Next time J Powell Speaks

 Trade the chart. Look at the $SPY 1 hr. Was that a bearish set up? Powell was just the catalyst for a bullish set up. 

More on Overnight 50 Retracements

More backtesting on this.

 Weds last week: opened just below the overnight 50 and hit it in the first minute and eventually retraced to it after a breakout at 11.55 am (5 min candle):

Light purple is midnight open, dark purple is RTH, white is midnight open NYT and 830 news drop, blue line is overnight 50 fib. 

Tuesday (11/22) last week, just missed the 50 by a tick, but was very close. Short off open targeting the 50 was the trade despite the gap up. Got to the 50 in about 10 minutes (2nd 5 min candle). 

Monday last week - pop off open and then retrace to the o/n 50 in six minutes. That would have been a little harder of a trade than the rest, but now we have gone back a full trading week and it’s hit the 50 every time. I know on Friday the 18, it did it as well as Thursday the 17th. So from 11/17 to 11/30, the overnight 50 retraced during RTH every single time. The longest it took to get there was one hour. Most times it gets there within the first 15 minutes. 

Overnight 50 on $ES & Retracement during RTH

 The overnight 50 fib seems to be a magnet for price action to get to in the early part of the RTH. Will start chronicling this here. It should provide a nice edge for trading $SPY options off the open. 

Tuesday Nov 29 — overnight 50 tagged during the 10.25am 5 min candle:

Monday Nov 28 — overnight 50 tagged immediately off opening 5 min candle. This left a large FVG below, which i ignored to my detriment and got smoked going long on the retracement:

Overnight flush or rips.

 This has to be remembered. They both retraced to the over night 50. Yesterday, then today. $SPY 395s went from 62c to 1.34. Man, you gotta HODL. 

In the Green

 

What a month! For the first time since i started a trading account, i was able to make a withdrawal this week. Those big drop offs that can be seen on the graph above are all but eliminated. Man, success here feels so good. It’s been a long long journey to get to the point where i can make some money trading. I blew up two accounts and when I started my third, I was was making two steps forward and three back all of the time. Things really clicked in July and I got too aggressive on a few trades. August was my first ever green month. Then barely red in September (but never shoulda gotten red to begin with; i over-traded many days). Now, in October, the ICT videos clicked and it almost all came together. November should be even better. My goal is $5,000. 

Taking Longs on a Red Day

 

$SPY $390 was the area to go long yesterday and with three chances i let them all go. Why? Same reason it was hard to go short at $430. Fear of continuation. $BAC was also a nice long at the lows yesterday. It couldn’t break thru that bull flag consolidation from a few weeks back (and it wasn’t going to on one touch). It moved up $1 from the lows. You can also see the 88 EMA moving up toward the 142 which is signaling a change of momo. 

$BAC hammered off the consolidation pattern. What did you think it would do? Slice right thru it? Come on now. 

Green is Green

 

August has been my first green month since the penny mania of early 2021. I finally learned to trade. However, I’ve gone back to some bad habits since the first week of the month. The last few days are perfect examples — not trading the trend on Friday or yesterday cause of “oversold RSI”. I marked this one hour bear flag trendline in premarket (in purple). Once that broke, it was a put party. Here was an opportunity to take 20 put contracts and ride them wayyyy down into Friday’s low. I didn’t do that. Then i chased at the bottom and got smoked on the reversal. -$185 for yesterday after starting out +$140. I executed a nice bear flag breakdown later in the day and that’s exactly the trade I need to be taking every single time (see below). One problem i need to address readily is that when i nail a trade, i get back in too soon wanting to hit that high of winning again and it causes a big fat loser for lack of patience. $398.47 was a key fifty fib from weeks ago that $SPY kept rejecting and had i entered on the rejection rather than chasing, I’d have ended up really really green yesterday despite the mostly choppy day after the first hour. 

No reason i can’t finish the month with a $300 day and close the week and month out really strong. Watch the fifties. No trades without trendlines. No chasing puts or calls at supply or demand zones. If you wanna throw 10 put contracts out on a dump or LOD, probably best to take calls on that hard bounce as it comes into demand. 

Tuesday IWM Gap Up

 

On Friday, $IWM had an inside day. Tuesday morning, it gapped up big. Right off open it came down into daily 2-U trigger and ran about $3 up to $170.08. On gap ups watch for retest and break higher. These do work out nicely. I traded this on the way up, but I didn’t HODL to my PT 🎯, which was in fact, $170. 

Green Streak

 

Trading $SPY yesterday off open. I used the premarket candles to draw a trendline that was useful off open. The first 15 min candle rejected initially and I went short at $3.94. Within seconds it was $4.20 and I sold. 

—

Other notes: on fifth 15 min candle we got to NHOD and at a key level i thought going short was the play. I didn’t execute as I am working in a more patient mindset — observing and memorizing so as to be more automatic in the future. This was the right trade as a nearly $4 move down occurred within seven candles (105 minutes). Hit magnitude again later in the day and did not go short on it at NHOD around 2.30pm; once again, this will be memorized. I actually did try to go short here in TD acct, but it was inaccessible due to a transfer. 

Later in the day, $spy had a 2-1 on the hourly. That had a great move upwards. I was too focused on $appl and missed this. The move up was about $1.20. I was focused on $appl because the compression on the hourly looked better at the time, but in hindsight, it began to expand too close to the hourly close for the r/r to be worth it. It did, however, hit the PT. 
 

eleven months, one day, and a thorn in the flesh (volume one)

(From 12.1.2008)

To-day, we marvel at the wonder of the overcast day. Blankets of grey clouds fill the sky and through them rains down soft, beautiful, and perfect light. Thank you dear Sun for hiding your face and until Spring, let it remain anathema.

To-day, we also marvel at the wonder of the India Blend at Prince St Cafe, the barely 2 year old coffee shop on the the corner of Prince and King Streets, across from the Opera House and parallel to the Market House. While we've definitely had better coffee in the past (as long ago as 2004 that made its way from State College to Philadelphia while inducing sleepless nights and heart arrhythmias) it is the best the small (but strong) city has to offer. When India is on tap, you know you are Home.

Home is a funny thing (and by the way, I/we think I/we use the word funny all too glibly, but I/we will continue to do so until reprimanded by someone of higher authority). Just under two years ago, Pittsburgh was about to become our home and in the early part of this year, Richmond, Virginia was supposedly the very same. Pittsburgh tried to spit us out with its uncommonly warm March and subsequently snowy April (Who wants to watch a Pirates game in sub-30 temps? And to be honest, who wants to watch a Pirates game all?), but by Steelers' Season, the city had etched itself on our hearts and it's six-month winter (Halloween through Tax Day) was shortly seen as endearing rather than brutal; the drunk Uncle you can't help but hug, even as he cusses you out and spills beer and cigarette ash on you. Richmond posited a different set of problems - primarily a lack of consistent income and a rare and diffcult to treat neuralgia - home was a word it never wanted to attach to us; not to mention the coffee was far below mediocre.

And now, almost two years to the day (12.8.06) and after thousands of miles on the Eisenhower Interstate System we are Home, sitting gently, with jittery-coffee-hands, in the very same coffee shop where the decision to leave was made.

So we grew up in cultural-Christianity, where church was somewhere you went, not something you were. Where information preceded belief and ultimately behaviour. Where alcohol and tobacco were not used in gentle moderation not because the Bible said so, but because the church covenant deemed them immoralities that would damn you to The Pit. Where dresses were demanded of the women and missing mid-week service for a Little League game was the unpardonable sin. Where community was a thing based on likeness, not diversity united by Christ and everyone kept up their facade because, apparently, Sanctification, like Justification was once and done; cracks were not permitted here because we're no longer broken people. And that's why we don't listen to rock devil music, smoke, drink or cuss and that's what gets us to Heaven, of course, if the Rapture doesn't happen first.

Fear of eternal Hell cannot produce true saints, and we lived in that misguided preconception up until age twenty-six. Jesus was our get-out-of-Hell-free-card and we used him for what he could give us, rather than love him for who he was. This smacks of as much idolatry as the false gospels that have other names attached to them (ie: prosperity) for it forces us to love things rather than Christ and use him to get to our very own ends. Living in the blood-soaked atonement changes us and we will never be the same.

We had seven hundred dollars in our pocket and nothing more. Rent was due on 95 South 22nd Street in just four weeks and that was more than half of our available funds. Saving one dollar on Brillo Pads at Giant Eagle was something to be jazzed about; so was keeping the gas bill under eighty and electric under forty. Internet was free if the wind blew just right, especially at night. There was no Farmer's Market or coffee-shop of our liking but this was the price to pay to flip a city on its head we arrogantly and naively thought. We thought this was our purpose here, but time revealed that it was only Training for Utopia.

Humility was Session One and its Lecture is far from over.

"In Him, we live and move and have our being" says the great Apostle. The Body, to function properly, needs to function with the thickness of blood. Anemia will not do. Thick authenticity comes only with superior sacrifice. Our propensity to go wide but not deep shelters us from the penetrating cuts that will bind us to-gether more tightly; that will weave into us the spirit of Shalom and healing. When we go brother-to-brother and sister-to-sister emptying our souls to and for them in prayer, the blanket is woven with chains. When people matter more than possessions or power the Body scabs its wounds and another step toward Shalom has been taken.

Seven days short of two years later and we're only crawling.