Market Update 7/16/2019 - Reviewing Yesterday's Pullback

 In yesterday update, I sounded the warning - that after hitting our upside target, the charts looked "sketchy", and that support on the DOW had broke, among other things... I also instructed traders to watch the $VIX (for any sign of fear), and "watch support at the 3017.50 (.80) level.

You can see where that support broke at the opening bell, and the results speak themselves. 

 $VIX reversed and gapped up as investors panicked, seen on this 5 min view, and this is a good example of how easy it can be to call a reversal, and I haven't even been trying that hard lately. I'm able to chart a little in the morning, blog daily, refresh the public charts a few times a day, and take it easy over the summer.  
 
  

I could go on and on about how I got it right again, but let's look at today's trade, and what to expect next week. 

Short term:

As you can see on the $VIX chart above the $VIX didn't break out - even on a 5 min view, and if you're watching the Public Charts area you already know, I remain bullish. The NASDAQ is leading as expected. DOW pulled back to a tradable bottom. Canada even formed a base, and today is short squeeze Friday. I don't have a solid upside target, but I see $SPX futures trading above 3009, and that becomes support. Resistance would be the previous high. As long as the $VIX continues to come down, no worries. 

We got the Federal Reserve next week, and that could be the catalyst for another shakeout, if they don't raise a 1/2 point, but once that news breaks it's going to take a lot of uncertainty out of the market. Maybe see a shakeout in Gold and Silver on that news, and that money put to work in equities? Maybe we see a capitulation top in Gold and Silver, followed by profit taking? That's going to be a tricky trade.

The Week Ahead:

If we don't see much upside (market) momentum, and a big breakout ahead of the FOMC (seems unlikely), then this is just a suckers rally. See wave B on the 15 min chart located in the Public Charts area. Wave B's aren't good trades, because they're usually choppy and hard to predict btw

After wave B consolidation would come another washout in wave C. I'd call 2990 (92) key support on the SPX, and a lot depends on if we selling into the Fed, or buying into the Fed.

I think we'll have a better Idea next week, but the charts resolved themselves yesterday, so I'm not too worried about it.

Happy Short Squeeze Friday, and have a great weekend.
AA  

Market Update 7/25 - Oops I Did It Again

You would think, "The Powers That Be", are watching, and trading my charts, but most pro traders are seeing the same thing, and that's one of the reason the charts work. The other reason the charts work is, "I'm just that good"!

If you look back at Saturday's blog, you'll see not only called the bottom, but also called for a powerful snap-back rally, and here we are. So, now what?

The $SPX broke out a little higher than my upside target - breaking out to a a new recent high -  but I'm not sure the breakout is going to continue much longer.

Yesterday's action was very odd, and things look a little sketchy here:

 1 Oil pulled back, at resistance.  Easiest trade in the world, if you were watching the $USO chart, in the public charts area. This morning we see it bouncing back a little. That trade is off the table for a while, I think. I wouldn't expect this rally to last more than a few days.


2. The DOW was down 50 points. You could say, "Boeing was dragging on the DOW", but support broke. See the updated 30 min chart in the PC area.

3. We finally got our breakout out on the $RUT. Cha-Ching!

4.  Short Squeeze in $SOX. This was definitely planned ahead of time (rigged). I could show you where the bid was raised above resistance - at the open - but then I'd have to kill you. 

5. A new recent low for the $VIX.


Watch the 3017.80 level on the $SPX. That was the previous high, and may have been taken out, just in order to squeeze the retail short sellers out.  We closed just above that level. And watch the $VIX like a hawk, for any sign of fear in the market. Hopefully I'll have a better idea of market direction, shortly. 

Market Update 7/20/2019 - A Look At The Week Ahead

It was kind of a stressful week, and still getting caught up today, Saturday. 

It was a wild OPEX Friday, starting with a higher high (off Thursdays bottom), followed by a pulled back to a higher low, and that's bullish. $VIX also ended below the previous high of 14.48, so we're not seeing much fear in the market. Unless the market can start making lower lows, then I'm going to remain bullish going into the The Fed announcement, at the end of the month.

The public charts area has been updated,

 and I've switched out the 1 min. chart for a 5 minute chart.

$SPX 5 min: Watch for another breakout to the upside Monday morning, unless it continues to consolidate (bullish), below my red line. That would push-back the breakout until Technical Tuesday.

Friday's action was more about Options Expiration, than anything. Bloomberg was seen reporting - BREAKING NEWS - that Iran has seized a British oil tanker, and that helped ensure that the retail bulls would not get paid on their bullish Call Options.

This is what happens when you hammer down the $VIX, instead of buying insurance... Complacency can be a dangerous thing, and bad things come when you least expect them.

The main reason for this update is to get you focused on the longer term, instead of a 1 min chart, which I've had to switch out in the middle of the afternoon, 2 days in a row now, because after a few hours of volatile trading the chart is a complete and total mess. I've gone to a 5 min chart view, hoping that solves the problem, but the 1 - 5 minute charts, are for day traders, and more for entertainment purposes than anything else.

If you trade on a longer term basis, you need to follow the longer term charts, and not worry about 100 point swings on the DOW, or whether or not "stocks maintained their 3 day winning streak", or , "stocks ended down for the week". This kind of reporting is a distraction from reality, and meant to keep people watching cable news, for rating ratings.

This brings me to the next chart - The DJIA daily candlestick chart:

As you can see on the above chart, the market has hardly moved over the past week, and continues to hold up in the top of the range, above my thin blue line. This chart isn't available in the public charts area, because unless folks care enough to follow this blog, they don't deserve the best charts I have to offer. That goes for the $VIX charts as well. Why should I give it all away for free?

$VIX continues to trend lower

,and as long as that continues, the "no fear" trade, as I like to call it, is on.

If you'd like a copy of my short term $VIX chart, and personalized charts, and updates, for 30 days, make a donation of $100. I'll even show you where the next major market correction is going to take place, and that could save you a bundle! Here's a link to my Paypal, if you're interest.

SILVER: Almost broke the stop hunt on Friday, but that never happens on the first test of key support. Dip buyers always come in, so I'm expecting a nice 2 - 3 rally. It may even continue to hold up into the Fed.

SLV - This is the 30 min from the public charts area

Silver contracts expired on Friday, and that's something you definitely want to keep in mind, when trading commodities. Equities markets are all about Options Expiration, and commodities are about contract expiration.

Good luck this week, Traders 































s

Market Update 7/19/2019 - The Week In Review

Announcements: I'm still locked out of my Twitter account, so I can't provide updates on the fly.
Support is non existent, and unless you have a phone number associated with your account, it's a real PITA to get your account back.

Watch the short term $SPX chart, for intra-day updates, in the annotations. Refresh your screen often, especially when when the market is moving, or you see me "Charting in real time".

Major Malfunction: After finishing up yesterday's update, I discovered the Public Charts area wasn't even public, so Wednesday was a total waste of time, and energy. At least I got it back up in time for yesterday's trade, which turned out to be a monster!

Yesterday's reversal: It was incredible, and coincided with the bottom in Oil, which I also nailed perfectly! Then news breaks - that we shot down an Iranian drone - to confirm what I was seeing on the chart. Uncanny!

$USO

  
$SPX - yesterday's short covering rally almost made up for the lack of clarity of the past week.
Until a down-trend is established it's hard to get short.... but by yesterday's open the trend had become clear, and the breakout was obvious. 

In hind sight, even after getting bearish on Tuesday, I was apparently not bearish enough. I think I was little distracted this week, with setting up the public charts area, and the volume has been light, but I think I can do better....

Calling tops and bottoms has become somewhat routine, but even after 10+ years of this, it's not easy trading into a reversal, and picking a pullback target, especially when markets tend to overshoot, and you got machines buying moving averages, and such.

If you think equities are hard to predict, try Gold & Silver and the Miners!

$GDX - I'm still seeing a broadening pattern, and a major bottom around this time next year, which lines up pretty well for a major top in equities, but we I think won't know for a couple more weeks.
If the Fed drops the ball again, it could be a game changer for metals.     

Short term outlook is somewhat bearish. I think we can hold up today, and trade up into a range, going into the Fed, but  I think this weeks pullback was the beginning of a larger correction

TGIF, AA

Market Update 7/18/2019 - Searching for a pullback target

 We've seen a little selling over the past few days, but nothing to write home about. We've established a little downtrend, on the 1 min chart, and if this continues, the trend on the longer term charts is going to start breaking, and that's going to cause downside acceleration, but I'm not expecting that.

I've drawn up a couple fresh 1 min chart views this morning: 1 is in the public charts area, and this is the other one (below). The larger pattern looks like a rising expanding triangle (aka megaphone pattern), with a 2981 - 82 target. Whichever charts works, we'll go with.

 It's important to watch the $VIX here. If it continues to break out, and gets above the 14.10 level, we could see a nice little washout. That's the short term pivot

$VIX - 10 min view:

 Tomorrow is OPEX, so I'm expecting the market to build a base this morning, and squeeze the short sellers out on a Friday as usual. Then we got the THE FED announcement...

The $RUT continues to consolidate bullish imo, and that be the sector that continues to lag behind the broader market.  Here's a 30 min chart, I may add to the PC area.

 That may not be the prettiest chart, but it's still working. The trend (in blue) is up. 

 Speaking of Trends: Silver continues higher, and miners managed to make a new high as well.
Commodities tend to overshoot, as do the leveraged ETF's. This is the norm.
$NUGT has doubled since June, and just pierced the upper triangle line, and if you don't know what that means, go back as read the previous sentence.

 And finally - NetFlix trading in the same pattern as the DOW. Amazing!

Public charts - auto refresh Issues continue -

I found an app to refresh the public charts window, but as it turns out, on a refresh; the page asks if I want to resent the data, so that's not going to work.

For now I'll try to refresh the charts manually every hour on the hour, but unless donations start pouring in... I'm not going to waste my summer refreshing short term charts for day traders. I also need down time, or my charting suffers, so I'm not really seeing a solution....  Maybe I can refresh the page from my laptop, without getting too stressed out about it? We'll see....

Good luck, Traders
AAA 



  

Market Update 7/17 - Publc Charts Area Accidentally Deleted

Yesterday, I accidentally deleted the public charts folder, and I'm still trying to get back up to speed.

This occurred around noon EST, when I returned to update the charts - 30 min. after (3009) support on the 1 minute chart broke - only to find the auto-refresh feature not working, and when I went to delete the broken 1 min chart, I must have hit the wrong delete button. Doh!    

If I had access to my Twitter account I would've put an alert out, but I'm still locked out... at least I had a down arrow on the chart, at the open, so no harm no foul.

1. To solve the auto- refresh problem I'm looking fort an app that will refresh the public charts window, when I'm away from my trading desk. I found an addon for FireFox, but it installed a bunch of junk with it, so then I wasted 20 min. trying to remove it.   

2. I'm not sure if the updated 1 min $SPX chart is working, but that should become obvious soon after this mornings opening bell.

There's obvious support at the 3000 level at my pink support line.

  


The sell was on a Trump Tweet, and led by Oil, so I think quant trading programs are to blame....
"Trump, tweet, china, increase, tariffs". The AI ain't too bright; this is old news. Where was the selling last week, when China was reported to have broken their end of the deal again? Why isn't China selling off on their lousy growth numbers?    

I checked the oil charts this morning and although the 50 day ma on BRENT was taken out, we see oil bouncing back this morning. That's something to keep an eye on.

Another thing to keep an eye on is Silver. Several websites - the usual suspects (motley fool and the rest...) - can be found on the web (news), pumping the Silver trade, calling it a "BREAKOUT"? Doesn't look like a breakout to me, but yesterday's buying volume was pretty incredible!

 Regardless of the volume, what I'm seeing is a rejection of the previous trend. The bullish channel is broken, and all it did was retest the lower end of it.  

I'm totally out of time.
Good luck today, AA 

Market Update 7/16/2019 - Long Term View

As stated in the previous update: Public Charts are now available at stockcharts.com (linked). The published charts are set to auto-refreshed throughout the day, and updated as needed. If you have a stockcharts account, please vote daily, at the top of the page. Donations are appreciated as always. PayPal link can be found in the top left menu, at 3xtraders.com.

My long term outlook

Today I want to look at some longer term charts, not available in the public charts area.

Looking at the DOW chart below you can see what looks like a broadening, or "expanding triangle pattern" (in black). This pattern is also referred to as a megaphone pattern.

This is one of my favorite patterns, and the one what most bears are defiantly watching.

Looks like the price action pierced the upper pattern line (at the 27,300 level), which doesn't rule out the pattern, in fact it's common for the price action to extend (whipsaw) beyond the boundaries of this type of pattern, or throw over the top of the pattern in wave 5.

This pattern definitely has some traders confused, and down-right scared, and that's evidenced by the way they came in an sold yesterday's open, but most traders are short sighted, and don't understand cyclical markets, let alone Elliott Wave Theory. It would be very odd to see the market sell-off on low summer volume, going into earnings, ahead of a dovish (The) Fed.

Next Chart

The chart below shows the Dow in another megaphone pattern, getting ready to take out the target I set weeks ago, and if I had access to my twitter, I'd embed one of my tweets from around June 1st, where I called the bottom on this market, precisely.

So the market is beginning to look a little toppy, but see the annotations I placed on the chart. This could hold up for a while, build a base above my pink line, and retest the highs weeks from now.
If the first pattern was correct then we could see the price action reverse and whipsaw back to the bottom of the range, but that seems highly unlikely. What's more likely is the market continues to hold up, and retest the highs, going into earning season, and the, The Fed Announcement. I think there's a good chance that's going to be a sell the news event, and an excuse for the bulls to take some profits.  

In the meantime, check out the Russell 2000 $RUT chart I added to the public charts area, yesterday.
Looks like we could see a sector rotation into the $RUT. Not really sure which sector money might come out of, at the moment, but you probably shouldn't be selling a dull market anyhow.

If market conditions change, and the long term chart break, then we'll have to regroup, but until then, enjoy the summer.
AA







   

Market Update 7/15/2018 & The Return Of Live Charting @ StockCharts.com

Exiting News: I'm publishing some of my charts in the public charts area, at StockCharts.com, including the short term (1 min) S&P 500 chart. Here's a link to the Public Charts area: https://stockcharts.com/public/1839526

This was my claim to fame - charting it in real time! Stockcharts has changed the rules, so I longer have, "Hall of  Fame" status there, but it would be nice to get it back. Don't forget to vote, daily! 

The Public charts area will be refreshed on a regular basis intra-day, so not only do you NOT need to pay for charting software... but I'm going to do all the work for you!  

I'll be switching up the public charts as needed: When the 1 min chart quits working, I'll replace it. When the short terms charts break, we'll go to the 30 min chart, and so on. If one sector looks like a better trade, than another, I'll include those charts, and I'll be adding charts as time goes on, so check back on a daily basis, and vote often!   For now we're watching Oil, Natural Gas, and the S&P. If you require a certain sector chart, comment here, or in the public charts area, and I'll try to accommodate you.

To Review Friday's Action:

We almost took out my 2015 target on Friday. If it breaks above there Monday morning, that becomes the st stop.

I'm seeing serious resistance around 3035 - 3050, on the longer term chart, also available in the public charts area.

Wish I had more time this morning, but I have a lot of charting to do.
AA

Market Update 7/12/2019 - Is The Market Rigged?

 Announcement: I've been booted from Twitter again. This time for calling someone a politically incorrect name (retard), after they trolled me yesterday morning. What can I say; I was having a bad day, on little sleep. Twitter is a poorly run platform, so I'm not sure when, or if, I'll get access to my account again. Took 2 weeks last time this happened, but a lot can happen in 2 weeks. In the meantime follow me here, and on LinkedIn. 

I'm thinking about moving to Gab, which is a less politically correct platform, geared to the alt-right. Alt right doesn't mean "racist", as has been widely reported by the fake news media. Alt right is a term used to describe the new right, who rejected the Bush/Clinton NeoCons, the rest of the corrupt political establishment in DC.

I've set up a Gab account, but not sure I like the platform. If you have a gab account you can find me at 3XTraders, but if we see any big market moves, I'll provide an intra-day update here, not that I'm expecting much, and especially on squeeze Friday.  

Short Term Market Update  

Markets continue to break out on light summer volume. When say "markets breakout", I actually mean certain indices... the most watched ones, such as the S&P 500, and the Dow.

To review yesterday's action - on the chart below you can see where the S&P pulled back, and continues to break higher this morning. Short term support becomes the breakout point. Resistance on this chart looks like 3015. If it breaks higher... the next major resistance I'm seeing is around the 3025 level.

Here's another short term view of the $SPX - a 10 min chart. Trend remains up, and will probably remain that way going into July OpEx.
from that point we could see a correction to the 2960, at my lower (hypothetical) channel line. As long as the $VIX continues to be hammered down, this rally can continue, but a word of caution...

The Rigging of Markets by the Banks and others

The New York Stock Exchange chart tells a different story. The $NYSE has not broken out to new all time highs - not by a long-shot - and this bothers me, because any hedge fund (s), with enough money can rig the most watched indices higher, using a handful of stocks, while hammering the $VIX down, and most retail investors won't know it.

If you don't understand how markets are rigged Max Keiser does a good job explaining it in the video (embedded) below. Think of the $VIX as your smoke alarm. As long as that alarm doesn't go off, nobody is alerted to a possible fire.


This rigging of the $VIX has been going on for nearly a decade, and most recently caused the implosion of the Leveraged $VIX bear fund the $SVIX, as I'm covered in previous blogs. Jim Cramer has written extensively about how he used to rig markets, and the banks have had been busted many times rigging markets.

In late 2017 day traders came in every day and bought the $SVXY, in order to hammer down the $VIX, as they squeezed the short sellers on light holiday trading volume, and the end result is plain to see on the chart below. The DOW lost 3000 points in 7 days. You can only manipulate a market for so long.      

The $VIXY is what most floor traders watch, and it's actually trading at an all time low. That would mean there's less fear in the market today, than we've seen since the crash of '08. It's obviously being sold, and this washout to a new low, scares me. I think no long term investor should be long the market at this point, because a sudden reversal in the $VIXY could result in another early 2018 scenario. or worse. 

As long as the $VIX continues to be hammered down this rally can continue, but money needs to come out of safe havens such as Bitcoin, Gold, US Treasuries, and global utilities. Those are your real fear indicators. I'll get more into that in a future update.   

The opening bell rings in 5 min.
Good luck, and have a great weekend.
AA