ETF Prophet

This January, equities logged their worst monthly start to the year since 1990. Indeed, the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrials and NASDAQ 100 cash indices posted losses of -6.12%, -4.63% and -11.68%, respectively. Intraday, several major indices hit the official 20% correction mark, with many emerging markets doing substantively worse still. Once again, the Federal [...]

As suggested in yesterday’s afternoon update, the market showed its hand in the first hour with a nice upside reversal in spite of negative news. Traders call this “filling the gap.” Currently, we are seeing some resistance at R1. It looks far below, but daytraders may look to yesterday’s pivot, the rising 5-day moving average, [...]

Looks like Ben the Bear is living up to his namesake. The Qs diddled around this morning, with nobody wanting to get too far off the PP pivot. A little over 50M share traded until 14:00 and then ZOOWIE. . .43M over the next hour and 220M for the day. And the last hour selloff [...]

Everything is effectively flatlined with the exception of the VIX (creeping up to 28) and the Ten-Year (up to 3.7%). Be prepared for some fireworks and only play the noise if you can manage the trade very closely. It usually takes an hour to start playing out directionally and lately the pattern has been for [...]

Qs were back to hitting the pivots today, starting with an opening kiss of R1. This was another classic gap fade, as the market had turned down by the 6:38-6:42 time pivot and the TICK and the NYAD were both down slope. The Qs fell right to PP in the first 30 minutes and then [...]

Lot’s of CNBC talk on “selling the news” ahead of tomorrow’s Fed announcement. I’m not so sure… Meanwhile tick is looking good, even as price has been relatively flat. I do think it’s bullish we have held the opening gap up thus far, but you will notice on the chart below that I started hedging [...]

Upper chart is 5 minute Qs. Lower is 5 minute MSFT. The Qs basically did nothing today, failing to hit any of the intradday pivots. This condition has been addressed in previous posts and is actually fairly rare. Expect the pivots to reactivate tomorrow. This was a day of relative indecision, despite the pop in [...]

Well, we certainly started off the day better than Asia may have portended. In spite of the inability to hold Friday’s open, note that volume was relatively light that day. As of now, VWAP, Cumulative Tick and A-D line slopes all look very constructive at the mid-day. We are challenging the pivot point for the [...]

Upper chart is weekly 3 LRs study (30,11,3). Lower chart is monthly bars of 3 LRs study. As predicted last week by the 3LRs monthly study, the Qs came right down to 42, and then bounced back towards the mean. If the Qs can’t make it back to the mean in relatively short order, then [...]

We’ve looked at this pattern before as an opportunity to fade the gap and today’s example was picture perfect. With 2 days up at our backs, the Qs gapped up almost a a buck in response to MSFT earnings (ostensibly). The Qs opened a little above R3, while the NYAD opened dead on R2, while [...]

Well, we had some profit taking at the open, yours truly included. I hope you thought twice about yesterday’s missive regarding how to hedge going forward. Nonetheless, there is nothing grim here (yet?) given the big move off the bottom we have seen over the past several days. If it does sell off much harder, [...]

Qs managed a nice gain today, but are finding resistance at the 45.00 level. (After hours Qs are up .36 in response to MSFT earnings). It looked like a strong day for the Qs with only a 50 % retracement to PP, which was unusual. I was set to buy the puts at 10:00 and [...]

One bullish pattern to look for today would be a “consolidation day” with a narrow range and light volume: the pause that refuels. We still have half a day ahead of us and note that the five-day moving average, while providing support thus far, remains negatively sloped. As bad as home sales are, at least [...]

Well, everyone who missed the fun yesterday got a chance to join in today. The DOW managed a rather amazing 660 point range, closing at the highs of the day, while the NDX actually closed in negative territory for an unusual disconnect of the markets. AAPL probably had a lot to do with it, and [...]

Here is the Briefing.com teaser excerpt from Yahoo!Finance — note the underlined portion… Wed 1:00pm ET- Briefing.comThe stock market falls to fresh session lows, without a specific catalyst for the wave of selling pressure. The major indices are currently trading… Clear rotation occurring with last year’s winners being sold hard and reinvested into last year’s [...]

The Qs bounced out of the abyss in the first 60 minutes into a narrow range S1 – S2 day. That 2nd to the last 5 minute bar was a tell that not everyone was buying. AAPL’s earnings were less than expected and it is off $19 and change after hours and the Qs are [...]

If you did and are just in for the day, trail a stop at the VWAP. If you are in for a swing, there is no objective reason we MUST retest this morning’s lows, “Cramer’s” warnings aside. If you did nothing, that’s OK too, at least you can now say you’ve seen a “black swan.” [...]

A timely and scary article in the February edition of Technical Analysis of S&C (www.traders.com) by Jon Sarkett discusses some issues that many traders may not be fully aware of. For those sitting on substantial cash pools, you’ll be dismayed to learn that FDIC and SIPC only cover you for $ 100,000 or $ 500,000. [...]