NYSE TICK

I'll admit and you probably could feel it, although I'm expecting one last, strong shakeout move before a substantial leg down that would be much stronger and moving than anything we've seen since late July of 2011, I was a bit thrown this morning as the momentum in the market picked up, but without a good reason (with regard to what moves a market emotionally: price levels, resistance levels, short squeezes, etc.). The 3C support wasn't at all like it should have been if this were the start of the move, leading indicators weren't where they should have been. I really felt a LOT better when the market started reacting to the 3C intraday negative divergences and when I realized that this was a buy the news, sell the event (Obama's speech). As a day within the set up, it was fine, it's still very much in scale.

I will admit though, the early action, although seeming bullish, just didn't have the support it needed and for a brief few minutes I was considering whether something had really changed and it was time to sell all the leveraged longs recently bought and take whatever shorts were still in range. Luckily things straightened out and that scare-that is a scare for me- was over.

In any case, I was just looking at the NYSE TICK for today, you can learn a lot from the TICK chart, especially if you are trading intraday or what we use to call day trading.

Here's something I noticed I thought was interesting given the last post.

This is the number of NYSE stocks closing that 1 min bar up minus those closing that 1 min bar down.

 If you look from left to right, the early momentum was running in the 750 range which is moderate, nothing exciting, pretty common, as momentum continued to move up and the market didn't pull back, it started to take on the look of a short squeeze (although there was no reason for one here), as we approached the intraday highs we saw a couple of +1000 hits on the tick, at the top it was back down to 750. Between the 3C negative divergence there or any other indicator you want to use that works and the TICK falling off to 750 at new highs for the day, it's a pretty plain sign that the move up is done for now.

 This is later in the afternoon in which the market looked pretty hum-drum, there were a few moves, but nothing that was a real spark, but even in this hum-drum environment (as compared to the earlier momentum) we saw several +1000 Ticks and even a +1250, I find that interesting considering the last post I put up.

This gives you an idea of the TICK during today's session, early momentum was around 750 or so, that's really not impressive, then a couple of 1000s and back to 750 at the top. To give you an idea, a flat range hits 750. Later in the day though, we weren't hitting new highs or breaking anything technically interesting, but we were hitting a lot more +1000s and +1250.

Just something I found interesting for late in the session on a Friday when most of Wall Street are already pulling in to the Hamptons.