shenanigans

A typical lull-you-to-sleep market all day long, than BANG! If you caught the end-of-day move today, then good for you. It's soooo frustrating to suspect it might happen only to not be on board once it does...grrrr. Price came within a nickel of the highs, a 1.7% move within 10-minutes, WTF! Of course I wouldn't complain had I been in the move :)
I digress.popped right out of a consolidation range and sky-rocketed to the highs!Anyway...something to keep in mind when the market is chopping around all day. Look for stocks that are trending (scan for ADX > 30, with nice, orderly candles) and find a consolidation range to jump on board. Here were two nice ones, notice the "3 pushes" up; push, consolidate, push, consolidate, push:Well that last minute push in SPY put us right up against the 200-day Moving Average
and right at the top of our range...here's the weekly, looks solid doesn't it?

up

Today the SPY (5-min chart) gapped down into S1, rallied up for a gap-fill, and trailed into a falling wedge before expanding all the way up to our pivot (which corresponded with a 50-EMA resistance on our 15-min chart). The pivot point for today is at the same range where price seems to be finding some equilibrium lately. The $84.30 area corresponds with the low of the April 9th gap, where price has on numerous occasions found support.
If you didn't buy the falling wedge breakout; A "First Cross" trigger (green vertical line) was given coming out of the high and tight bull flag (11:45a.m.EST). Another strategy I'm looking to incorporate is the reason I included the DMI in sub-graph2. The concept is to trade the direction of the +/- DMI when ADX ticks up from the low of the day (provided DMI is greater than 25 at the time). In this situation you would have gone long (two white vertical lines) at or near the highs of the day.Looking at the 15-min chart; price has retraced 50% between Friday's highs and today's lows (Fibonacci retracements not shown). It's amazing how quickly those moving averages get back to a bullish orientation lately. Also notice how price chops around that area that corresponds with the April 9th gap-up lows.
Watching the NYSE TICK with SPY price today we can see the open was negative (but not overwhelmingly so) but began to trend up through the morning. Following the high TICK of the day the TICK readings began to fall off, and once the upward trending TICK readings began to fall through it's corresponding trendline it was a good time to start taking profits. With the same approach, once TICK broke out of that downward trendline to the upside (coupled with the generally positive bias to the NYSE TICK) it showed renewed interest in the upside.So, after our little pullback yesterday, price closed near the highs of the day, leaving us with a piercing line candle pattern.

low volume swings

Not much to blog about today; a low volume day in SPY today. The 5-min chart gave us two "First Cross" entries; one short in the morning (red vertical line) and one long later in the afternoon (green vertical line, that would have tested your patience unless you put the order and stop in and walked away, which is what I should have done). There was also a "Slingshot" setup where price made a higher low, momentum made a lower low in momentum and price accelerated after that. In the chart below this setup occurs after the swing low that follows the green vertical line.On a longer time frame (15-min), the most recent 20- & 50-EMA crossovers have been quickly reversed.Looking at the daily chart; where's the momentum? Volume has dropped off, the 3/10 oscillator is drooping, ADX is showing low volatility (a precursor to expansion).

end, or beginning, of a trend?

We've certainly been in rally mode for nearly a month now. What should transpire from here is figuring out whether or not this is the beginning of future strength or merely a counter-trend move that will soon exhaust itself. Looking at the Daily SPY chart I wanted to highlight what has happened over the course of the last year.
Looking at the ADX for this market we can clearly see what has followed periods of low volatility (indicated by an ADX less than 20). Currently the SPY ADX is below 20, and that's not to say there can't be more upside, but it's curious because a low ADX reading is something that should give us warning of an impending volatile move or trend (in either direction), as volatility contraction precedes expansion.Taking it even further, here we are from Jan. '07 through March '08:
Looking at an hourly chart of the SPY, we gapped up and found resistance at a previous congestion area around the $84.50 area.As this rally threatened a breach of our regression channel, price has recovered, though found resistance at the midline todaySure we have one more day left in this week, but here's where we stand as of today on the S&P500 weekly chart, very much a critical point.