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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Technical difficulties

Either blogger ate two posts, or the cyber-gods are angry with me...or, it was the ghost of Tapeworm.

Whatever the case, it is frustrating. These were two, HIGH-QUALITY posts - chock full of witty insights, wonderful graphics, solid money-making opportunities, and just overall great content.

While I try to get things fixed, check out Victoria's BIDU trade today. And be warned, she could take down that chart and replace it with pictures of naked women at any moment!

5:30 edit - I reclaimed this from the angry cyber-gods. More later:

I don't let the broad market dictate the trades I take. I go short or long depending on the set-ups presented to me.

But every now and then I glance at the broad market. Here is the 30-minute chart for the Nasdaq E-Mini futures:



The first bar was wide-range and indecisive with a long upper-tail. The second bar was wider-range and rallied strong. The third bar narrowed in range and left a long upper tail. The fourth bar was an inside bar, the narrowest of the morning (NRM), and closed red. The fifth bar was also a narrow-range, inside bar that closed weak and left a long upper tail (bearish).

So there were plenty of warning signs firing off that this rally was in trouble and due for a pullback. The question was, how far? The answer, of course, is the magic Fibonacci extension of the recent lows to the high of this morning (look at that bounce)!

OK - you may not have guessed how far the selloff would go, and I would not have initiated a short of the E-Mini's based on these factors (price was still above the key MA's, and in the top half of the morning's range) - BUT, there was little reason to miss the warning signs of a rally in trouble!

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15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Today was just to easy to make money today if you payed attention.

AMD-short, BOOM-short, BIDU-long, GOOG long and short, SHLD long and short,USO short SE short at the break of top, GS-long and out, not all X style trades but a good example of the day.

I look at today as a do nothing flat day for the overall markets even though we had that real breakdown with the FOMC minutes but a rally afterwards brought the markets back up to nuetral except for the commodities of metals, mines and oils and oil services. We shorted these heavy today and covered 68% of the positions.

I hope you guys post some good trades that we missed!

Michael said...

good post man. I was wondering what happened to your site. I saw the original post in BlogLines but when I clicked through... nada.

Trader-X said...

I think in the very near future I will be forced to convert to the new blogger platform. I hope the whole blog does not vanish/get lost...I have read MANY horror stories.

If so, maybe I can make a post once a quarter on Trader Mike.

Victoria said...

Did you try the new chart download method?

Trader-X said...

Victoria - yes. I think it formats differently in new blogger vs. old blogger because it looked the same.

Maybe after I upgrade. Provided my blog is still here!

Victoria said...

If your blog disappears when you convert, you can always fill me in...uhm I mean fill in for me over at Victoria's Box.

: )

Anonymous said...

X how did you draw that Fib retracement on the Nasdaq Emini?

From the low of the 26th to today's high?

Thanks,
XO

Anonymous said...

My oh my, 2007 looks to be interesting.

Trader-X said...

xo, I just drew it from the recent lows - which I think was the day before or after Xmas (I don't have charts in front of me) - to this morning's high.

Granted I was doing it after the fact, which is why I said you may not have guessed how far the selloff would go, but you should not have missed the warning signs that a selloff was coming...

Victoria, you are a bad person. Bad for the way you make my readers think...

franco said...

trader-x, can you explain how you got your fib levels?

Anonymous said...

He just did in the comment above.

Anonymous said...

Okay, its 9:15 eastern time, Thursday, Jan. 04. The market opens in 15 min.

After the gap down in oils and gas I will cover the rest of the short position just to bank profits and keep with trading rules.

All three" Crude, gas and distiliates are expected to have a build of about 1 million barrels each. I just don't know for sure so it's time to take profit and deal with new positions to trade around later.

Look for possible gains today in the investment banks after a small pull back, also keep an eye on the comercial builders and mortage companies like FNM

Anonymous said...

Use Fibonacci?
Fibonacci only works when no real market driving forces are present in the market but we have all kinds of economic data pop up every moment.
I think Fibonacci is foolish methods for predicting the future. I might as well throw dice and my crystal ball will work better.
걍 꿈동산이나해라

Anonymous said...

lol. You have a lot of traders here proving you wrong, not the least of which is X who had 100's of charts on this blog alone.

Why are you hear reading if you don't like the trading style?

Anonymous said...

Trader X - if you are concerned about your blogger content (and you might have a reason) you could consider setting up a wordpress site on your own server (or a friends) and then do a "convert from blogger" where all your data should come over in a functional form - you could continue to use wordpress at that point or just use it as a back up method. There are also sites which allow you to download all the text and content from websites just by entering the website name - but I'm not sure how that would work with blogger.