Head Fake!

I know you bears are all sick of the rally that just won’t quit - well, I got some good news for you - I just saved some money on my car insurance! Okay, bad joke - and no, I can’t promise that this is the end of Primary {2}, but I have an inkling that the bears will get a nice downswing and an opportunity to recapture some of that old glory in those puts you’ve perhaps been hanging on to.

That 10-day MA is really growing on me as it uncovers extremely interesting pattern on various charts. Look at that fractal above - it’s almost identical, even down to the time it takes to resolve. Downward that is by the way, as it should when the market keeps getting ahead of itself.

I have shown this CPCE chart before - last time was on November 2nd, take a look what I said that day.

This, my dear ladies and leeches, is how distribution looks like. And it’s happening on dropping volume - actually it’s much better than that - take a peek at this goodie:

What do we have here? Rising volume on the drops, flat or now tanking volume on the rips. Meh - this is probably sheer coincidence - after all Cramer is the master of the universe again and can’t be wrong.

The Zero is spiking a classic head fake - chart on the prior post. Will it resolve this week? Probably not - after all, every single holiday week this year was an excuse to ride the tape higher in low volume. But let’s see what next week brings. The bulls want their coveted 10,500 mark - let them have it if that’s what it takes.

On the wave count side I see three possibilities - yes, anything is possible in this low volume holiday week - sorry:

Blue Kiss Of Death: We just get it over with and make the bulls happy by handing them their coveted Dow 10,500 mark. A bit too simplistic - MMs have the opportunity to burn a lot of theta this week plus drive the VIX further down - perhaps even have it touch 20 - my poor long term puts (sigh).

Orange Bear Biscuit: We drop from here and don’t bounce until we touch that lower border on that expanding diagonal. Also doubtful, especially since we are so close to that lower channel border which again held up. The poor bears didn’t even get a fake out drop below - what an ignominious defeat.

Green Churn From Hell: I don’t count a valid bullish EWT triangle here but I think a nice churn followed by a rocket burn into new highs might be what market has in store for us.

Moral Of The Story

So, what to do? If you’re not already in the market this week just stay out - trust me, it’s not worth it - spend time with your family instead - you will thank me later. You can of course play the swings if you’re good at that - but be nimble and be cautious as this morning’s open should have taught you. BTW, that spike was sold fairly quickly - again, the news are usually only good for some short term gyrations. Never ever trade headlines, news reports, economic news, etc. - all you need to know is in your charts.

Geronimo News

We updated the Geronimo stats today - please take a look. Also, there have been some changes/fixes/improvements as of late:

  • First of all the dreaded empty alert issue has been fixed. I even managed to figure out the original bug in NinjaTrader, a bit late of course as it’s now been ported to Multicharts.
  • We reduced the stop size to about 20% without impacting performance.
  • We added a ’steep drop filter’ which prevents false alerts on sell off days, so far it’s been working quite well as Geronimo kept performing well all last week, even on the down days.
  • Finally we are planning to introduce additional signals over the coming weeks which are based on new observations of market behavior (i.e. the games the big boys are playing). We will roll those in as we see fit - some of them will be short signals as well.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 1:39 am and is filed under Elliott Wave Theory, Market Outlook, geronimo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • gmak
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  • Schwerepunkt
    Fins are weak. Bloomberg reporting Feds are asking 9-banks for a timetable on repaying TARP funds.
  • bergs
    I re- counted and have us in subminuette wave four (red)

    http://screencast.com/t/NzViNjgyZDQt

    I guess the buzz is did we top already? Possible?

    yet with a subdued holiday session of low volume and good black Friday shopping results we could make this last push.
  • Schwerepunkt
    Going to be a little crazy(er) today with all the news dumps: GDP Prelim/2nd; GDP Deflator Prelim/2nd, Case Shiller, Consumer Confidence (very important), home prices and last but not least, FOMC minutes@2pm.

    Say what you will about news, but it sure whips the markets around, taking out stops and confusing people mightily.
  • bearmaid
    Great charts Mole. Thnx.
  • green.
    no blue.
    wait, green.
    no, blue. That's what I want. blue
  • better still, could we be witnessing the unwinding and relocation as equities stalland gold rises? large funds could take the retracement of gold to 900 with a smile knowing it goes to 7k and knowing you can never load or unload positions that big at perfect tops or bottoms, only when there is a market to take it
  • Schwerepunkt
    That is what I'm hoping for. An out-of-nowhere dollar rally that guts the goldbugs and stock bulls. It would probably reverse somewhere down the line once all those dollar bills start circulating. With 9-banks still to payback TARP, I don't think too many FRNs are going to be filtering down to the little people anytime soon. They'll hang around the pantheon for a while longer.
  • sloth_bear
    Hi all,
    I'm new here so I wanted first to thanks our host Mole for all the hard work and to have built up an incredible community!
    I don't have much to contribute and my English is very limited but I will do my best to give back a bit of all that I received here.

    I'm not a professional trader (quite the opposite!),
    I started to mess with the market one year ago with bad risk management and a lot of optimism wich conducted me to loose a lot of money but earned me an important lesson:
    I'm dumber than the market :-(

    Since then, I spend a lot of time to learn from my mistakes and become more and more educated...
    Still have a long way to go but I will do my best to help others to avoid my mistakes and to have an healthy relationship with the market :-)

    Have a Great day
    SB
  • tradejane
    >I'm dumber than the market

    You too?! I thought it was just me. Risk management was my first stumbling block too. I keep finding new ones.

    Welcome and good luck!
  • We are all dumber than the market - an important realization for any trader.
  • well, we should be having fun and we're spinning round and round as in an hamster wheel

    anyone here has an idea of how long (given current volumes) smart money would need to unwind long positions?
  • USDJPY looking interesting - fib on the daily kinda marks out where we have equality right now in terms of the wave (b) high of a possible freaky huge extended flat and the wave (c) low in percentage terms - 30 min lining up as well by the looks of it - a good risk:reward long-the-dollar?

    http://screencast.com/t/ZDE5MmNkZTU
  • CorporalCarrot
    Morning folks. Every public servant in our country is on strike today at attempts to cut their pay to bridge our ludicrous budget deficit (Spending this year, €56bn, tax revenues €32bn). As you can see we are running a €20bn+ per annum gap ( a lot for a country with 4m people), the strikes are over attempts to cut a mere €1.3bn per annum from spending, which is as good an indication as any that PEOPLE STILL DONT GET IT.

    I still continue to believe that if the ludcrous price weighted index we call the Dow did not exist, there wouldn't be the same bullish mania that exists right now, and Cramer would not be frothing at the mouth. Instead we would be saying the S&P struggled to make new highs, was exhibiting clearly waning momentum, topping & distribution signals.

    Interesting also, is that so many Bearish websites now accept as inevitable a runup into the year end. "They won't let this go down before Holiday shopping season" etc. Major higher price targets for darling stocks like Apple , "Apple $220 guaranteed by Dec Opex".

    If the market was to do its greatest to frustrate the greatest number of participants right now, it would almost certainly be down.
  • The Dow 30 is insignificant - easily manipulated and obviously out of touch with al other averages.
  • AUDUSD..my crude attempt at EW labelling !! Any pros can comment?
    http://www.screencast.com/t/NmJjMmJh

    looks to me that it is or has topped...one last rally??
  • Actually, this is the one chart I can see out there that *shock horror* does actually fkng look like a genuine 5-down.

    With a perfect 61.8% retrace.

    Naturally, it will go and prove me wrong now, but if you caught the top of that putative w2, then it's just about as sweet a set up as any I've seen for ages...

    Morning, everyone...
  • nice post, I'm still in
  • tradejane
    The DAX opened below today's pivot of 5771. First resistance is seen at 5853, if it rallies above that, but a drop below the 5745 area should bring us down to 5700 again.

    Comedybank* lost 6.67 Friday. That was my signal. I kept myself really busy yesterday, anything but sell the shorts - I promised myself I'd let the stops take them out. They didn't.


    *Thanks for the inspiration Bob. Perfect name for that bank, I love it.
  • DAX usually likes to fill opening gaps...I think!

    especially gap downs ...recently
  • tradejane
    Oh, it does? Because it seems to have skipped one at the 4100 area on the daily chart. :)

    Joking aside, a gap close/green opening in the US-markets would be a nice finishing touch on this headfake, if it's a headfake. (Comedybank says yes.)
  • bobthehorse
    I didn't come up with that - they earned it after a long period of incompetence.
  • bobthehorse
    There is yet more focus on Greece this morning. You may remember I have been highlighting them for the last 10 days or so as the potential grey swan event. Basically, the EU are putting the squeeze on as the fiscal position is so bad. We are a long way from a default but these situations can deteriorate quite quickly if the bond market gets spooked.

    Also, China has had a huge reversal day.
  • bobthehorse
    Ambrose is another perma-bear but he does seem to have decent links to the brokerage community and can be quite timely in highlighting issues. On the other hand, he gives idiots like Albert Edwards a platform.
  • jacksoo
    good call on 1107 yesterday bob - -power outages here so had to hit and run at 1102 - didn't want to get caught with a falling mkt and a dead battery on the laptop......how do you see today?
  • bobthehorse
    I am looking for a move to 1089 minimum but to be honest I am not going to get excited until we break 1080 and from a bigger picture perspective, 1060 needs to go. But you can't ignore China - big reversal day on record volume. We have a chance of a big move lower if some momentum gathers to the downside.

    But as you know I am looking to play this move through OTM puts.
  • Scoops
    Looks like we're in for some fun tomorrow. Asia is a sea of red atm.

    Prechter may have nailed it today.
  • bobthehorse
    That's what I love about this world. Prechter keeps calling the top and being wrong. Then when it does eventually go down, you say he's nailed it.
  • Scoops
    If you actually read his work, he only offers probabilities with caveats.
  • In 2007 Pretcher stated "highly leverage short position" which to 97% of all traders meant puts. Then in early 2009 he stated "and by that I meant futures". those who bet puts were screwed unless they had the guts to re-bet in 2008 and 2009.

    Great research, terrible betting advice....except this time. :-)
  • vision_invisible
    How do you market 1.6 Trillion in 10/30year treasuries?

    Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead. To lock in low interest rates in the years ahead, Treasury officials are trying to replace one-month and three-month bills with 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities. That strategy will save taxpayers money in the long run. But it pushes up costs drastically in the short run, because interest rates are higher for long-term debt. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/business/23ra...
  • bobthehorse
    Avoids refi risk though - the US is funded a bit like a pre-crisis bank. Too much short duration - susceptible to a run.
  • vision_invisible
    Pushing people to the long end makes sense, but how.

    Here is a graphic of the refinance dates and volumes.

    http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/11/23/...
  • bobthehorse
    Compensation. They are paying you 0% at the front end right now. If you agree to extend duration they will pay you 3.5% or even 4.25% at the 30yr. It's just about what is the market price for this. If we are in a deflationary world, 3.3% nominal looks okay. If they manage to generate inflation, it's terrible. The market reaction to this supply is going to tell us something - -if yields stay as low as they are right now, then equities are going down no question as we are stuck in deflation. If yields go up, that is a positive perversely as it is telling us that reflation is successful.
  • vision_invisible
    The only way Americans are going to be buying up those hot Treasuries is no-good-alternative. Ben Bernanke trades in his helicopter for a Dyson Vacuum cleaner and rides around sucking up liquidity.
  • vision_invisible
    Just what I (we?) needed. Something to sink the teeth into and get focused ...feeling complacent. Great chart of the DJIA, volume is anemic.
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