Wrong Thinking

I was thinking of the short side on Sunday and needing a few things coming together to lure me in.  None of those triggers were pulled and instead the market found a bounce that has likely burned any bears who jumped the gun.  Thankfully, I waited for my signals that never came and saved myself some capital :

AS one who’s looking for weekly trends I prefer CLOSING action over intraday action as a trigger.  Price never closed below the 13WEMA and only flirted with an intraday poke yesterday of the 65DEMA (AKA 13WEMA) before closing back above it.  THOSE are the punk moves I enjoy missing as an EOD trader.

Naturally, $TICK  held it’s ground also:

SPX 1345 looks like the top of a downward TL from the May top, so if there’s any merit to my notion of a weak summer then that TL needs to cap this rise.  I need solid confirmations in my favor before trying to trade around my usual summer boogie man.  The last 2 summers have imprinted a bias on my brain.

Speaking of recency bias, I’m sorta liking the triple bottom action in NVDA and the +PPO divergence in SSRI and EXK.

Thinking Short

I’m still on the sidelines and checking charts 1-2x per week just for an idea of what’s going on out there.  Back in March I had a nice short trade from 1290 and was looking for an exit around 1240 and again at 1230ish.  I got caught with the hook in my mouth and let nice profits slide away by missing my first exit by a few points.  Now, I see another potential opportunity to the short side and that same 1250 level that provided a pivot then now looks like a target: 

The last 2 summers linger in my mind and the market is once again entering that seasonal ‘sell in May and go away’ hurdle.  Furthermore, declining PPO’s are also back in play.  It looks like the only thing standing in my way of nice profits is my usual challenge of no intraday access to tweak stops as price action goes my way.  I would like the sanity of entering under the 10WEMA and simultaneously entering a stop above it; not coming home to find I was triggered below it just before the market punked me by charging back over it.  I loathe starting a position on the wrong side and especially when so much damage can be done on an intraday basis.

TICK 3Dema has room to give and I figure $SPX 1295-1300 would be the place where $TICK would once again be poised to spoil the downward momentum.  Fail 1295 and a mere 20+ handle trade could easily become a 70 handle trade:

My target on ANY SPY option trade has been 40+ handles and another set-up appears to be very close.  I need to trade this -40 move much more adroitly than I did the last one!

Found & Lost

Good grief, my two ‘finds’ a week ago turned out to be losers this last week.  The distinction is one was absloutely a good loss while the other was just a loss.

The good loss would be SVNT.  After nearly getting stopped out on Wed, the open on Thursday sealed the deal.  Yes, I got triggered below my level due to the yawning gap, but far better than what coulda been:

I'm not complaining about this stop out

On the other hand, NVDA now looks like a punk loss.  I was banking on the ‘plethora’ of DEMA’s to hold the line for me, but the smart players took them out, stopped me out in the process and then ran prices back up to my entry.  Well done, jerks:

It happens.  I still like NVDA so long as SPX can hold and resume the uptrend:

Hold this level then resume??

 

I entered these positions while $TICK was closer to a top than a bottom, so a pullback was to be expected.  I thought my stops were far in a place that would keep me in the game.  Oh well, manage risk first.

I see no strong reason to buy here because 1) Tick demas are still not washed out:

2) I promised myself no more fiascos like the last 2 summers!!  May is awfully close to summer so I need to become very stingy with my small, yet precious, gains and 3)  I now spend 10 hours a day staring at spreadsheets instead of the market, so unless the market is in a bona-fide trend i have no real interest in “Dowfolio getting slapped around just for sport.