Posts Tagged ‘X’

Swing Trading Week in Review – August 6, 2010

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

The week of going nowhere!

After a decent GAP UP Monday morning the market followed through with…nothing really.

Low volatility and volume usually lead to "sideways" type price action and that is exactly what we saw this week.

DIA - ETF Swing Trading

The 2 blue arrows above indicate the "double top" area that we posted in last week's BLOG.

Monday morning's GAP UP brought us up above this level and ended up trading above it for almost the entire week.

Friday we saw the market GAP DOWN and then rally a bit only to ROLL OVER to the DOWN SIDE prior to an afternoon reversal which brought the market back over the "double top" area.

Here is a look at the 15 minute chart so you can we what we mean.

DIA - 15 minute chart

Monday through Thursday you can see the "sideways" price action we encountered.

Although the INTRADAY price action was great this type lack of follow thorugh can be very frustrating for Swing Traders.

Most (not all) of our positions did exactly as the market did this week…went almost nowhere.

Although the GAP UP on Monday and the Friday afternoon reversal indicate that there are buyers at this level in the market it is still a sign of overall indecision (so far) to move this market higher or lower.

There are still a lot of stocks that have great chart patterns that my be setting up for some nice trades in the week ahead.

CHKP, NTAP , ALK, BAX and CAL are a few that we will be watching.

The Steel Sector has also been very strong as of late so we will continue to watch SLX, X, CLF, AKS, and STLD.

With the decent rally (and lack of DOWNSIDE follow through) in the GOLD MINERS this week we will watch to see how these stocks shape up during next weeks trading.

A exception to the LOW VOLATILITY theme of this BLOG post this week was the Education Stocks.

APOL, DV, COCO and CECO all had nice chart patterns that setup some great SHORT trades on Tuesday.

Take a look at these charts and you will see great example of the PRICE and VOLUME relationship.

CECO - Short Swing Trade APOL - Short Swing Trade

Also as a reminder our next PVT (Price, Volume and Trend Lines) Trading Tactics class will be held next Saturday August 14th.

If learning how to use Price Action and analyze Volume to make trading decisions in stocks and/or ETF's is of interest to you then be sure not to miss it!

Our new Swing Trading BOOTCAMP, Swing Trading Strategy Class, and FREE webinar schedules will be coming out this week so we hope to see you at one (or all) of the upcoming events.

Until next week…Good trading to YOU!

Swing Trading Week in Review – March 5, 2010

Friday, March 5th, 2010

And UP we go again!

Last week we said we were hopeful that the market would give us a clear direction and this week it did exactly that!

Last Thursday's price action had us looking to the LONG side and this week started off on Monday with a nice UP day letting us know we were on the right side of the market.

The market stalled a little mid week but by Thursday the buyers stepped in again and pushed the market higher right until the close on Friday!

The rally was wide spread with most sectors having nice gains this week.

Retail (RTH), Real Estate (IYR), and the Steel (SLX) sectors continued their strong runs.

Several stocks in these sectors had GREAT price and volume patterns that lead to some very nice swing trade set ups!

X, AKS, KIM, O, TIF, and JCG all are good examples of these set ups.

The Financials (XLF) and the Homebuilders (XHB) also rallied nicely allowing us to take some profits in these sectors by weeks end.

So how do we look going into next week?

After such a nice strong run up this week we see some stocks that are approaching short term overbought levels as well coming up to overhead resistance areas.

As Swing Traders its our job to identify the clues that the market gives us and to put all the pieces of the puzzle together to make a decision.

We the fast run up in these stocks, combined with short term overbought conditions AND coming into OBVIOUS overhead resistance it would be smart to tighten up your stops at this point to protect your open profits.

Some of our more recent positions are just starting to move into positive territory but the positions we opened at the end of last week we will be quick to exit at the first sign of weakness.

Do NOT chase the market up!

If we continue to rally sit on the sidelines and wait for the market to either pullback a bit or at least consolidate near the highs.

Be patient and wait for the low risk/ high reward opportunities…you will be glad you did!

Until next week…Good trading to YOU!

 

 

 

Swing Trading Week in Review- January 15,2010

Friday, January 15th, 2010

What a way to end the week!

The indexes all closed DOWN on HUGE VOLUME today…The Dow closed down -100.90 (-0.94%), while the S&P 500 lost -12.42 (-1.08%), and the Nasdaq finished down -28.75 (-1.24%).

Some of the strongest stocks (CREE, MRVL, DE, RIG, APC, X, CAT) followed suit also trading significantly lower on heavy volume.

We were able to lock in our profits from last weeks swing trades by being prepared for a move we somewhat anticipated.

So what were the clues?

Well take a look at this weeks price action.

After last weeks strong up move you have to expect a pullback in the market.

Monday and Tuesday saw they S&P and Nasdaq pullback a bit while the Dow held pretty steady.

Monday we did note that some of last weeks strongest ETF's (OIH, XLE, SLX) gapped up on Monday and then sold off to finish near their lows.

The strong stocks also pulled back a bit as expected.

Nothing too alarming but a clue to POSSIBLE things to come.

The next few days painted a different picture from the previous up move.

One of the things we noticed that really stood out on Wednesday and Thursday was the amount of stocks and ETF's that were pushing higher on DECREASING VOLUME!

Take a look at the chart patterns to see what we mean.

Here is XLF (Financial ETF)…

XLF - Swing Trading ETF

And the OIH (Oil Services ETF)

OIH - Swing Trading ETF

And finally the SLX (Steel ETF)…

SLX_1152010

Now you can see how they all attempted to move higher on DECREASING volume.

Dominant moves (UP in this case) on LOWER VOLUME should turn on the CAUTION light for you.

If you pull up some of the individual stocks you will notice the same chart patterns.

Stocks like DO, RIG, APC, MEE, WFC, JPM and X all have similar stories.

Once we noticed the signals that PRICE ACTION and VOLUME gave us we were a little cautious getting overly LONG.

Now, no one can predict the future, and POSITIVE volume could have come back into the market the next day so we were prepared if that would have been the case.

We held our remaining LONG positions and actually added 2 more during this time however we DIDNT LOAD THE BOAT!

When todays (Friday) sell off happened we were well prepared.

We tightened up our stops on our LONG positions and when we were stopped out of some of them today we were able to hold on to our hard earned swing trading profits!

Now that being said the market could do an about face on Monday and head right back up.

But at least for now we locked in our profits and have no problem entering into new LONG positions if the market take off again.

When you see LOWER volume UP moves it means you need to start paying very close attention!

It does'nt mean to EXIT your positions or start shorting strong stocks in a strong market but it does tell you that things MAY, and I repeat MAY, change.

Once you see the warning sign it prepares you to TAKE ACTION if price action confirms the change (like it did today).

We like to see price action AND volume working together we we enter into our trades.

UP moves (in this case) on strong volume and pullbacks on lower volume.

When the two dont match up they are telling you something…WARNING WARNING…Sentiment MAY change here (even temporarily) so HEADS UP!

By learning to read and interpret price action, volume and chart patterns together you can see the "big picture", that way you are always prepared to take whatever action the market calls for.

Until Next week…Good Trading to You!

Off to a good start for 2010

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

So the New Year started off with a bang!

The markets continued to show tremendous strength during the first trading week of 2010.

The Dow opened the the week at 10,430 and never looked back, closing up 1.8% at 10,618!

The S&P 500 was up 2.7% for the week and closed at 1144.

Some of the sectors were absolutely on fire!

Steel stocks were on a roll and stocks like X, AKS, STLD, and NUE all had a big  week.

SLX, the Market Vector Steel ETF, finished up almost 10% for the week.

Energy and Oil stocks also continued to rise with stocks like BHI, DO, RIG,and APC having great weeks.

OIH was up over 11% for the week while XLE finished up almost 6%.

The heavily watched financial and home builder sectors also show some very nice upside moves.

The home builders had some great swing trade set ups.

XHB closed up over 7% for the week after breaking out from a nice pattern on the daily chart.

PHM, LEN, DHI and MTH all finished the week up nicely.

Swing traders should have capitalized on the financials as GS, JPM , and WFC all had BIG weeks after breaking their respective DOWN TREND lines.

Casinos, Airlines and Solar stocks also had a great week

Some of the other sectors, however did not fare very well during this strong week in the market.

The retail sector had a weak showing with a few exceptions like RL and BBBY.

The Real Estate sector also had a weak showing with IYR only up a tad over break even for the week.

There were plenty of opportunities for Swing Traders to profit from last weeks action and we hope you were able to do just that!

We look forward to see what next week brings and Good Trading to you!

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