AAPL scalp

A scalp trade this morning in AAPL that I missed;
AAPL opened on top of its 20-EMA on the 15min chart. While the previous day saw a sell-off followed by an impulse move and slight retracement into the close (giving it a bull flag look). So, we're looking for a continuation of the impulse move going into today with a potential test of the highs.
What I did yesterday was draw a Fib. Extension line from the pivot low-to high-to low which gives us a potential target going into the next day. It so happened that the Fibs projected a 100% retracement up to Wednesday's highs (score 1 for confluence!).
While letting the first 15-minutes take its course we look for 3 things; a place to buy, a place to sell, and a place to run (in case it goes against us). With the first 15-minutes gone I put Fib. retracement lines across from High to Low and see if the bullish retracements hold (above 61.8%) and to see if a projection coincides with my theory (test of PDH). It so happened that the 127.2% external Fib. retracement lined up in that same PDH area (score 2 for confluence!).
So, on this smaller time frame I was looking to buy the 200SMA, sell the PDH, and run from the PDC if it went against me. It was, at it's worst, a $0.50 risk for a $1.00 gain. Unfortunately I blinked and price ran without me.
This 2-min chart is a bit noisy, just let your eyes soften and it may get clearer :)
While the higher time frame shows the support you had (in terms of the 20-EMA), as well as the flag setup from the previous day.

scalping day

You never know what you're going to get during the day, but as time goes by the market begins to tell you.
Starting with the SPY gap down this morning (of 0.5%), the low of the day (LOD) was established at (one of) the previous day's support levels ($106.05) and after 6minutes of consolidation we broke higher. A good measure of whether we might expect a gap fill or just a weak handed attempt at the fill is to snap a Fibonacci retracement line from the Previuos day's close (PDC) and the open low (vice versa in a gap up). Once price broke (and closed strongly) above the 61.8% retracement from these levels we have to assume that the Risk:Reward better favors a long entry to fill the gap. Also, remember the strategy for scalping long on a gap-down that returns to the PDC?
Besides, it's Friday morning, how many traders just want to get a nut in their pocket and take the later afternoon off if we end up range-bound? Why not buy that gap-fill entry on larger size, take 1/2 to 3/4 at the PDC (remaining position at higher Fib. extensions) and start the morning profitable? And it doesn't hurt to have the Vix and TICK trending in your favor.
45-minutes into the day and traders then begin to realize that profits have been taken (is that a nut in your pocket? ;) and this isn't shaping up to be a trend day so far. We're now back to the PDC and TICK is becomming more and more negative.We so far had a nice TICK divergence that either got you out of your initial long position, or got you into a short position (if for nothing else, a scalp back to PDC). So, we sold off in a higher low that was also highlighted with a TICK divergence and we could have even reversed and gotten long for yet another test at that PDC!
We notice by now (and for the rest of the afternoon) that internals are mixed, so we should be thinking "range-bound" and "scalping." We should be thinking "fade" the extremes. By "internals" I mean comparative readings of the Advancing/Declining Issues, Up/Down Volume, TICK, VIX, etc.
The arrows circled throughout this chart highlight entries you could have taken which corresponded with TICK divergences (volume divergences as well). A number of these entry arrows are actually little flag setups, (can you see the flags?? those initial pushes followed by lack of interest in the opposite direction) While a number of the exits were based on moving average support on the higher time frame.At any rate, we slowly creep up in an ever narrowing channel (wedge). Remember what I said earlier about trading for a gap-fill when price begins to work above the 61.8% retracement? How many stops are overhead that could squeeze us up even fruther? Well, we're nearly at that higher probability upside trade, as measured from previous highs and the most recent swing lows:The daily is close to forming a right shoulder, but these H&S patterns were a dime-a-dozen in '08-'09
This week ended in a Harami candle pattern. Next week will be interesting!

trend day down

finally!
Nothing to get too excited over, just biding time until we get a dip far enough to interest buyers.
Today's sell-off extended to the lows reached on Sept. 14. which coincided with a 38% Fib. retracement from the lows of Sept. 3rd to the highs of Sept. 17th.
We gaped up slightly, consolidated, returned to the previous day's close (scalp short entry!) where the selling ensued. Notice how price consolidates for the first 35-minutes, but once the pile has been stacked price just slices through the previous day's low/close decisively. A Fib. extension snapped between my S/R pivots gave a good general level of expected exhaustion today.Remember what to look for to expect a trend day.

Here's a chart of the day and a lesson in when to recognize a short covering squeeze.

OPEX Thursday

Today's selling got me excited for an intermediate "top", but we need more proof of a turn in sentiment.
We have seen an increase in volume this week and we're sitting right at a gap fill that couldn't get more technically significant. A closer view of the SPY daily; Wouldn't you just love to see a spike and fail into $110?
I've mentioned before that I check the first half hour of Total NYSE shares (symbol is $TVOL on Tradestation) to get keyed in to whether larger time frame players may be participating. Here's what today looked like; almost as big as yesterday. Notice the largest spike in $TVOL occurred on Sept. 2, the bottom of the most recent swing low!
Upward momentum continues to wane. Here's the 60-min SPY (notice the "Slingshot" setup on 9/2, where momentum made a lower low while price made a higher low). Here's how the 30-min is setting up. It looks like a Head & Shoulders pattern, but we've seen this too many times before, we just have to wait to see if we test the 50-EMA and how it reacts on such a test.
Here's the intra-day SPY. Things to point out: My resistance pivot held twice, (2) a little inverted H& S pattern, and (3) a H&S pattern on the macd late in the day. Not highlighted on the chart we also saw a 3-push move to the downside. The first "impulse" move occurred with the break through of the lower keltner channel. We retraced and then a second and third impulse move formed our buy divergence in the 3/10 macd.

Let's check out the NYSE TICK in combination with the SPY on a 1-min. timeframe.
Things to look for are divergences between highs/lows in price and/or TICK which are marked on the chart above. As an aside, we did have a successful buy scalp setup that I have mentioned before.
I also keep an eye out to see if the other TICKs (Nasdaq, and Russell) confirm what's happening on the NYSE TICK. It's a matter of confirmation/non-confirmation and whether we may be in counter-trend, trend, or trend reversal move.

keeps going, and going, and...

The SPY closed on the highs of the day (highest close since Oct. 06, 2008!). Until the dollar can get it's footing, it looks like our lows will keep getting bought.Total NYSE volume today was the 2nd lowest it's been all year.These past two days in the SPY have left us with "P"-shaped profiles having single print buying tails, just enforcing how quickly the lows have been bought.
This morning the SPY gaped up, TICK was weak and getting weaker, price returned to the previous day's close (PDC) so a scalp short was in play.
The resistance pivot held pretty well throughout the day (red horizontal line), not sure what the 1p.m. fake-out was all about, but the momentum divergence paid off when price came back down under resistance. Later in the day the 3/10 oscillator recovered from it's bearish tone and momentum started working upwards.
The resistance pivot also worked extremely well with RIMM. After being rejected for the 3rd time, price stair-stepped back down to the lows of the day.While resistance for the day coincided with my pivot level, it also happened to be the 50-EMA on the 15-min chart (confluence of technical signals!!).

testing

We made an attempt at testing previous highs, only to be sold. The good thing is, however, that we're building value at these higher levels, so that we can break out to the upside with conviction/follow-through; when/if this happens is another matter. I can see a test down from here to see if we can put in a higher swing low:This morning's gap-down was quickly bought, and the strategy I mentioned a while back for buying a return to the previous close was in play for a scalp. I've been forgetting to mention this technique, but that's not to say I have scrapped the setup.
These aren't hard and fast rules of course, like waiting for price to get to the exact PDC price. It depends entirely on the way things are moving, if there's a better opportunity to get in while suspecting a play off of this scalping technique than that's what you base your entry on, take this morning for instance; On the 1-min chart the nr7 bar (purple doji) at the end of the tight consolidation flag was a much better risk/reward entry, suspecting a quick move to (and off of) the PDC. As price flagged again at the $95.75 range you can see TICK getting weaker and the lowest close of that range was followed by a sell-off.Something else I wanted to mention was incorporating Buy/Sell Envelopes on some of my charts (select issues I watch with frequency). They're very similar to pivot points, and they're adapted from the Taylor Trading Technique.
This day's Support on the SPY was $94.83; not bad, our LOD was $0.06 higher. Meanwhile, the Resistance for today was $96.13, the exact penny for our HOD. Here's the 5-min SPY, with the Buy & Sell envelope are highlighted in the bright blue horizontal lines (the other three horizontals represent Pivot, R1, & S1).On the chart above, notice the "Slingshot" setup. Price put in a higher low, while the momentum indicator put in a lower low, giving you a buying opportunity that has three criteria; Pivot Support, a Slingshot setup, and a bullish engulfing candle closing right on top of the 20-EMA.

Finally, there was FCX this morning. Price based around the PDC for most of the morning. Towards the break of the base we had 4 narrow range candles, 3 of which were nr7's. I'm keeping a spreadsheet for FCX as well, using this Taylor Trading Technique I mentioned above. The Buy/Sell Envelope for today on FCX are highlighted on the chart below with green and red horizontal lines. Price came withing $0.03 of our resistance level! If there's any desire to know these Buy/Sell Envelope levels, let me know. For now, I'm keeping track of SPY, RIMM, FCX, POT, and XLE.

SPY reversal

Just a reminder, this week is OpEx come Friday.
As mentioned in previous posts, when price gaps up only to return to the previous day's close (PDC) I look to scalp short, with a target of a previous support level.
The selling this morning didn't look to have strong momentum behind it (as evidenced on higher time frames), so I wasn't looking for an extended downside play.
Price quickly recovered and based back under the PDC level providing an excellent entry long:

last day of June

Today was nearly a mirror image day of yesterday. We gapped up and failed $93, price filled the gap and returned back to a previous consolidation range. Being that we gapped up and price returned back to the PDC a short scalp was in play and turned over a better result than it did yesterday. The remainder of the day was spent in a sideways chop.
Price is awfully choppy these days. Maybe next week will kick-start some momentum.

weak day

We did about as much volume today (third lowest volume day of the year, the second lowest being Friday's) as we did on Friday, with a little juke move in the morning that was fun while it lasted.
After gapping up on the SPY this morning price eventually worked it's way back down to the PDC where a short scalp was in play (target the lower keltner channel band). The lows on the TICK weren't very extreme after we put in our little double bottom where we quickly turned around. The highest probability entry was in waiting for the little flag to set up where we got stronger volume taking price higher. After that was just a mess.
We're sitting right on in a previous consolidation rangeOK, Treasuries are ready to go lower from here, right?

opening scalp

As price gapped down this morning it put in a silly little fake-out move down on weak (but not THAT weak) TICK. The better entry would have been to buy the pullback into the 20-EMA (on the 1-min chart below) at $90, but I waited for price to get closer to the Previous Day's Close (PDC), as a scalping strategy mentioned in a previous post. It set up a little flag/inside bar at that PDC level while also showing strong volume (dots above/below candle). Target was the previous day's support level. This was a big move that should have been held longer.

shake-out

As climactic as today's downside action was, the only thing it seemed to resolve was to shake out the "weak" hands, and seeing more upside isn't out of the picture.
To start with, the VIX came very close to it's most recent lows before bouncing up and seeing markets tumble.The Dollar strengthenedTreasuries are a dead man walking:The SPY set up perfectly this morning. Price stair-stepped the gap-fill.We have seen how powerful these moves out of consolidation ranges can be, and as strong as it was, price is now flirting with returning to that very same range!!!Price gapped up outside our keltner channel this morning and above R1. The sell-off turned around right at the lower band of the keltner channel (corresponding with 200MA, AND a momentum divergence). The next leg of the move down ended right around S2, corresponding with the highs from May 29th, that preceded a large momentum gap up into our current range (also present was a building TICK divergence as can be seen from my 1-min chart above). The arrows on the chart just highlight how well price reacts to the Keltner channel; and when price is trending outside the channel, you know you have an impulse move that can be profitable when looking for little continuation setups on a shorter time frame (flags, pennants on a 1-min chart for example). Two strategies I've mentioned before worked today as well. First, we had a First Cross short setup (we also had one yesterday which I forgot to mention).
Also, we had a gap up and a return to the previous day's close. Granted our move to the PDC was quite long in the tooth (and therefore, the probabilities are lower), but we had the low of the day up to that point did register a lower TICK reading AND we had a Support becomes Resistance setup ocurring at the time. Not to mention, this is a SCALPING technique!