Thursday, October 10, 2013

VIX / VXX UVXY / XIV Follow Up Charts....

This is a follow up for the last position, VXX November $15 Calls and the P/L report for the VXX Put position entered yesterday just after 1 p.m... and closed this morning at 10:45 a.m.



For the VXX Put entered yesterday with a cost basis of $1.90 and a fill of $2.66, the P/L came out to a gain of +40% for just over 4 hours of market exposure.


Being such a short term position I could have easily gone with a weekly like next week's expiration, but I always prefer to buy quality rather than a lotto ticket (and in the money)...

VIX Futures
 The 15 min negative developing this week in VIX futures along with last night's sell signal, really are solidifying the confirmation of an upside market move as we have been expecting.  This tells me any move in the VIX toward filling the gap, isn't likely to be much more than that and further confirms our short term expectations of market upside as the VIX trades opposite of the market.

The 5 min VIX Futures went negative yesterday (this is more of a timing timeframe than probabilities for a strong move), so this fits very well with my custom Demark Inspired Buy/Sell indicator that gave a sell signal in last night's Daily Wrap. The leading negative distribution is pretty bad here and is migrating to the 15 min chart, but short term (intraday), the leading positive in white suggests some move to the upside which fits my expectations for the market to see an intraday pullback.



 VIX Futures 1 min intraday, as you can see, the VIX futures made a new lower low on the day as I suggested as an entry point in today's VIX Call post.

Right now we have a relative positive divegrence there. This divergence is starting to improve as I write.

I'll compare VXX (VIX short term futures) to UVXY (2x leveraged short term VIX futures) to XIV (VIX inverse short term futures) as well as VIX futures above. We have several different timeframes, all different assets trading unique volume and all different management companies for each of the assets except the actual futures.

Yesterday's distribution saw a head fake move confirmed by the leading negative divergence/distribution which is something we see about 80% of the time just before a reversal, thus the reason I mentioned it as an entry for today's position.

As you can see, price did break to new intraday lows as I suggested, again as a lower risk entry for a new position.

 UVXY 1 min from negative at yesterday's highs to the gap down and a relative positive at today's new intraday lows.

UVXY 2 min intraday confirms the distribution at the head fake / false breakout yesterday as well as a leading positive divegrence today at the presumed head fake run on stops to a new intraday low (the suggested entry area)

Even now these charts are improving suggesting accumulation of additional stops hit below the former intraday low.

XIV 2 min is the inverse of VXX , thus yesterday's head fake was a stop run rather than a false breakout, you can see the 3C accumulation of the low confirming the head fake.

Today we have what looks like a false breakout and a negative divegrence confirming all of the charts above.

This chart has improved since its capture.

I still like VXX calls or long or UVXY long.

This looks like a good, low risk entry, a stop can always be placed a standard deviation or so below the normal daily range or wherever you chose.

Opening New Position: VXX Nov. $15 Calls

This is a VERY speculative trade, likely a day trade and that's why I need the leverage.

I suspect the market will pullback intraday at least some, maybe a gap fill although I don't think that a gap fill is necessary as the gap would be filled eventually on the way back down.

I think you could use UVXY (the 2x leveraged version of VXX and there are numerous other ETNs that are variations). I didn't like the liquidity for the UVXY calls so I'm choosing VXX.

I fully expect this will be closed by the end of today. If you are going to enter this trade (or long UVXY) know that it is very speculative AND MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU STAND REGARDING REGULATION "T"

For me this position will be about half the size of a normal options or speculative position, it's just for an intraday market pullback.

***To lower risk, you might consider ONLY entering the position if VXX were to make a stop run under intraday lows of  ($15.18) which lowers your risk and gives you a better entry with lower premiums for options (most likely). For UVXY longs, the intraday low would be $35.95.

I don't have the time to watch it for these moves so I'll enter now, I will get some charts up momentarily so you might want to wait and see what they look like, JUST REMEMEBER THIS IS A VERY SHORT TERM PLAY.

Market Update: Initial Impressions

First, there's EXCELLENT 3C confirmation, however as to that pullback, there are some initial intraday signs in the averages, the Index Futures, the VIX of course and the TICK (intraday).

This isn't going to change any of my positioning,, but it may very well open up some great opportunities on the long side (short term duration trades of a day to several days), first thing first though, we have to see what a pullback looks like and where the opportunities are.

I continue to hold the trading positions in both URRE as well as AA.

Closing Yesterday's VXX November $17 PUT

A.M Update

I'm back, late as usual from the doctor as I had to fill out a lot of paper work as he merged with a new practice, surprise, surprise.

I'll be updating soon, the only thing I'm looking at immediately is yesterday's new VXX November $17 Put, it's at a nice gain and I have a feeling it's going to lose momentum as it breaks under the a.m. lows, I'll likely be closing that position very soon. Of course I'll post it before I do, but it could be any minute.


Pre Market Futures

It looks like the Carry's have gone crazy, USD/JPY and the AUD & EUR vs. JPY crosses as well have all been on a tear since Tuesday's lows of the week... The story is of course that Obama is willing to negotiate and has a meeting set with Republicans this morning. In any case, those 5 and 15 min positive divergences building in the carry crosses and Index futures all week finally have a headline that  is kicking them in to second gear...

USD/JPY 5 min showing the week's lows on Tuesday roughly 5:45 p.m. to present.

There's some question in my view whether this will hold without a decent correction...
1 min USD/JPY looks like it wants to correct.

ES is up about 17 points as of right now 7:15 a.m. which is ironically just about in line with the Capital CONTEXT's model which was between the high teens and low 20's, that's based on things like Credit outperforming ES/SPX futures as well as Carry trades, and other institutional assets.

I seem to remember a Goldman recommendation I believe Monday to short the USD/JPY, remember I never claimed they were dumb, I claimed they were trying to buy USD/JPY and reminded everyone that Goldman isn't in the business of giving out free advice so whatever they rec'd, do the opposite as this makes something like the last 8 rec'd failures as this particular one is set to stop out any moment now.

The short term Debt Ceiling increase that's being discussed (4-6 weeks) seems doable, but it will be attached to framework for a longer negotiation and I believe the Democrats in the Senate said they won't accept framework that puts Obamacare on the discussion list so this small step still has to span a very wide gap, I'd just say beware of volatility.

As far as other assets...Those 5 and 15 min positive divergences that have been growing in Index futures look pretty good, the NASDAQ which looked the worst of all now looks like this...
NASDAQ 100 futures (NQ) looks to have strongly accumulated the lows yesterday which was a theme seen broadly across the market.

However looking at the intraday 1 min overnight, it too looks set for at least some correction.
NQ 1 min

Although the R2K and ES 15 min futures look great and look like any correction will be short lived...
TF 15 min also very strong...

Both ES and TF 1 min charts also look set to correct soon.

Also on the correction bandwagon, 10 and 30 year Treasury futures which been heading down all night look set to correct to the upside with positive divergences building in.

Crude looks like a bear flag, it has made up ground overnight, but I suspect it at least corrects a bit before moving higher, again it needs a bigger base/footprint for any sustainable upside run, but the news that I talked with some of you about is that crude went up with the USD overnight so long as the USD went up as part of a carry trade which it did.

Gold and silver didn't get hit as hard as I would have thought, in fact silver is a little bit, "all over the place".

So we have an interesting start to the day, but regular hours are really what I'm most interested in.
ES 15 min chart leading positive which is good for the near term outlook, but price does not need much of a correction to widen that base or footprint which would be best in my view for a more sustainable upside bounce as we have been looking for to set up some final shorts.


I have an 8:15 Dr. appointment, it's a short one, but he always seems to run late, in any case I should still be back before the open.

I might look at taking some profits on call options if there's strong early momentum, watch the TICK for signs of the momentum fading or RSI or even ROC applied to price. We can always re-enter calls at a lower price if the market looks set to correct.

See you soon...









Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Daily Wrap

After looking at just about everything I need to look at (except futures, as you know I like to give them a little time), I feel pretty good about today's decision and the reason why.

Here we can clearly see what I was talking about as far as a "larger footprint" in the reversal process.

 Intraday (1 min) ES/SPX Futures shows the intraday negative divegrence from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., this is very much in line with the kind of pullback that gives us more of a "U" shaped bottom and should give us stronger positive divergences on the upside as pullbacks are expected to be accumulated.

Almost every asset I looked at had this same intraday behavior including the market averages.

Also interesting was the same behavior being confirmed in an asset that trades opposite the market, the VIX or in this case the VXX's 2x leveraged version, UVXY.

Earlier there was a negative divegrence which I used to open a VXX put which is already at a double digit gain today, but I think we get another chance tomorrow as short term trade would suggest some upside here (downside in the market), however...

The longer 5 min chart has so much damage that I doubt any intraday upside can sustain itself, leaving the VXX / UVXY open to being shorted again and the market putting in that larger rounding reversal process.

Also suggesting the VIX has had it, my Custom DeMark inspired buy/sell indicator gave a rare signal today.
You can see the last buy signal to the left and today with a long upper wick candle, a sell signal on the VIX which trades opposite the market.

The NYSE TICK suggests the same probability, at least the first part of it...
 There was a lot of volatility in the TICK today from about +1250/-1250, The EOD or last 2 hours show a clear downtrend. However if we look at my Custom TICK Indicator vs the SPX...

The overall trend for the day is positive suggesting short term down turn which should do something like I suspected in this last post and this larger trend signal should bring us back up just as the longer UVXY chart suggests as well as the longer 3C charts in most assets and averages, it's almost universal in every asset I looked at.

We can even look at the VIX futures and get the same feel...
 the short term futures suggest intraday upside, but this is not a strong signal like the 15 min below...

This is in a leading negative divergence and has much higher probabilities for the longer term, so taking both in multiple timeframe analysis along with other assets, the implication is the market pulls back a bit, but in a healthy way and finishes strong.

This is what the same pair of  signals look like in the SPY.
 SPY 1 min intraday strong all day, with a relative negative in the late afternoon. I would suspect price would move as I drew with the green arrows, there's always the probability of a shakeout/ stop run below today's intraday low just before an upside reversal .

However the probability of that upside turn went way up as the 30 min SPY chart locked in a positive divergence today, this is a very meaningful signal.

Every single asset or indicator above all suggest the exact same thing and I could give you 50 more right off the top of my head.

There was no Dominant Price Volume Relationship today like there was yesterday, yesterday's being a reversal relationship and extremely dominant, price down, / volume up, of the 4 possibilities, this one suggests a selling climax occurred yesterday. Today's closing daily candlesticks suggest the same...

***On all 3 charts below I've drawn in an example candle for tomorrow's closing candle, it is just an example***
 Daily SPX closing candlestick pattern is a bullish Harami reversal with today's candle being a Doji which increases the probabilities. I drew in (#3) an example candle which would be a confirmation candle, a bullish engulfing candle, however I should have drawn the open (lower end of the candle)
 below today's intraday low, that would give us not only the wider foot print, but the head fake move as well.

The Dow-30 is also a text book bullish  Harami reversal pair (as long as today's candle is inside yesterday's real body which it is). The Japanese call the Harami "Mother with Baby" as the two candles resemble a pregnant woman. #3 I drew in as a confirmation candle, but I should have though more about it as it shows a gap up and that gives us more of a "V" shaped reversal which is possible, just not the highest probability. Today's Star alone is bullish after yesterday's candle, it shows a loss of momentum and conviction to the preceding trend.

The R2K daily chart doesn't have a known reversal candlestick pair, but the longer lower wick with the higher close is reminiscent of a bullish Hammer, however the lower wick would need to be at least 2x the size of the real body which is placed perfectly. However today's candle does tell us lower prices were tested and rejected. #3 is what I drew in, this would give us the move lower, the head fake move and a bullish engulfing confirmation candle for an upside reversal.

As for leading indicators, not much changed since today's update...

Credit is still well above the SPX locally including High Yield Corporate, Junk, and HY Credit. Sentiment  shows one of our indicators lost a little in to the close which fits with the scenario I'm laying out for tomorrow while the second has a much stronger move that started yesterday after weeks of negative readings and it closed up much higher in to the close, so I think we are just seeing the opinion of two different timeframes short and longer just as I'm presenting them above although I believe both should fulfill tomorrow. VXX as you probably figured from the price chart above, underperformed its natural correlation in to the afternoon so it looks like there just isn't a strong bid there, it wasn't to activate the SPY arbitrage so again I suspect the fear is fading as today's VIX candlestick hints at with that large upper wick. Yields which attract price to them, made a consecutive 3rd day higher high and the SPX is dislocated from them, it should move to revert to the mean. Dow transports saw much better 3C underlying trade, I suspect as usual the old school Dow Theory guys want to see transports confirm even though it's ridiculous as we are no longer an industrial nation, however when Wall St. is trying to sell a weak rally, they often push transports.

There are a lot of short duration longs (most need some leverage) setting up and many will set up long duration shorts that need no leverage, I have them tagged in my watchlist, but a good example is IBM...

*For newer members, short term 3C signals like the 1-3 minute usually dictate intraday trade, as they become stronger (either accumulation or distribution) they migrate to longer timeframes. Signals at 5 mins are about where we see the first real institutional activity, a 15 min signals is quite strong, in normal circumstances it will signal a swing trade. 60 min signals are very strong and often can signal trend trades, daily & multi-day are the strongest. However they also suggest a timing component as I'll demonstrate below with IBM.*

 The 2 min chart is intraday; it was positive yesterday afternoon and in to the open sending IBM higher today, but later we have a pretty strong negative divergence suggesting IBM see some downside, likely toward yesterday's lows and we almost always see that signal take shape at the start of the next day's trade.

You can think of this the exact same way as the examples at the top of this post regarding market direction, both very short term intraday and longer term for a strong reversal.

The 10 min chart from left to right shows a negative divergence or distribution at the mid-September highs and price is confirmed by 3C on the way down or rather the downtrend in until we get this amazingly strong 10 min leading positive divegrence, this is serious institutional activity.

Looking at the two charts, the way I want to play this is to wait for an intraday pullback tomorrow and buy on that price weakness, I'll likely chose an option for some leverage being IBM isn't much of a momentum stock. The leading 10 min chart suggests a strong move and the target is likely above the mid-September highs.

Looking at the strongest of the 3 charts, the daily IBM, this daily chart shows a strong leading negative divegrence in red, but it has been seeing distribution for some time, this is quite common for smart money to feed out a small amount of shares at a time in to rising prices as to not effect the trend, get a better sale price and be able to move a large position over time without moving the market against them. However the leading negative in the red box should not be underestimated, IBM's strongest trade is to the downside.

Now note the range in yellow. The 10 min chart's positive divegrence above is capable of sending price above this range (yellow arrow); this is where longs will consider IBM a breakout buy and shorts are forced to cover, both actions provide demand which Wall St. can use to sell short in to in some size without sending price against them. Ultimately, that is the trade we want, although I already have an IBM equity short started, this would be a trending trade of long duration and doesn't need leverage.

So the play is to ride the upside, I call it "Hitch-hiking" until we get in to the upper end of the range or above it and look to close out the leveraged long and look to enter or add to the core short position.

This could serve as a model for almost any index in the market as well as many industry groups.

That's it for now, I'll take a look at futures later tonight.


Gist of the Day

This is not the Daily Wrap, I need to look at a lot of indicators, assets, futures, market breadth, etc.

However, the basic theme of today was there was strong underlying (3C) activity and the probabilities for an upside reversal went up, but that's not the same as a "High Probability Position".

Over the last month, every time we've had sufficient downside market action I've looked at the "Tracking Portfolio" which is dozens of mostly core (trend) short equity positions and they have consistently been beating the market on a relative basis somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 to 1. Normally you can expect a lot of stocks to just about double the market's performance on a strong up or down day, but 7x better performance (not once, but every time we've measured over the last 2 months or so) for a tracking portfolio which is WAY over-diversified (which kills the portfolio's average performance) is excellent.

So the gist is, while I have no problem entering specific positions that are throwing good signals, for the most part I wasn't in any rush today to add to short duration leveraged longs as I don't want to tie up dry powder on positions that may not only be sub-par, but really are positions entered solely because we're afraid to miss a move, that's not a good reason to commit capital to a position.

I think there are VERY good chances tomorrow may be a very busy day with a lot of potential trade ideas, I just didn't feel the process was mature today.

Here's an example using the SPY.

 This 30 min chart shows the F_O_M_C knee-jerk reaction we're always on the lookout for. Then we have a range that showed accumulation although the majority of the range had fairly weak signals until the end when they started to pick up.

The range is VERY obvious, which makes it a high probability target for stop runs as well as triggering shorts to enter, both provide supply in large quantity and lower prices which is exactly what institutional money needs to enter positions in the size they  trade.  I was watching something last night with a hedge fund trying to fill their own orders rather than use a market maker or specialist and in the first day (they didn't say what stock it was), they moved price AGAINST their order by $5.00. Of course that's relative, but the way they mentioned it, they were clearly saying, they had no skill in filling a large order like that without moving the market against them. A good fill for an institution will be at progressively better prices for an average fill.

Point being, taking the market below this obvious range is an easy way to generate the volume needed to accumulate and to keep prices from going against your position while accumulating, THIS IS ONE OF THE MAIN CONCEPTS IN THE TWO ARTICLES I PUT UP ON THE MEMBER'S SITE, "UNDERSTANDING THE HEAD FAKE MOVE".

However as I said, today didn't feel "mature" to me.
 The 3 min chart for the SPY did what it should in transitioning from a weaker relative positive divegrence to a stronger leading positive divergence.

For me the main concern was I thought the signals could standout more and the reversal process is a little too tight, if it were to reverse up tomorrow on the open, we'd have a wide "V" or an event, if we pulled back and established a larger footprint, we'd have a "U" or "W" reversal which is a process and much more common, much better equipped to support a stronger upside move and gives 3C time to add to the positive divegrence as I drew in on the chart above (both price and 3C).

That's about the gist of today's trade, tempting, but I'd rather miss a short duration trade than enter a position that I don't feel very positive about, especially when the difference between the two is roughly 4 hours.

USO Looking Interesting

I have November Calls for USO, I'd consider adding a little here, but the position size is already at max size for risk management.

This is what I like about USO which is a channel buster so it's return back inside the channel is very high probability before any signals were given.
 USO 2 min is seeing positive action today on an intraday basis.

At the intermediate 10 min we have a positive divegrence too, note the accumulation areas, they are the lows of the range.

Now a 30 min leading positive divegrnece, again the accumulation areas are the low of the range with emphasis on the more recent trade.

A 60 min chart makes the trend very clear, USO looks primed for a run / Short squeeze back in side the channel is busted out of on the lower end. A likely target would be above the channel.

Overview of GDX

This is not meant to be specific, however it is meant to address what some people are seeing as a break of a H&S trendline. This is also one of the reasons I prefer NUGT (3x long gold miners) ETF over GDX calls, I think time is on GDX's side and NUGT seems like a better way to play that than options.

 This is the H&S people are seeing in GDX on a 60 min chart, today it would have broken the neckline so other traders are seeing it as well, but many technical traders only see the price pattern and assume it's a H&S top, a lot of bears got burned in 2010 because they looked at price only and did not verify a H&S top with volume and it broke out to the upside after they were shorting this for 6 months.

I'll just mention for new members, there are only 3 places I'll short a true H&S top, 1) is the top of the head, 2) is the top of the right shoulder and 3 is AFTER a break below the neckline and a rally that technical traders EXPECT to fail at resistance (former support/the neck line),  I'll only short it AFTER price has moved above the neckline and shaken out all of the recent shorts, this happens with increasing frequency no matter how many times you see a textbook/cherry picked H&S failing at the neckline every time, that's not reality any more.

 The check for a H&S is volume, to make it easier I created this cumulative volume indicator real quick, in a true H&S it should see volume diminish in to rallies like the shoulders or the head and volume should increase in to the declines down to the neckline, that's not what's happening here.

Beyond that, the first rule is a H&S top MUST proceed an uptrend, this doesn't so the very first test it fails and it fails the volume test.

 An alternate view that volume does confirm as well as the preceding trend is an inverse H&S bottom, it would also be at the right place for a shakeout of a true H&S top, that 3rd place I'll short a H&S.

This would be a complex pattern with 2 left/right shoulders.


 On a 5-day chart here's the large H&S that you couldn't see before, the area with the yellow arrow is the inverse H&S bottom. The yellow arrow shows the shakeout of shorts (the last place I'll short a H&S) and the red arrow shows what happens after all the shorts are squeezed out above the neckline.

Obviously this too is a complex top.

Looking at a 15 min chart, the recent break today below some support or what some see as a neckline has a VERY positive divegrence, smart money wants to accumulate on the cheap, not in to rising prices, hitting stops and triggering limit shorts is an easy way to produce the kind of supply they need to accumulate without moving price against them.

This 30 min chart shows the same powerful positive, it's very powerful on a 30 min chart and we even have 60 min signals.

I'm fine holding NUGT long, I'm not so happy about GDX calls, but I think we will get there. I'll be keeping an eye on the intraday charts, the NUGT long is still in play.