SPX Pushes Back Into The Range And Leaves The Breakout Unconfirmed

Market Snapshot – Volatility promised, volatility cancelled, and everything else grinding.

The futures indicated the start of expanding volatility. The volatility has since been notified, and has declined to attend.

VIX remains elevated, no surprises there with the sell off, but it is holding the highs it’s made.

BTC, Gold and Oil are all stuck in the grind.

• ES 7,715.75, +0.03%. Back inside the range.
• YM 53,444, +0.07%. Sat under the NATHs.
• NQ 29,568.00. Well off its own highs.
• RTY 3,027.2, +0.03%. Carbon copy of SPX, see below.
• VIX 15.83, -0.13%. Elevated and holding.
• GC 4,408.1, +0.42%. Grinding.
• CL 84.37, -0.06%. See below, it’s earned a section.
• BTC/USD 64,300.84. Grinding.

Crude Oil – One narrow bar, 12 occurrences, and 10 of them called the break.

Crude oil did print a small narrow ranging bar yesterday, which we can take as a range on the lower time frames.

This has developed around 10 to 12 times in the last several weeks and has popped out for 1 to 2 days afterwards.

The move into the range has typically determined the breakout move, 10 of the 12 times I eyeballed the pattern.

Watch the way it goes in, and you have a fair idea how it comes out.

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SPX – Back in the range, breakout unconfirmed, and long live the bear.

Today, and in the premarket, there has been a nudge below the prior day’s lows, which I usually take as a sign for continuation 80% of the time. Good ole Pareto and his principles.

Selling rallies in the premarket may be a choice again for me. We will see.

Onto the swings. SPX has pushed back into the prior range and not confirmed the breakout move. Just as we discussed, most of the move from the range high to the range low was done in the gap lower, and now SPX is flirting with the same breakout or break in setup.

As you know, I am bearish. Long live the bear, lol.

RUT is almost a carbon copy so I’ll skip the chart again today, although it remains a cleaner chart to assess.

Back in the range, nothing confirmed, and the bear is still standing.

Crypto – A tighter range inside the range, and nothing new to see.

ETH/BTC gave me a brief headache, but it does look like prices are grinding out a smaller tighter range within the range.

Nothing new is developing so just waiting for the larger cycle move to get going. The 6 money making patterns hold true.

Smaller range inside the bigger one, and the cycle takes its time.

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Premium Poppers – Two minutes before the bell, and I was watching a play.

The profit tents locked 2 minutes before the closing bell, which is the market’s way of admitting it heard you the first time and simply could not be bothered to say so.

Premium Poppers once again pulled the premiums.

Both SPX and RUT, although I only traded SPX again myself. RUT showed a clear clean breakout while SPX gave an eventual breakout which then went sideways into the grind.

For myself I took the 1st and 3rd breaks again and then twiddled my thumbs, met some friends, had a meal, enjoyed a show.

Those profit tents only started to lock in 2 minutes before the close, and I’m surprised they did that often, with prices doing that last minute push to the end of the day. And it’s only a 10 point move so nothing to write home about.

The orders can get skipped as there is just nothing in it for the market maker algos, so one did and one didn’t, and I think I buggered the orders up anyway. So no harm no foul.

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Most importantly is that despite the shitty SPX moves or lack thereof, the AntiVestor community scooped a bucket load of premium. Awesome work as always team.

• Don E. Closed RUT Bear BO for 45%
• Keith F. “It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Too much discretionary trading and not enough structure….it dawned on me…. I know a guy 🙂 Things lined up. Got the PP for 50% today.”
• Richard H. “RUT BO1 ATM SS3035 transformed into butterfly for a $1 win, and hoping for a retracement to the profit tent.”
• Bill B. Wins on the RUT, AMD and AAPL
• Chris T. “Got bored waiting for the transformer to fill so just took the profit and relaxed into the sofa.”
• Scott K. “Getting some consistency for the last couple of weeks, 9 wins, 1 loss (that plunged through my SL!) I am happy with the progress.”
• Keith B. “Took a small trade on SPX BO1 with SS @7715 (just outside top of range). Wanted to see if it would come in a winner with sideways movement of price with little volatility or if I would hit the SL. Hit 50% profit early afternoon while I was away running errands. Still trying to get a feel for how price movement can trigger the SL. Sometimes it seems that it can happen quite quickly.”
• Chris “Seems like RUT is better for a LP since I keep randomly getting stopped out due to the crazy spread swings.”
• James D. “Still wasn’t like the price action yesterday, would have taken the RUT LP when it hit but the price was terrible, instead took an XSP LP for a small win.”

Welcome back Keith. Good to see you on the Wall of Wins.

And Richard, that’s a Bam-chicka-PopPop.

A bucket load of premium out of a 10 point day.

Fun Fact

Since you brought up good ole Pareto. He never called it the Pareto Principle.

The name was coined in 1941 by management consultant Joseph Juran, who came across Pareto’s work on quality control and named the idea after him. What Pareto actually noticed, in 1896 at the University of Lausanne, was that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the population, and he then found the same split in other countries. The other observation credited to him is that 20% of the pea plants in his garden produced 80% of the pods.

So the most quoted rule in trading is named after a man who was counting peas, by somebody else, 45 years later.