Thursday, May 14, 2009

Why I got long


Here is a five minute bar chart of the e-mini day session. My original range estimate for today was 873-890 (solid blue rectangle). I was expecting to see the low of the day early in the session. The market had traded as low as 878.75 earlier this morning - midpoint support was at 873. This was not as close an approach as I like to see. On the other hand, a strong market is hard to buy at ideal spots. So when I saw the e-minis establish what appeared to be a somewhat higher trading range after the early break (higher green line) I concluded that it was about to leave behind yesterday's afternoon trading range (lower green line) and start a move to 952. I couldn't afford to let the market leave the station without me on board so I bought one unit as soon as I reached this conclusion.

In the event I had to sell at 884.00 because it then appeared that the move to 888.75 was a shakeout, a false breakout. The first loss after a shakeout is the best one to take.

I still think the odds are good that we have seen the low of the day, so I am changing my range estimate to 880-900 (blue dotted rectangle). If I am reading things correctly this reaction is probably over.

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