joshdance

Let's hope I'm not being flip-floppy, but I'm long form 55.50 -- it struggled way too much to retest the lows, let's see if we can get to 60.

I have closed and am flat at 56 ... unfortunately I stepped away for a moment when it went to 54 the second time, and I could have possibly closed there for a better price. It failed to get above VWAP, but lots of buying pressure coming in here, and sentiment may have shifted for the time at least. So, I'm flat, and waiting for next thing. If it goes lower, I'll try to jump on.

Chart showing balance and failed auction after the open.

Hope you guys are short at this moment. I missed an early buy, then tried to buy again, and lost 4 ticks on it. Then I shorted 57.75 around 9:50 -- almost shaken out a few minutes later when it retested, but held through it and just closed 1/2 at 55. Target was 54, but the sellers aren't quite "running away" with it so I was a little safe. 49 is my final target but it really needs to slide to get there with prior 4/10 support at 53 or so.

In doing my weekly prep, I noticed that neither briefing.com nor earnings.com had AAPL on their "highlighted" list of companies releasing earnings this week. This defeats the purpose of having a web site even list them at all, as I'd rather not pour through hundreds of names. What the heck is wrong with these sites? Do they not know that AAPL is hands down, the #1 stock of attention for investors and the market, as far as single stocks go? What is wrong with them? Is there something very obvious I'm not considering here? "Good thing I checked the 4/24 calendar and saw that Boyd Gaming is releasing earnings, whew, almost missed that one!"

I would like to reiterate that I believe in the value of statistics, but that I do not trade directly off of this information. I am simply providing a statistical basis for gosu's comments regarding the way that the market behaves, generally speaking. Outliers are always possible, and stats be damned in such cases. But when the stats are similar in the prior 90 days, 250 days, and 1000 days, it does tell a convincing story about the "usual" pattern of market behavior.

I just redid some of my analysis using the cash session hours only, and they do not differ much but will explain in this context. The cash session runs from 9:30am to 4:00pm ET. This is 390 minutes. We can break the day up into slices of time several different ways. One way is to subdivide it three ways, as gosu has done. His times are flexible, but for the purposes of my analysis I decided to equally divide the day into three parts: 9:30 to 11:40, 11:40 to 1:50, and 1:50 to 4:00. Each period is 130 minutes in length. Another way is to subdivide it into hours. So, we examine one period of 9:30 to 10:30, the next from 10:30 to 11:30, and so on, and finally we have 3:30 to 4:15, which is why I made the reference to a 45 minute period. But for my cash session analysis is a final period of only 30 minutes (3:30 - 4:00). We will have 7 such periods in this scenario, the final one being 30 minutes. Finally, I examined half hour periods, the "traditional" MP frame of reference, and there are 13 such periods from 9:30 - 4:00. Attached are charts showing when the HOD and LOD is made. I left out the "neither", since it skews the scale and is really only relevant on the 130m bracket analysis, where the 2nd bracket (midday period) is about 80% likely to be neither the high nor the low of the day. The times are the times when the bracket closes. Also, this is for the last 250 trading days. It does not differ significantly using 1000 days (~4 years), or 250 days (~1 year). Though, the tendency to make the LOD earlier in the day, and the HOD in the final 90 minutes or so is somewhat significantly greater since Jan 1 of this year, for obvious reasons.

This is very astute observation, and since you say it this way, it puts a bit of a more objective take on my own experience: I have thought, though maybe not posted, before, how much more clear (if I may use that word) the morning part of the session is, compared with the rest of the day, generally speaking. There are always exceptions, but generally the market seems to have a goal, or a purpose, in the morning. Sometimes it's more of a continuation of the European session, which ends at 11:30am ET, or it seems to take a new direction, perhaps based on yesterday's day session. But usually, the business seems to be taken care of in the morning, and then in the afternoon, the market's more prone to less predictable behavior. This is purely anecdotal, but is also practical and also mirrors the opinions of many traders. What is the "relative extent"? This seemed a bit curious, but I assumed you meant that "most of the time one of them will be made in the AM," though I'm not sure what the single caveat is. So, I did some stats. If we divide the 405 minute day session into three parts equally, we get 9:30 to 11:45, 11:45 to 2:00, and 2:00 to 4:15, each period being 135 minutes in length. Seeing as how the 15 minutes after cash close at 4pm can have some very interesting movement, I considered this time as well, not choosing to close the day session at 4pm for these statistics. We'll call these AM (morning), MD (midday), and PM (afternoon). AM: HOD made 47% of the time, LOD made 56%, both made 12%, and neither made 9% MD: HOD made 12% of the time, LOD made 13%, both made 0.25%, and neither made 71% PM: HOD made 44% of the time, LOD made 32%, both made 3%, and neither made 23% If we dig a little deeper down to 30 minute intervals, the first half hour of the day has been the high 25% of the time, and the low 29% of the time. For the first hour, it is high 34% of the time, and low 41%. I used the last 1000 trading days for these stats. Changing it to the last year (250 days) does not significantly (+/- 3%) change the stats in any way, though the opening half hour is likely to be the HOD 21% over the last year, compared with 25% over the last 4 years. Consistent across all periods from 30 minutes, 60, and 135 is that the high is only slightly more likely to be put in during the first period than the last (max difference of about 7% more likely considering 30 and 60 minute periods, about 1% more likely considering the three period day); yet, the low is much more likely to be made earlier than later (68% more likely for the three period day, and 98% more likely in the first hour than the last 45 minutes). We can thus draw the reasonable conclusion that the market has had a tendency to search for value lower in the morning, and rally later in the day. We can also conclude that a trade initiated during the MD period generally will not be at an extreme of the day, and thus more subject to either a smaller profit, or an early exit as the PM session is more likely to make a new extreme. Nothing earth shattering, but the stats certainly agree with gosu's generalizations and probably other useful conclusions can be drawn from this information.

gosu, you posted this on another thread: You also mentioned that you don't consider a fixed 60 minute window (like the MP "IB"), for example, but that rather you have three general periods of varying length, depending on the day: morning, midday, and afternoon. First perspective on this: If we generalize this concept, a case could be made that the day session in and of itself should not be treated as a specific time frame (405 minutes), but that the market is simply continuous and only has one 15 minute break during the session close at 4:15pm ET, and again the half hour maintenance downtime at 5:30pm. For example, in the attached charts, is there an obvious, clear delineation from the overnight session to the RTH session? I've discussed this ad nauseum in other threads here so no need to go too far down this path. Second perspective: From a practical standpoint, logically the day session from 9:30 to 4:15 ET is a different animal. Days are a logical structure humans use, and due to the traditional nature of the pit session, the RTH session time is certainly "separate." My point is this: if you do not consider a 60 minute time frame significant, but have flexibility as to the logical structural three phases of the day session, what about further flexibility and simply seeing the entire 1440 minutes as a logical unit, or even the 5 days of the week as a logical weekly unit (we could go on here, but you get my point)? I suppose from a practical perspective (number two above) that it makes a lot of sense to divide it the way you do. But I thought about this idea this morning; the market was simply building on what it did in the pre-RTH session; it traded to points of reference established overnight. See third attached chart. So, why do we consider this as a new logical unit, and not merely an extension of what happened a few hours prior? I would actually like to hear you expound a bit more on your logical day structure, if you would be kind enough to do so. Specifically, the formation of one extreme, an expanding in the other direction, and so on. In other words, what does a day "look like" to you? Or, how does the market "work" in your paradigm of things?

How did I come up with it? After the one tick break and failure to go lower immediately I put my limit in at 73.75 which was the prior low. I don't know if that's what you're asking or not. So, you holding this over the weekend? I would assume so, since there's no reason to buy here otherwise, given the time of day and the very low possibility of going higher after 3:30 or so.

Took 5 ticks, have a good weekend guys...

resold 75, will give it 3 ticks, 72.50 is target

selling a very very small position here for 72.50 EDIT: scratch this at 75.00, BE

Accompanying picture........ Looking to possibly short here for a point or two on the way down to that support.

Was thinking the same about you buddy, hope all is well, we miss you!

If 76s give way here, not sure I would want to buy until the next logical support-- overnight 72s. EDIT: will say this though-- looking at yesterday's profile, 74.50 makes a good case for potential support, given how well 80 provided resistance this morning.. check out yesterday's profile.

Back and house full of chemical fumes but safe by now. This is the area I mentioned yesterday, and it's interesting to note how many times it's been responded to (earlier) and more recently today, served as an area of value. 78.50-79ish

Okay, got 79, flat, have to leave as they are about to do some renovations and I can't be here for 3 hours due to chemicals Choppy but got a few points, see you all later, probably late today or weekend.

Oh well, I'm closing here for flat, and let it think a little more EDIT: bought back 77.25, if it does not go now, 76 or lower is likely IMO.

Adding one here at 77.75, scale at 79.50 ish probably

Got a scale, 79.25, so again, no risk here as stop is at 77.25

Trying a buy one more time here at 77.75, small stop

lol yes indeed! But managing a trade from the perspective of profit allows us to let it figure things out and to test our hypothesis, a good thing. Attached is my chart showing the premise of the trade. Overnight R turned S, volume coming in at 77 (bottom pane), TICKs high (top pane). Not rocket science but it works, sometimes.

Well, I closed 2nd portion at 77.00, a tick below my entry, and still made a net +2, I'll take it! Now, must be careful as it seeks value.

Said another way, I would not be surprised if this ranges, but basically, given the activity overnight I am more bullish, so I was inclined to buy where they bought before, which was in the 76.50 to 77 area. I will see if this turns directional, but scale is done and stop is in place, so can only profit here either way. 83 may be a good scale, as would 85.