Opening (IRA): IWM Dec 15th/Dec 29th/Jan 19th 160/157/153Comments: Targeting the <16 delta short put strikes paying around 1% of the strike price in credit to emulate dollar cost averaging into the broad market.
December 15th 160: 1.64 credit
December 29th 157: 1.63 credit
January 19th 153: 1.57 credit
IWM
Opening (IRA): IWM February 16th 151 Short Put... for a 1.58 credit.
Comments: Targeting the <16 delta strike paying around 1% of the strike price in credit to emulate dollar cost averaging into the broad market. I would've gone shorter duration, but already have rungs camped out at where I would've pitched my tent, so starting to building out first quarter rungs here.
$MBLY U&R?NASDAQ:MBLY looks like and technically is a fairly new IPO. However, it was a publicly traded company prior to NASDAQ:INTC buying them in 2017. They re-IPO’d in 2022.
I am playing this as an Undercut and Rally play. Earnings are behind them, and they beat expectations and guided sales and earnings higher. My stop is a close below today's low.
A word of caution, they are located in Israel and may be affected in some way by the conflict going on over there.
They have enjoyed several upgrades as well. See Chart for additional notations.
Ideas, not investing / trading advice. Comments always welcome. Thanks for looking.
THE SHORT SQUEEZE as STARTED PEAK ON JAN 112024The chart posted is my top view I am posting the weekly and daily of the value line For a reason it should NOT break the low of oct 27th 2023 If it is valid I have a major spiral from sept 21 2001 it is due NOW 11/10-13th the march 13th low was from june low 1949 . We will see rather soon which cycles are in force . and based on MY VIEW OF TLT 5 waves down ended
Weekly Update: Do Small Caps Still Lead the Broader Markets?We've all heard that the small capitalized publicly traded companies lead the larger cap companies, more so featured in the broader indices. A quick look back shows the Small Caps Topped in November 2021, whereas the Nasdaq and SP500 did not top till January 2022. Subsequently, the IWM bottomed in June of 2022, and it took the NDX and SPX till October of 2022 to form a bottom.
So it appears we do not have to go back too far to see this phenomenon is still valid. If this price action of leading the broader markets continues to persist, then the IWM is now poised to literally "Drop like Rock".
A quick observation shows the small caps are around their lows bouncing slightly for wave 2 in our primary c-wave down. You can read my prior posts on the SPX and NDX indices but it appears if you want to know if the recent bullish feeling rally in the DJIA, NDX and SP500 has sustainable legs...look no further than the IWM.
Best to all,
Chris
Opening (IRA): IWM Dec/Dec 29th/Jan/Feb 154/151/146/141... short put ladder.
Comments: Adding on weakness at strikes better than what I currently have on, targeting the <16 delta strike to emulate dollar cost averaging into the broad market.
December 15th 154: 1.60 credit
December 29th 151: 1.63 credit
January 19th 146: 1.49 credit
February 16th 141: 1.50 credit
Opening (IRA): IWM Dec 19th/Jan 19th 146/142 Short PutsComments: Squeezing in a couple of extra rungs here at strikes better than what I currently have on, targeting the <16 strike paying around 1% of the strike price in credit.
December 29th 146: 1.47 credit
January 19th 142: 1.47 credit
After this, will primarily look to do "housekeeping" trades running into the end of the year ... .
$PCAR On watch for U&RNASDAQ:PCAR Beat Earrings and revenue and has been building a base for about 4 months now. I have this on my watchlist for an Undercut and Rally trade. All TBD.
See chart for notations and thought process. Ideas, not investing / trading advice. Comments always welcome. Thanks for looking.
PACCAR (PCAR) reported earnings of $2.34 per share on revenue of $8.70 billion for the third quarter ended September 2023. The consensus earnings estimate was $2.07 per share on revenue of $7.99 billion. The Earnings Whisper number was $2.18 per share. The company beat expectations by 7.34% while revenue grew 23.20% on a year-over-year basis.
PACCAR Inc designs, manufactures and distributes light, medium and heavy duty trucks and related aftermarket parts.
$NDX breaking atm, $SPX will follow, can $DJI & $RUT hold?TVC:NDQ looks to be in SERIOUS trouble at the moment.
IF this is the case then the SP:SPX likely will follow.
DJ:DJI can hold, to a degree but wouldn't bet on it.
Let's focus on AMEX:SPY
Oversold daily BUT WEEKLY it has more room to go.
Also, in comparison to 2022, #stockmarkets are likely FURTHER along than anticipated. The chart we've been showing for some time.
Unless change FAST = 💀
Advanced Bull Flag ConceptsHave you ever wondered why price action sometimes forms a bull flag pattern?
Have you ever wondered if there is a way to predict whether a bull flag will break out before it actually does so?
In this post, I will try to address these questions by presenting a couple of theories about the nature of bull flags.
Bull Flag Theories
(1) The flag structure of a bull flag tends to form along Fibonacci levels, with the ideal flag proportion being an approximated golden ratio to the flagpole; and
(2) Fibonacci and regression analyses can provide useful insight into whether price will successfully break out of its bull flag pattern, sometimes long before price even attempts to do so.
I will try my best to clearly explain both theories in detail below.
Note: Although this analysis is also generally true for bull pennants, bear flags, and bear pennants, to keep things simple I will focus solely on bull flags. Additionally, this analysis is generally true across timeframes.
Part I - The Basics of a Bull Flag
First, let's begin with the basics. As shown in the image below, bull flags form when an asset is in a strong uptrend. The uptrend forms the flagpole of the bull flag structure.
The flag structure forms when price consolidates, usually in a falling trend. This consolidation phase is often characterized by price oscillators rotating back down while the price retraces only a small part of its prior upward move.
From a market psychology perspective, bull flags often form when most market participants who bought the asset continue to hold it expecting the uptrend to resume, while only a minority of market participants sell (or short the asset) as its price corrects downward. The bull flag pattern is a continuation pattern because it reflects the market's general expectation that price will eventually resume its upward move.
Once the price definitively breaks above the upper channel of the flag (often with strong momentum and high volume), the bull flag pattern is validated. Upon breakout, the expected move up is equal to the vertical height of the flagpole.
Part II - The flag structure of a bull flag tends to form along Fibonacci levels, with the ideal flag proportion being an approximated golden ratio to the flagpole
Here's where things begin to get interesting. Below is the golden ratio.
Two quantities, a and b (where a > b ), form the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. (See the equation below)
The equation above shows the Greek letter phi which denotes the golden ratio. Phi is equivalent to a/b when such ratio is also equivalent to (a + b)/a.
Although bull flags can take various forms, it is my hypothesis, based on chart analysis and research, that the most perfectly structured bull flags (ones that also have the highest probability of successful breakouts) occur when the flag forms a golden ratio to the flagpole.
Mathematically, this means that the vertical height of the flagpole is equivalent to (a + b) and the vertical height (i.e. the width) of the flag is equivalent to b. This is also to say that price retraces down to the 0.382 Fibonacci level as measured by applying Fibonacci retracement levels along the flagpole (or to the 0.618 point on the vertical height of the flagpole if one measures from the bottom to top).
I realize that this can be quite confusing, so let’s walk through some visualizations.
Let's first visualize this hypothesis using the golden rectangle. Below is an image of the golden rectangle. A golden rectangle is composed of a square (with sides equal to a) and a smaller golden rectangle (with width equal to b and length equal to a).
Now let's rotate the golden rectangle to better visualize the hypothesized flag pattern.
The bull flag is hypothetically an approximation of the golden rectangle, whereby the width of the flag is in a golden ratio approximation to the length of the flagpole.
In the illustration below, there are multiple bull flags contained within a Fibonacci spiral. The spiral is made up of golden rectangles, with each larger golden rectangle containing a smaller golden rectangle inside it. The smaller golden rectangle is the flag structure, and the length of the larger golden rectangle is the flagpole.
One can think of the Fibonacci spiral and the golden rectangles as a series of bull flags that build on top of each other in a repeating pattern. In this diagram, price is represented by the increasing length of the sides of each golden rectangle. In other words, the price on a chart can be seen as spiraling higher after each bull flag breakout.
Of course, not all bull flags form a structure that approximates the golden ratio, but it is my belief that in forming a bull flag, price action is aspiring to achieve as close of a golden ratio approximation as it can. I believe that the bull flags that best approximate the golden ratio structure also present the highest probability for a successful break out.
To learn more about Fibonacci spirals, including the golden spiral that Fibonacci spirals approximate, you can check out this Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org
Part III - Fibonacci and regression analyses can provide useful insight into whether price will successfully break out of its bull flag pattern, sometimes long before price even attempts to do so.
To see how Fibonacci levels and regression analysis can give insight into whether a bull flag will break out or break down before it does so, let's consider an example.
Let’s consider the massive bull flag that the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) formed in 2021.
In 2021, the monthly chart of IWM formed what appeared to be a bull flag, as shown below.
Now let's see why Fibonacci analysis and regression analysis were warning that this bull flag was not likely to break out successfully.
First, IWM's price did not retrace to a Fibonacci level before attempting a breakout (when using the pole as the Fibonacci retracement reference point). In the chart below, we see that price tried to break out, without even so much as retracing down to the highest Fibonacci retracement level: $196.71. By not undergoing Fibonacci retracement, price did not give its oscillators the opportunity to rotate back down fully. Instead, price remained overextended at the time it attempted to break out.
Now let's look at regression analysis. Below is a log-linear regression channel that contains IWM's entire price history. As noted in my prior posts, a regression channel simply indicates how far above or below the mean (or average) price an asset's current price is trading. In the regression channel above, the red line is the mean price, the upper channel line is 2 standard deviations above the mean, and the lower channel line is 2 standard deviations below the mean.
A successful breakout of the bull flag would have taken IWM's price way above its regression channel, to a level that is too many standard deviations above its mean price for us not to question the probability of the breakout’s success. Achieving the full measured move up would have been extremely unlikely, assuming that the regression channel is valid and that price tends to revert back to its mean over time. What was more likely than a breakout was a breakdown, and a reversion back to the mean, which is what ended up happening with IWM.
Another interesting note about IWM’s bull flag is that it presented a false breakout in November 2021. This false breakout was presenting multiple warnings signs including being a UTAD test of a Wyckoff Distribution. As shown below, however, another important clue that the November 2021 breakout would likely fail was that the breakout was not confirmed when comparing IWM to the money supply (M2SL). See the chart below.
One can interpret this chart to mean that in late 2021, IWM’s price was rising because the central bank was increasing the money supply, but not due to improving strength of the underlying companies that comprise the ETF. Using the money supply as a ratio to an asset elucidates the true inherent strength of the asset's value. To understand more about why the money supply can be used in this manner, you can check out my post below.
Part IV - Additional Comments
I have a few additional comments. I usually use Fibonacci levels on a log-scale chart to identify Fibonacci spirals because Fibonacci spirals are logarithmic spirals. However, when using Fibonacci levels based on log scale, the ratios, percentages and numbers, can seem quite confusing because they are logarithmically adjusted. If you choose to replicate my process, please be mindful of this. While using log-scale charts is critical for higher timeframes (e.g. the monthly chart or higher), I have not identified much benefit to using it on shorter timeframes.
In a prior post, I noted that Plug Power (PLUG) is currently forming one of the best-looking log-scale, golden ratio bull flags I have ever seen. If my above hypotheses are true, I would expect to see PLUG move dramatically higher in the years to come. For more information about PLUG, you can read my post linked below. (This is not a solicitation to buy PLUG. Please do your own research and carefully consider all risks.)
At the risk of making this post too long and too dense, I just want to briefly note that it is also my hypothesis, based on observation and research, that the golden ratio is where many S-curve dilemmas are solved. If you don't know what an S-curve dilemma is and you'd like to read about this you can see my post below about Jumping S-Curves .
In short, an S-curve dilemma is another way of conceptualizing the question of whether a bull flag will break out or break down.
I hope that someone finds value in this post. I spent a lot of time studying, researching, analyzing, and cogitating the mathematical nature of price action to reach many of the conclusions here. Thank you for your valuable time in reading my post.
GameStop: Remains In A Position to Break Bullishly From Its ZoneGME has been getting sold off with the macro for quite some time and it continues to push deeper and deeper into dangerous territory. At this point in time, it has pushed slightly below the 0.382/0.886 Confluence Zone and is now at the 200 SMA, but with that, we can see that the Local Bullish Shark can extend into a 1.618 Extension, so the Breakout watch is far from over on GME though we are getting towards levels where one may leave it alone. I would say that if GME breaks below $11.50, there would be a very distinct chance of it dumping down to $9.5, but if it instead holds above $11.5 and pushes back above $14.00, then we could instead see GME make a rapid move up to $18.00, which would be just high enough to test the supply line of our Channel/Falling Wedge. From there we could possibly break out of it and go for the measured move, but for now, I'd say one would probably want to have a short-term position to take profits on at $18.00 and a separate longer-term position to hold strong until GME gets the big measured move breakout to $74 - $134
$IWM Reversal?I took a chance on AMEX:IWM yesterday on the reversal candle. I liked the action today as it followed through. It did get rejected today right at the area of horizontal resistance although it did close in the upper 2/3 area of the candle. I look at that as being bullish. I will look to add to my ½ sized position if / when it can get over that flat resistance area and again if it can break above the downtrend line. All TBD. My Stop is under that red candle from last Friday.
See notations on chart for my thought process.
My thinking is that “if” there is going to be a 4th quarter rally the small caps will need to participate. Again, all TBD.
Not investing / trading advice. Comments always welcome. Thanks for looking.
$DJI & $SPX leading, $NDX trails, but $RUT is shining!DJ:DJI is struggling here a bit but it looks okay, so far.
SP:SPX is in the same boat.
TVC:NDQ has been weaker recently but it moved the most out of the indices.
But look at this! TVC:RUT is shinning nicely today!
Looks like it wants to base here & maybe even move higher!
AMEX:DIA AMEX:SPY NASDAQ:QQQ AMEX:IWM #stocks