The setups I include on this blog are used in conjunction with the 3/10macd and the criteria I ascribe to it as a way to alert me to an existing condition of price. The key concept to take away from this blog is that I try to anticipate what will happen on the higher time frame by using a faster time frame to trigger the trade setup. I do not trade a "system" I use two indicators to clue me in to price conditions. Please read the Disclaimer located in the sidebar of this site. I can be contacted via email at toddstrade@gmail.com
I am always open to questions, comments, or suggestions on how to improve this blog.


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

S&P cycles far and near

Again, off the heels of my previous post, here's a look at the S&P500 index as well as the SPY.
Using a weekly chart of the $INX, the cycles are blatant. Two big Regular Cycles, with an Inverted Cycle in between. Currently we're going through an Inverted Cycle.So what do we have?:
- The first Regular Cycle lasted for 409-bars and spent 276-bars (weeks) going up and 133-bars going down. I didn't actually plan this near perfect symmetry. I simply chose the bottom of the prior Inverted cycle that price experienced before going into our debt & leverage fueled price propulsion.
- The Inverted Cycle which followed lasted for 394-bars and spent 133-bars going down and 261-bars going up (amazing symmetry).
- Now, the Regular Cycle, which ended in May of 2008, had a span of 334-bars with 261 on the way up and a mere 73 on the way down.
- The Inverted Cycle we are now in contains 119-bars so far (slightly more than half of those bars going up following our last 73-bar down swing).
- The slope of our "trend" is definitely down.

Now, we know from my previous post, that a cycle is deemed complete when price closes outside of it's Cyclic Trend Line (CTL, refer to my previous post to understand how the CTL is measured and projected), like so:
To say the current Cycle we are in is a bit long in the tooth would be an understatement. Provided we don't melt up from here, a weekly close less than this weeks bar would put us under the CTL, thereby ending this Inverted Cycle and starting the next Regular Cycle (which has a PTT projection well under the March '08 lows (and should contain approximately 100-bars).

So, that's a little longer term perspective. Here's where the SPY sits as of Friday:
I'm using a 90-min chart so as to take away some of the noise that this market has been putting out over the past month.
Within this timeframe, price is in an Inverted Cycle and the PTT's are shown in red lines.
The slope of our trend is flat to slightly down (the past two Inverted & Regular Cycles have had highs and lows within a penny of each other). So, from here we would be looking for a test higher, while a close under a CTL would give us the start of our next Regular Cycle.

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