S&P 500 & other indexes - intraday. Plus chat

[Pat494]

Long here

Hit my target which is fairly unusual for me.

 

[tim3]

Nice one Pat.

Closed my long a little early as its a counter trend trade and feel the bears are still running the show,would not be suprised if we re-test the lows in the main session.

 

[Pat494]

Nice one Pat.

Closed my long a little early as its a counter trend trade and feel the bears are still running the show,would not be suprised if we re-test the lows in the main session.

Tks

That's why I asked what time frame you are using because it has been trending up since 3 am. I am guessing daily ?

Had a quick toe dip - in and out since for a quickie

 

[Pat494]

S&P just below 200 day trend line. First time for months.

Buyer's exhaustion ? Could be.

Volume falling.

Scared money is looking for sanctuary somewhere. Gold maybe.

People and big companies will be broken if they get it wrong and it could go either way.

US treasuries, that old bastion of last resort are paying such low rates.

 

[tim3]

Tks

That's why I asked what time frame you are using because it has been trending up since 3 am. I am guessing daily ?

Had a quick toe dip - in and out since for a quickie

Yes I usually look at the daily chart for the trend.

 

[Pat494]

I suppose it's a bit heretical but I think I prefer pre-market trading. It tends much more to go as it should.

 

[Pat494]

Got spanked with a too small stop.

 

[DionysusToast]

PMSL - just got in.....

Friend brought his missus round to stay with us before they flew off from the airport. I took him out for an Italian and the 2 girls stayed @ home and polished off a bottle of wine (or 2).

My mates missus ended up having a drama in our house, then she stormed off fook knows where. In the end, we had to take him to the airport on his own. Her location remains a mystery.

Now my own missus is not talking to me - angry through osmosis I think. Women + alcohol + a fairly innocent comment = SHOWTIME!

Will pass on trading today...

Women, eh?

 

[Pat494]

PMSL - just got in.....

Friend brought his missus round to stay with us before they flew off from the airport. I took him out for an Italian and the 2 girls stayed @ home and polished off a bottle of wine (or 2).

My mates missus ended up having a drama in our house, then she stormed off fook knows where. In the end, we had to take him to the airport on his own. Her location remains a mystery.

Now my own missus is not talking to me - angry through osmosis I think. Women + alcohol + a fairly innocent comment = SHOWTIME!

Will pass on trading today...

Women, eh?

Love 'em

 

[Pat494]

If it reaches 1271 then I will prolly short

 

[Atilla]

If it reaches 1271 then I will prolly short

Wohaaaa!

Get ready for Dow 11,000 - MarketWatch

 

[Pat494]

Wohaaaa!

Get ready for Dow 11,000 - MarketWatch

Gold is prone to long booms and busts. Before its latest dip, it multiplied five times in value over a decade, mocking stocks and other investments. Before that, it lost money for 20 years.

Some investors look to gold as a safe haven. It is one—but only when it wants to be. Just over two years ago, when investors learned that Greece’s deficits were much larger than officials there had reported, the metal followed U.S. Treasurys higher while Greek government bonds crashed.

Yet last month, with Greece’s fiscal crisis intensifying, Greek government bonds again tumbled while U.S. Treasurys rose, but this time investors dumped gold.

To study how gold behaves, we asked FactSet Research Systems to analyze the metal’s short-term correlation with two other investments: the 10-year Treasury note, representing safe havens, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index /quotes/zigman/3870025 SPX -1.00% , representing risk.

“Correlation” is a measure of how closely two assets track each other. A reading of 1.0 means they trade in lock-step, while zero means they are independent and a reading of minus-1.0 means they act like opposites.

What did FactSet find? Chaos. The correlation between gold and the 10-year Treasury has jumped above 0.6 at some points over the past five years and has fallen below minus-0.8 during others, changing direction several times. The one between gold and stocks has had similar spasms, with the highs topping 0.9.

In other words, gold might suffer from a multiple personality disorder.

Some investors say gold is a hedge against inflation. That is true of any good or service that consumers can be counted on to want in coming years, such as oil or poultry farms. Gold’s wild swings have made it a poor proxy for the consumer-price index, a key inflation measure.

Perhaps that is because only 12% of gold’s demand comes from industrial applications, according to the World Gold Council, a trade group. The rest comes from jewelry and investment (and the divide between those two isn’t always clear).

Still others view gold as “real money” —the one thing that will hold its value if governments create so much new currency that those currencies lose their value. Taken to its logical conclusion, this means governments would eventually agree to once again use gold as the basis for their currencies, says James Swanson, chief investment strategist at MFS, a mutual-fund company.

That is a fantasy, he argues, because some powerful nations have relatively little gold and some gold-rich nations have little power.

So how much is gold really worth? With stocks, bonds, rental houses and laundromats, one way to answer that question is to compare the purchase price with expected cash flow. But gold doesn’t generate any cash. Indeed, it costs something to store it.

Investors sometimes use the cost of producing the world’s next ounce of gold as an approximate floor for its price. That cost is between $1,200 and $1,400 now, depending on the efficiency of the mine, reckons Michael Dudas, a mining-stock analyst at investment bank Sterne Agee. Gold sold for $1,620.50 an ounce on Friday.

There is a catch, however: The cost of mining gold has followed the price of gold higher, as mining firms have bid up machine prices and countries with plenty of gold underground have raised the royalties they charge to miners, Dudas said. If production costs are a floor for gold’s price, the floor is made of straw, not concrete.

Of course, gold’s price is ultimately based on supply and demand, and demand has surely soared over the past decade. Gold-coin pitchmen have played off the angst and distrust left by a global financial crisis.

But ultimately, as Swanson put it, you need a psychology book rather than a calculator to decide how to trade gold, and that means you shouldn’t rely on it to do anything specific.

Investors who are determined to stock up on gold following May’s dip might wish to give gold stocks a look instead. Year to date, gold’s price is up 3.5%, but the Market Vectors Gold Miners /quotes/zigman/420125/quotes/nls/gdx GDX -1.00% ETF has fallen 9.4%.

Adrian Day, an Annapolis, Md., money manager overseeing $170 million, said gold miners look unusually cheap relative to the size of their gold reserves. Joseph Foster, manager of the Van Eck International Investors Gold fund, can place fund assets in either gold or mining shares. He said he heavily favors the latter now.


For investors who won’t feel comfortable without having some physical gold within easy reach, one last piece of advice: Forget about Krugerrands. Buy your spouse something expensive, lovely and high-karat.

That way, even if gold disappoints, at least someone will be happy.

Jack Hough is a columnist for SmartMoney.com.



Interesting article on gold on your site At.

 

[Pat494]

Something more relevent to our business

..


Stock markets fell in Asia and the US amid investor fears of a sharp slowdown in China, a weakening US economy, and the nightmare prospect of a eurozone breakup.

In early trading on Wall Street, the Dow (NYSE: DPD - news) was down 0.2pc and the S&P 500 (SNP: ^GSPC - news) fell 0.3pc. The Nasdaq was flat. The falls came after figures showed that orders to US factories fell for a second consecutive month in April, providing new evidence of a manufacturing slowdown.

In Japan the Nikkei (Osaka: ^N225 - news) 224 index dropped 1.7pc to a six-month low of 8,277.56, while the broader Topix index dropped 1.9pc to a 28-year low of 695.51 as investors in Asia digested disappointing US jobs data from Friday.

The latest data from China also contributed to mounting fears that the world's second largest economy is on the verge of a significant slowdown, after a PMI survey showed slowing growth in the services sector.

There is no resolution in sight for the eurozone crisis, which continues to play on investor fears worldwide.

Markets in Britain were closed for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee bank holiday but most of Europe (Chicago Options: ^REURUSD - news) was open.

The German DAX closed down 1.3pc as the country's policymakers looked increasingly isolated in their refusal to back EU rescue funds for banks, and the introduction of so-called eurobonds.

The fall meant the German blue-chip stock index dropped below the key psychological level of 6,000 points for the first time since January.

The situation was different across other European markets. Despite Spain's financial woes and a banking system feared to be on the verge of collapse, the country's IBEX 35 (Madrid: IBEX.MC - news) index finished up 2.9pc.

Italian exchanges were also trading higher as investors in both countries were buoyed by hopes that the eurozone might move towards greater centralised control of national budgets in the single currency bloc, after comments by Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, at the weekend.

The CAC 40 in France rose 0.1pc.
...
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[Pat494]

​

If it reaches 1271 then I will prolly short

On second thoughts it may be a pivot point for a pullback.
Patience is needed

 

[Pat494]

​

On second thoughts it may be a pivot point for a pullback.
Patience is needed

55/45 it's going up again imho

 

[Pat494]

should be clearer by 6.40 pm

 

[wekim]

Can you guys please critique this trade?

I don't know much about market profile/volume profile, but I decided to give it a shot. Two screenshots are attached both giving my reasonings for getting in the trade, forgive me if this seems basic, I'm a newb.

entry

1. the 15 min chart shows a developing value area circled in red. We get a price spike above that value area so I wanted to short the top of it. I expect price to retrace back to value or keep developing lower. The red line is my entry and where it hits on the profile.

2. the 5 minute chart shows a pullback in a downtrend. I'm shorting the pullback in hopes of trend continuing. I get in 1 tick off the high of the pullback at 1269.25. Price rebounds on a quick spike up but I don't add to my position.

stop
I was planning on giving myself a stop at 1272 which would prove that my profile analysis was wrong since price would be moving back up into the value area earlier in the day.

target
Don't really have a target, trade is in my favor now, could just be luck. Up to this point I've pretty much been trying to scalp using DT's product, but I figured I'd take this trade on a longer timeframe. Price just hit 1265.25 but just hit some support and bounced. Perhaps I should've just exited as I wrote this post. Let me get back to the screen..

edit:
exit
Attached a final 1 minute chart. You can see the volume spike that I mentioned above. I've marked out my exit at 1267.00 for 9 tick win; price was spiking up and I got scared and didn't want to give too much of my profits back. Stupid reason to exit, letting my worries/fears dictate my executions, but its really cause I'm not confident in my methods. Turns out it was the right play anyway as price kept spiking through and is now 1270+, but guessing right doesn't mean anything.

 

[Pat494]

Can you guys please critique this trade?

I don't know much about market profile/volume profile, but I decided to give it a shot. Two screenshots are attached both giving my reasonings for getting in the trade, forgive me if this seems basic, I'm a newb.

entry

1. the 15 min chart shows a developing value area circled in red. We get a price spike above that value area so I wanted to short the top of it

2. the 5 minute chart shows a pullback in a downtrend. I'm shorting the pullback in hopes of trend continuing. I get in 1 tick off the high of the pullback at 1269.25. Price rebounds on a quick spike up but I don't add to my position.

stop
I was planning on giving myself a stop at 1272 which would prove that my profile analysis was wrong since price would be moving back up into the value area earlier in the day.

target
Don't really have a target, trade is in my favor now, could just be luck. I've pretty much been trying to scalp but I figured I'd take this trade on a longer timeframe. Price just hit 1265.25 but just hit some support and bounced. Perhaps I should've just exited as I wrote this post. Let me get back to the screen..

edit:
exit
Attached a final 1 minute chart. You can see the volume spike that I mentioned above. I've marked out my exit at 1267.00, price was spiking up and I'm got scared and didn't want to give too much of my profits back. Stupid reason to exit, letting my worries/fears dictate my executions, but its really cause I'm not confident in my methods.

Chart 1 has about a 4 hour up swing as far as I can see and hopefully with my trendline method I would have got in and out again successfully. Maybe a slice of the next downturn too. Definately take profits imho as they can quickly disappear. Listen to your fears and train them to operate successfully.

 

[Pat494]

Yup up it is

 

[Pat494]

Yup up it is

Some more ticks in the bag