Quote from ElectricSavant:
I must learn my ABC's before my 123's and then when i get price action down, I can discuss this better with you senior traders. For now I am struggling. I will practice pulling up charts and learn my 123's for now.
Michael B.
Don't make it more difficult than it is. Think about buyers and sellers and the prices they're paying and the pressures they're putting on each other. At the beginning of the day, the intent is down. How do you know this? Because you're making a lower high, then a lower low.
However, what happens after that lower low is troublesome in that the price advances past the opening low and well back into the range. Yes, there is a lower high and, yes, there is a lower low so, yes, there is a trend and the trend is down. However, the trend is not as strong as you'd like because the price pulls back into the range rather than finding resistance at the opening low and continuing its way down (on the opposite side of the coin, when the trend reverses and a new high of the day is made, price advances, then pulls back to what had been the old high
without falling back into the range, then resumes its advance. This, more than anything else, tells you that there is serious intent here.
Therefore, go ahead and trade that downtrend if you like by shorting the breakdown through the opening low. But when you see price get past that opening low and work its way back into the range, consider exiting immediately until you see just who holds the trumps. You can also wait to short until price has broken down through the opening low then pulled back toward the range, giving you a chance to see just how far back it can come. If it's too strong, then you have no trade. Yet. (If demand is that strong, you're much more likely to get a profitable move to the opposite side, in this case, the upside.)
But this is largely off-topic as it has to do with strategy and tactics. The point is that if you don't have that "stairstep" look where each pullback comes back only to the last reaction high before resuming the advance, then you may be looking at a slowing of momentum or even a trend change, if not a complete reversal. The trend can continue upward, but it will be a much slower "grind", and it will be increasingly difficult to place stops.
Therefore, don't get trapped into looking at all of this as lines and angles. Think of the traders involved and what they paid and when they'll be profitable and when they'll be underwater and where they might be trapped into taking the wrong side of the trade. That is, after all, where all these movements come from. Gauging their strength by their movement will tell you who's got the upper hand and where the intent is likely to lie.
--Db