The last trade

In my previous post I said that once I had evidence the reaction has ended I would get long. That evidence came around 3:25 pm after the market had rallied above the 725 level. So I bought one unit at 726.00 (first green arrow). Here was my thinking.

I was looking for a move to 740. The market had rallied quickly from its 713.25 reaction low and had moved above the top (at 723.50 - red dashed line) of the last rally on the way down to 713.25 - this is what convinced me that the reaction had ended at 713.25. There was only 30 minutes left in the day session, and I thought that the market didn't have enough time to hurt me before I could react, so the downside was limited by the proximity of the close. On the other hand, I think the short term trend is upward, and in such circumstances I know that there is always a good chance that a lot of buyers would show up near the close - and in this case push the market to new highs for the day. So I was risking a few points against the possibility of 10 or more.

In the event the market struggled after I got long. At 3:45 I hadn't seen any good volume buying and I began to think that the buyers weren't coming to my party. So I got out at 726.25 (second green arrow).

As luck would have it, the market started to break just after I sold my unit. But luck really didn't have much to do with it. As I often say, what the market fails to do is usually more significant than what it does do. This was a case in point.