Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Wave Chart 10:30 am

Here is the e-mini wave chart as of 10:30 am today. I am long a single unit from 825.50. I got long near the open figuring that if today was to be a bullish day the market would rally above the 830 level early in the day. This didn't happen. My plan B was that the market would hold support a the midpoint of yesterday's big reaction (purple dotted line) and at the 1/2 point of the day's range (green dotted line). So far the market has been holding these support levels.

The wave chart itself isn't telling me much. Up and down swings are both getting shorter and are moving through a trading range of 818-827. There is a positive aspect to this action. The mid point of this range is roughly 823 somewhat higher than the 820 support level. If you look at the chart this fact shows up as a tendency to spend time at the upper end of yesterday's trading range, an area that attracted strong selling yesterday. Today the sellers don't seem to have as much ammunition. This is a clue that the market will have to go higher, if only to find more sellers.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Carl,

Can you please explain why you would rather trade these e-mini instead of something like SPY, or even SSO? I know this is a basic question but I am just trying to understand the differences between.

Thanks,

Mike

Carl Futia said...

I trade e-minis because they offer more leverage and more liquidity than Spiders or any other ETF.

As I pointed out yesterday, one e-mini contract is the equivalent of 500 share of the Spiders.

As I write this the Spiders show a volume today of about 95 million shares, while the e-minis show a volume of 900,000 contracts. Sounds like the Spiders offer more liquidity, doesn't it.

But if you divide the Spider volume by 500 you find that Spiders have traded today the equivalent of 190,000 e-mini contracts, only about 20% of today's e-mini volume.

Anonymous said...

All your posts are really interesting.

Anonymous said...

Carl,

Thanks for the clarification. It just seems to me that trading SPY or any ETF would be easier as it trades like a stock. Where do you get your information on for these e-minis?

Thanks again,

Mike

BTW- keep up the great work