willd

I have seen several posts on possible weakness at these levels. Here is one more thought to consider. I ran a quick Fibonaaci time extension on the SPY. Today May 16, 2007 is showing up as a key time zone for a measurement of high to high, low to low and low to high swing points. June 6 and 7 are also key time dates. Price has continued to rise into this time frame, therefore, the proability of a reversal occurring within the next 2 days is good. Nov 28, Dec 14, Feb 22 and Mar 14 are the dates I used for the time extensions.

Hi Bubs - I am not sure if this answers your question. I have Volume Avg indicator on my daily charts. The chart can be set to any time frame for intraday also. I brought up radar screen, inserted a list of stocks and then inserted Volume Average. 2 columns appeared with this indicator in Radar Screen - Vol and Vol Avg. Bill

SoulTrader and Ant - I just noticed this week that Ant's version of MP is not plotting the last 2 days of MP. I have been using it for a couple of months now and have not had this problem before.

One other thought, is the 52 week high above or below the 200 day sma or ema. The 200 day average is a major average followed by institutions.

Many studies have been done on breakouts. You might be off, testing your theory on pullbacks to the 52 week breakout and then go long. Retracements give you an edge.

There are a few software packages that have built in functions for avid Fibonacci users. The Fibonacci Trader and Miner’s Dynamic Trader are two packages that I have seen demonstrated. These packages assist the user in analyzing and projecting price and time targets using Fibonacci retracement or extension ratios, and time cycles. The user is able to break the analysis down to almost any intraday time period. This article is to help traders learn how to project Fibonacci time cycles using an Excel spreadsheet or a Fibonacci time extension feature. The main difference between the features is that an Excel spreadsheet is based upon calendar days not trading days. The following are some fundamentals that you need to understand. These fundamentals can be applied to any time frame, i.e. minute, daily, weekly or monthly chart. •Swing highs and lows may be easiest to determine using a bar chart. •Select major swing points. Major swing points tend to have more significance in the bigger picture. •Dates that are further apart between swing points have more meaning. •A confluence of projected dates is more reliable than a standalone date. •Dates one or two periods either side of the projected dates may be the actual date of a reversal. •Price must be moving in the direction of the current trend and be close to a high at the time of the projected date. The attached chart is a SPX daily bar chart labeled with some swing dates. The gray ellipses represent major points. Note that since July 18, 2006 swing low, it is difficult to find significant swing points. 8/3/05, 10/13/05, 5/8/06, 6/14/06 and 7/18/06 are highlighted points. Additionally the chart shows dashed lines which represent the Fibonacci time extension between the swing highs and swing lows. The extension ratios are discretionary. This function was set up with the 100%, 127.2%, 161.8%, 178.6% and 272.2% ratios. The result shows two dates with confluence at 100% ratio of February 9 and February 13, 2007. The time extension function was applied as follows: Step 1: Selected two swing highs. In this example 8/3/05 and 5/8/06 – 100% result is Feb 9, 2006. Step 2: Selected two swing lows that overlap the swing highs. In this example, 10/13/05 and 6/14/06. Yes 7/18/06 could have been selected, but I chose the lower low swing point. The 100% ratio result is Feb 13, 2006. Step 3: Selected a swing high and low from steps 1 and 2. You could use either pair 10/13/05 and 5/8/06 or 8/3/05 and 6/14/06. In this example the resulting date(s) were not confluent with the ones in Step 1 and 2. What if your software does not have the time extension feature? I set up an Excel spreadsheet that projects dates using a string of Fibonacci ratios. This method is based upon Excel’s date function. Therefore the number of days are calendar days. Note the bold dates are confluent with the projected trading dates from above. The attached Fibonacci Spreadsheet doc shows the calculations for various ratios using the above dates. Another way to look for confluence is to calculate the number of trading or calendar days since a swing low or high to the projected dates. Feb 13, 2006 will be 144 (Fibonacci number) trading days and 210 calendar days since the July 18, 2006 swing low. 210 calendar days is a Gann cycle number. I do not use Gann analysis nor proclaim to be a novice in it. I am only aware of some of his analysis. Attached is a Fib Gann document that you can use for future reference. Fibonacci Spreadsheet.doc Fib Gann Ref.doc

Alexander Trading has a briefing room. You can sign up for a one month trial or a quarterly subscription. I signed up for the one month trial back in October and continued on for one quarter. I think Tom Alexander is an honest individual and tries to disclose everything he does in his trading. However, he will not call out trades in his briefing room. He wants you to be able to make your own decisions. At certain points during the day, he will give you his opinion and answer questions. What he uses intraday to make a decision based upon market development process are ticks, volume, breadth and divergences between futures prices as they reach highs or lows. I think the monthly trial is a fairly inexpensive place to start. His newsletters are an analysis of certain markets using market profile and breadth. The newsletters identify high volume nodes and key reference areas. Everyone has their own trading style. I have seen some analysis posted on this website that provide very good detail related to the ER and YM using Market Profile.

Great stuff Tingull

I have had an account at MB Trading for several years. I orignally opened the account for stock trading. When they started providing futures data, I added that to my account. Now I have come to realize MBT's data feeds are often delayed during fast markets. Additionally they have had multiple internal situtations where their servers have gone down. After talking with Infinity futures and testing their platform, I am moving my futures account to Chicago.

You can go to Daily Notes for Day Traders | Pivot Points for Index Futures and more and get the VAH, VAL and POC for several of the futures. Use this to mark your charts.

Option Week Effect on the SPX Have you ever found yourself caught in a contra trend day trade that didn’t work regardless of the logic? Be honest. It has happened to me, but I am getting better as to when I take them. About six months ago, I read an article by a seasoned professional trader who mentioned he would not take contrarian trades during option expiration week. So I decided to figure out what effect expiration week had on the SPX. I went back to the beginning of 1990 and divided the weekly data for the SPX into two groups – EXPIRATION and OTHER. My initial review found prices ranged from 3 to 187 points. The 187.79 point move happened the week of April 14, 2000. This was one month after the 2000 bull market top and it was not an option expiration week. The following table shows the SPX weekly price range for both groups from January 1990 through December 2006. As an example, the week ending December 15, 2006, the SPX range was 26.88 points. A 26 + point range has occurred 88 weeks since 1990 and happens less than 42.6% of the time (100% - 57.4%). Expiration week only occurs once a month, therefore, I used the weekly averages to compare these two groups. In the first chart, SPX Average Range by Year, both group’s ranges significantly increased starting in 1997. For 2000, 2001 and 2002 (Bear Market decline), EXPIRATION week averages exceeded OTHER weeks. This occurred again in 2005 and 2006. From the above chart, I decide to further divide the two groups. Table 2 lists the statistical data of the two groups from 1990 to 1999 and 2000 to 2006. The EXPIRATION’s mean exceeds OTHER by 2.14 points or 5.7% since 2000. There was an edge less than .09% from 1990 to 1999. Using only the data since 2000, the following chart illustrates which months of the year you may expect to find a trading edge during EXPIRATION week. There are seven months, March, April, May, September, October, November and December when EXPIRATION’s range exceeded OTHER. What I have gathered from this study is that EXPIRATION week range tends to be pushed a little further than other trading weeks. From my personal observations, once a trend has been established for the afternoon session, never trade against it during EXPIRATION week. For another time, I have done an additional study that breaks the Expiration week data down by day of the week. Can you guess which days of the week have the edge?

The attached article is one I wrote for a blog site about six months ago on TradingMarkets.com. This past week I took the time to update the data and the article to include all of 2006. I was not sure as to where I should post this. However, it is about the effect option expiration week has on the SP500. Anyone trading intraday during this week may find this data to be useful. Option Week Effect Article NEW.doc

How about a former pilot? Flew only single engine planes.

Today I took an elderly man to see 'We Are Marshall.' This man is like my 2nd dad and he was very athletic in his younger days. He remembers better than I the tragedy of the Marshall University plane wreck. We both enjoyed the movie. The theme was very easy to follow - but the movie was so emotional that it left these two grown men drained. Take a tissue if you go see this one.

Market manuipulation - Yes it exists. Do a search on Working Group on Financial Markets or Plunge Protection Team. 'President's Working Group on Financial Markets in the United States. It includes the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.' The stock market is inherintly bullish. Anytime a sharp move down occurrs on negative news - ie London bombings, Hurricane Katrina, 9-11, the markets recover. Markets need a push due to upcoming election fears - call on the Fed to print money and the PPT will get into action.