Wed. 05_01

Got a bit chopped up for the ISM.  Frustrating being how textbook of a stop run that was within the first hour.
Also got a but chopped up in mid-afternoon.  I gave up on the trade setup because of "Fed Day" excuse which is stupid to make excuses like that.  I failed to include the down arrow on the 5-min 3/10macd to indicate the last trade into the close.

Breadth - Compare the Adv./Decl. (top) to that of SPY 5min (above, right).

Vol. Profile coming into today - Opened right under previous day's value area and traded through the second, smaller, distribution area.  Eventually traded back to NVPOC from Friday.

ES with globex - trended lower since 7am

Higher t/f split - Price coming into decent support

Fed day bounce

The S&P found anxious buyers at the 1084 level. Now we gauge how far the deep pockets are willing to ride this thing. Should be gap up tomorrow we should be looking for whatever dip there is to be bought. I suspect we would likely get a rally of some sort tomorrow, should Bernanke be confirmed for another term?
The first level of potential resistance is around $110.50 on the SPY. Should we test higher, the range between $113-$114 will be significant.There's a lot of bounce potential out there; take a look into GS and FCX:

Fed day sold

A lackluster rally after Fed announcement led a sizable sell-off. We have to see what happens the rest of the week to see if dip-buyers step in.
The first shoe to drop this morning was the energy sector (XLE).Our intermediate trend was breached late in the day

ridiculous volatility on these Fed days

whatever

I'm not sure what sense it makes to have these FOMC minutes released during market hours. The bots own the tape after 2p.m. Anyway, we'll have to see follow-through tomorrow. Who cares about technical corrections at this point, right? We just keep pounding things higher...on lower and lower momentum.We congested a little around my resistance pivot and held it as support later in the day, but I'm not about to get involved with FED day unless I'm in SIM mode or trading 10-20 share lots.The 15-min chart did show a First Cross buy entry on the open this morning:Let's see what the reaction is tomorrow.

Fed day

Interesting day, and the charts tell the story why I choose to stay away from Fed day after 2pm (EST). On the SPY $91 was resistance and $90 turned out to be support.We closed above the 200- & 50- Moving averages and as it stands put in a higher low in through this correction, giving us an indecisive doji right on top of the moving averages, while momentum is turning up.

what market?

I didn't participate in today's market. Currently preoccupied with bottling our latest batch of beer (can't wait to try this one!).
There still doesn't seem to be any convincing commitment from the bull/bear camp at this point. Sure we tested new highs on bad news, but we need a solid stance above this long-standing resistance.
The opening of today looked nice and clean. A strong move with nice pullbacks for entry, a mid-day "Holy Grail" and further upside. While the close brought selling back to the day's congestion range. As much as I'd like to see this market tumble down, it just looks as though it can go either way. Are we building a base here?
The Nasdaq, tagging it's 200-day Moving Average, looks ripe for profit-taking/correction.

fade the Fed trend

Quite a healthy trend today running up to the FOMC meeting. Early on after gapping up (above R1 & R2) on the Q's a base break set-up gave us a good long entry (pay no mind to the momentum indicator at this point) which ran us up to R3 where a lot of narrow-range chopping took place. After another push higher we were looking at our momentum indicator to see what would happen once the Fed minutes were released. This gave us a bearish momentum divergence, bringing price down to just below the daily 50-EMA, where we were able to close above.
{Correction} The chart below is labeled incorrectly, the solid green line is the daily 50-EMA, not the 20-EMA.
Using my cycle-stochastic indicator I got three entries (2 long 1 short). The 2 long entries were an opportunity to either add to, or hold the long position entered on the early morning base-break. The third entry was also a "holy grail" set-up; more encouragement to be long. The third signal was a result of the FOMC announcement that coincided with a bearish momentum divergence on this same indicator.Meanwhile, our QTICK barely pushed negative all day and the Advancing/Declining issues at their peaks were at a 2054:709 ratio (quite bullish).So, on our broader perspective, tomorrow can be quite telling. We broke out of our ascending triangle and came quite close to our target and closed pretty solid. Immediate resistance is in the $30.90 area.I'm curious about USO here. Basing around support ($27.73), got rejected from it's 10-EMA in a narrow range on ever larger volume. While our stochastic takes on a Head & Shoulders pattern with the neckline threatening a breach soon.

FOMC

I don't participate in Fed-day, so I've got nothing today. 0% rate and day after day we have negative news, and yet we have a +5% day. Check out the Elliott wave synopsis over at AfraidtoTrade.com to get some perspective on where we are and where we might be headed in the intermediate-term.

hmmm

We sold off something like 300 points on the Dow in the last 15 minutes of the day. Check out these two charts of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S & P 500, notice the similarities in the two? In the past 2 1/2 weeks we've had two enormous rallies that were followed by bearish looking "consolidation" down day candles. We're still stuck in a range and we're not getting the conviction follow-through from these +800-point rallies.

sim

I traded the Fed announcement today while in sim-mode; trading QLD, SKF, and SRS. After about 10-minutes I was trounced to a negative $680. I focused on SKF after closing out the other two and scalped my way back to +$50 for the day. There really is a lot more to just sticking to the addage of "Don't revenge trade," "Don't over-trade," "Stick to your plan," etc., etc..
The individual trader really has to have an internal fundamental understanding of what these addages mean before getting into the thick of things. It's so easy to treat this system like an arcade game, just clicking away thinking you'll work your way out of the hole you dug yourself into, as well as convincing yourself that you are correct in your opinion.
SIM-mode can certainly help with perhaps getting a pulse on a fast-moving stock, but it's not exactly an accurate depiction of how things might turn out if you were trading with your own money; both in how your orders will route, as well as how your mental edge will hold up.
So, my lessons learned for today are:
1). Sim-mode rules! It can be fun, AND it can teach you some valuable lessons if you follow through with a mental review your performance.
2). I don't trade fed-day with real money for a reason! Just when you think you have a lock on the tape, you can easily get completely spun around and tumble in the opposite direction.
On a positive note; I bought (NOT in SIM-mode) some NOV this morning at $49.50 as a swing trade. It just looked very Oversold to me and seemed to have found strong demand after testing the March lows. It currently looks strong; closing at the highs of the day with strong volume, could see some continuation tomorrow morning.