesis and action plan as the market trades going up to the meeting. After 2:15, wait 5 minutes and see what is happening to the indexes. I have a list of several stocks that are known to move along with the market. If the market starts trading in one direction, then these stocks will move in that direction. You can also trade the ultralong or ultrashort etfs. If the market starts heading in one direction, you can always ride one of them into the close and dump right before the day is up.
I am short the 10-yr bond, long ES, betting on the spread between the two beasts to narrow. Good for any day, including the FOMC day.
US futures are right where they were at yesterday's close ... the dip lasted just a couple hours last night. China up 1.6%, Europe up .4%, oil down .5% will all support the US market.
If you look back, CSCO's earnings consistently coincided with short term or medium term market tops. Considering how much we've gone up, I'll bypass long signals and look for some short set ups, while reducing my size to 60 percent in light of the Fed rate announcement. I'm looking at the current run-up on ES to see if it would end up being the second shoulder on an intraday timeframe (this also means going long if we break out of the head, though like I said, I'll probably ignore that signal and stay put).
You have to remember that there were quite a few entitites bulling it up before the call. Goldman Sachs stated last week to buy before the call and to get in at any price. Such bullishness before an earnings call is never good. It inflates the price with unrealistic expectations. One week ago, the price of CSCO was at 26.75 and then Goldman came out with its buy at any price campaign. Then the price jumped to 28.50. If no one said anything and just left it alone, I bet you the price would have jumped after that earnings call. I agree that CSCO tends to trade with the overall market, however, the price was talked up before going into the call and it was bound to fall unless CSCO smashed it out of the park (which it never seems to do).
You could do what the big boys will probably be doing...go golfing, visit a whore, eat a burger, be back at 2 and get ready to gun the money into the markets and run this fucker into the close thus setting up epic gap trading for tomorrow morning.