Here is another example of what I said earlier about strong retraces. Snipped from the day I'm simtrading right now on Ensign.
<img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1653479">
What do you notice about this retrace? What I notice is that there was half as much volume as the last black bar, YET price traveled nearly twice as far. That has to mean something, like that one side of the DOM has dried up allowing 18k market orders to do twice as much damage. Now in this case the retrace didn't mark the beginning of the new channel, but if the black traverse following it had been one point lower, it would have. Point is that I view "strong" retraces as a pretty big clue, just like "decreasing peaks" or any of the other patterns we are supposed to notice.
<img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1653479">
What do you notice about this retrace? What I notice is that there was half as much volume as the last black bar, YET price traveled nearly twice as far. That has to mean something, like that one side of the DOM has dried up allowing 18k market orders to do twice as much damage. Now in this case the retrace didn't mark the beginning of the new channel, but if the black traverse following it had been one point lower, it would have. Point is that I view "strong" retraces as a pretty big clue, just like "decreasing peaks" or any of the other patterns we are supposed to notice.