Friday Morning Briefing

Welcome to our morning briefing. Here we are reviewing short term setups ahead of the NYSE opening bell. If you are a scalper or swing trader then these setups may be of interest to you. As usual keep in mind that these are short term setups although they could be used as early entries for more longer term positions.

For some reason we’ve hit the motherlode on the setup front this morning – everything is coiled up and ready to rip. But careful – it’s quadruple witching Friday and that means you need to set your stops particularly generous today – add at least 25% to your common distance. But before we get to the goodies let’s talk about price action on the equities side. We’ve popped quite a bit higher and then pushed sideways all day with minimal participation (see the Zero indicator flat lining) in a common ramp & camp fashion. What does that mean and where do we go from here?

Well right away that is the wrong question. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to inherently flawed mindsets related to trading. You simply trade according to what *at the current time* is the most probable outcome – and sometimes that includes both directions (I can literally see heads explode here right now).

Let me give you an example. I have a chart on which price has reached an important inflection point based on your ‘lens’ (it’s all mental models anyway). How about a 100-day SMA plus we throw in a 25-week SMA nearby for good measure. PLUS the daily Bollingers have compressed and I suspect a big move is coming. Now based on prior history price usually has either bounced back or breached and then pushed higher very rapidly. Both trades could be profitable so I would get positioned short first with a stop above that inflection point. I expect to be stopped out of course (you always do) and once that happens I flip positions to be long with a stop below what now is tentative support. May I get whipsawed once or twice? Sure – can happen but in this particular case it doesn’t matter to me as I expect increased volatility to make up for some of the early losses if they appear.

Does this example always work? Of course not – but it’s an adaptive approach that over the long term has a positive edge. Now note that I spent a maximum of 5 minutes looking at my charts as the TA should only occupy 20% of my trading day. The other 80% are 20% campaign management and finally the most important and largest aspect of trading: self management, which is 60% of trading.

Too many of you guys confuse swapping directional opinions with trading – to me it’s merely mental masturbation. If that offends your fragile egos then GOOD – you are way too comfortable with your entrenched approaches. Trading is all about persona development and if you get settled/comfortable in a path that answers easy answers then the market will hand out instant punishment. Which btw, is why I love the trading racket – unlike in politics, the law, or religion it is not up to interpretation or opinion. Your acceptance of reality has no bearing on its validity – if you’re positioned incorrectly you will lose. In essence your job as a trader is to manage loss as best as possible.

Now let’s talk about the chart above – let’s just look at the price action. After touching and successfully retesting the 100-hour SMA the SPX is now back at the upper 100-hour Bollinger which has nicely contained price action over the past weeks and months. We may get scenario A or we may get scenario B – each direction is completely plausible as price has not yet told us that it’s ready to turn. Going short here right now is tempting as we ‘have not breached the new highs’, right? Well, yes and wrong – the assumption is that breaching the new highs has any meaning whatsoever – I mean we could breach it and then fall back like a rock! Maybe – so let’s look at how price usually moves:

This is our daily volume profile chart on the E-Mini futures – all based on trading volume concentrations. When we touched that 100-hour on the SPX we were near a volume hole and as you can see the big move up (and the prior move down) was exploiting an ‘easy move range with plenty of participation. Where are we now? Near a veritable volume chasm and that means we should be prepared for a pull back – but we can’t just go short without evidence. If there isn’t any on the daily (i.e. as in right now) then we look at the hourly panels instead for patterns. So let’s do that!

And there we have two Net-Lines opening the door to both directions. We are also seeing a bit of BB compression and if you curious as to what that means then look no further than to what happened on the 18th around 15:00 EDT. So we could get a big move here shortly – if you manage to get positioned early on the hourly then you can build your position up as the tape continued to push your way. And that means you may get an early entry into what turns out to be a daily or even weekly campaign.

And that is how professional traders approach it – it’s imperative that you remain nimble and continue to assess what the tape is telling you. How does that compare with simply drawing a line and saying – I’ll go short here, no matter what because the tape ‘is supposed to fall from here?’

On to the setups – crude looking at a lot of resistance here and I’m short with a stop above the 100-hour SMA.

AUD/NZD – coiled up like a clock and I’m long with a stop below 1.077.

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Be careful if you’re trading the CAD crosses around 8:30am EDT – event risk. See you guys later today.

Cheers,