Fully covered short @4362

I am all flat right now, but reduced loss from this morning's trade so at least something was achieved.

The pre-open levels were actually a long ambush zone from the lows that were quoted on Monday (at least on my broker) to yesterday's highs: I failed to see that, completely my fault.

Momentum on the upside is really amazing: not one, single, long lasting, retrace down yet during market hours. Let's see what happens in the afternoon.

Update: here is the ambush long mentioned above, which I missed completely, we hovered in the 4300s-4310 pre-open. Oh well, something learned...

Covered half of short at 4352

Pulled stop down to 4376.

Second helpings

I am short again at 4371 and 4363, basically around the same level I got stopped out earlier. I am going to give this another chance, as I really should have been more aggressive on my previous stop.

Divergence on the hourly is forming, momentum seems to be fading, and while the FTSE made a double top, the ES did not follow and failed an ambush short area.

I am cautious, so I'll play this conservatively, I am not here guessing tops...

Stopped out of short

I got stopped out, and the only good part of this trade was that I was in small and for a daytrade, so the loss was neglibile. I am seeing the hourly intraday on positive momentum once again...

The regret is that perhaps I should have been more aggressive on the stop, given that we had some data out this morning. I might try to reduce my losses with a scalp later on.

Short @ 4337

I am short at 4337, 10% fill, stop at 4365, for a scalp or a day trade, hence the larger stop.

Very cautious for now as you can see, intradays are mixed.

Update: I have moved my stop slightly to 4372, although 4365 has not been touched yet.

Play for Wednesday, May 6th

The FTSE held steady yesterday and touched a few highs: however, after-hours the US markets began to fail in momentum, and Asia has hold held ground.

We are quoted in the 4310s to 4320s currently, 25 minutes from the open, and I am seeing:

• Negative momentum from the 1 hourly to the 4 hourly (where it's in works).
  
• We are still within the main ascending channel.
• Momentum on daily and weekly is still positive.

I would wait for strength on the longer intradays mentioned above for a long trade. As we did reach some key levels in a fast manner (and across a 3-day weekend), a retrace down might frankly be in the works.

As noted yesterday, we have several support/resistance levels on the way down, and also one key area around the 4140 to 4160s which we broke through last week. If I had to look for a level to get short, I'll be watching anywhere between the 4330s to the 4350s for weakness.

A personal note

Just last week I began to actively comment on a very popular market blog: xTrends. While I don't believe my posts were ever offensive, they were perhaps a little critical of the permabear argument.

Today, I was banned from such site. I think it's a shame as many new traders do rely on others to learn the ropes, but I can see that the blog owners have now been inundanted with belligerant comments regarding their bear calls over the past two months.

I hope that users can judge for themselves the quality of a blog. Personally, I don't see xTrends as the creme de la creme out there (not recognising this move in March was an amateurish mistake), but they have had some good calls during the bear run (but so did my 5 year old nephew).

Most importantly, I would advise new traders that recognising one's mistakes is an essential step in trading (and much more): blaming others, the market, the government, "manipulators" and so on for getting stopped out is childish and borderline scary. And the owners of xTrends have been doing so since this rally began.