The S&P has topped

[volente_00]

And people wonder why the real traders no longer post anymore on et. If your wrong you get bashed, if you are right you get bashed. But I digress as the fact remains the S&P topped last week regardless of how much the negative nancies wanted me to be wrong.

 

[bone]

Well if only it worked as well as you describe, we'd all be rich! I'm not sure if there is any way to spot this on a chart with precision. Now maybe there are better footprints in the options world, because I do hear there are nuggets of gold here when you analyze different strike prices and expiries, etc., but strictly looking at futures, I'm not sure. Any time you get an entry with more confirmation, your price risk is going up.

Looking at your chart from this post, https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/the-s-p-has-topped.307293/page-19#post-4419505 , it still looks like a runaway bull trend, but if we focus on the lows in 2009, one week bar was down, next week bar was up, and then it was up all the way from there without ever looking back or being tested. Surely there had to be shorts closing, longs opening, and deep pockets moving in there are well, but how to see? In fact, even just analyzing the anatomy of intermediate tops and bottoms on this chart, there is a whole range of what can happen at a top or at a bottom, and there is no clear market structure that tells you. Sometimes you get a bull/bear reversal bar side to side, sometimes you get a test like a double top or bottom, and sometimes its a "pin" bar with a very long tail, but each instance of top or bottom is different.

If going just based on visual cues, the runup since the election in November seems to be the most acute run higher out of anything on that chart, and based on this, ready for a deeper pullback since there is no other run higher quite like this one without a pullback. (but of course going on just this would be foolish)

I'm a Spread Trader. But, I would imagine that if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to pick a top in the S&P I would have gotten short around February of 2016 and then puked my guts out around July 2016 - based on Weekly bars. Now, this is just me, but to call a top for a long running macro trend like we're in currently I would definitely sacrifice trading range for confirmation - there's lots of downside support targets and yeah, there's plenty of burnt bears out there so getting enough fresh shorts into the market to push the longs over the cliff is going to be tough. This rally is indeed extended but every sell-off since 2009 has been relatively short-lived and shallow on the Weekly.

 

[BONECRUSHER]

And people wonder why the real traders no longer post anymore on et. If your wrong you get bashed, if you are right you get bashed. But I digress as the fact remains the S&P topped last week regardless of how much the negative nancies wanted me to be wrong.

Volente...if this is your style then go for it! I hope you succeed. It's not my style to call a top like you, but so what...I still like your bravery.

 

[volente_00]

I'm a Spread Trader. But, I would imagine that if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to pick a top in the S&P I would have gotten short around February of 2016 and then puked my guts out around July 2016 - based on Weekly bars. Now, this is just me, but to call a top for a long running macro trend like we're in currently I would definitely sacrifice trading range for confirmation - there's lots of downside support targets and yeah, there's plenty of burnt bears out there so getting enough fresh shorts into the market to push the longs over the cliff is going to be tough. This rally is indeed extended but every sell-off since 2009 has been relatively short-lived and shallow on the Weekly.

What's the benefit of spread trading an index in a one way market ?

 

[Gotcha]

But, I would imagine that if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to pick a top in the S&P I would have gotten short around February of 2016 and then puked my guts out around July 2016 - based on Weekly bars.

See.. this I find interesting. You're gonna short when price is so far from the top? Sure, now you have that confirmation on your side after already a huge drop, but shit man, its so far off the top that even if we rally back up, which we did, it doesn't invalidate the short, but you're puking as you say.

The equivalent now is shorting when... 2300? 2250? which is over 100 points from the top and expecting even more down action. For me, the R:R is not skewed in my favor.

 

[Gotcha]

See.. this I find interesting. You're gonna short when price is so far from the top? Sure, now you have that confirmation on your side after already a huge drop, but shit man, its so far off the top that even if we rally back up, which we did, it doesn't invalidate the short, but you're puking as you say.

View attachment 171396

The equivalent now is shorting when... 2300? 2250? which is over 100 points from the top and expecting even more down action. For me, the R:R is not skewed in my favor.

Oh.. I should point out that I'm not saying you're shorting on the low of the bar, just simply that this is the first bar in February, so its somewhere around here.

 

[volpri]

The s&p has not topped. Just a pb. Sorry.

 

[bone]

Oh.. I should point out that I'm not saying you're shorting on the low of the bar, just simply that this is the first bar in February, so its somewhere around here.

Close enough for discussion purposes. I would have targeted 135-140ish support area from 2011/12. My conversational input is that with such a strong, long standing macro trend IMO it makes sense to give up some trading range in exchange for confirmation. And, my working thesis hasn't worked on this particular market up to this point - you can see the bear traps in 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016. On the other hand, in terms of predictions timing legit MACRO market tops hasn't worked either.

Real estate markets are getting stronger and headhunters say that they are getting demand like they haven't seen in a decade - obviously, there are great economic expectations already priced into the market and we are coming out of 8 years of really tepid growth.

Hopefully Volente is right sooner than later and he can have his victory lap.

 

[Gotcha]

Close enough for discussion purposes. I would have targeted 135-140ish support area from 2011/12. My conversational input is that with such a strong, long standing macro trend IMO it makes sense to give up some trading range in exchange for confirmation. And, my working thesis hasn't worked on this particular market up to this point - you can see the bear traps in 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016. On the other hand, in terms of predictions timing legit MACRO market tops hasn't worked either.

Real estate markets are getting stronger and headhunters say that they are getting demand like they haven't seen in a decade - obviously, there are great economic expectations already priced into the market and we are coming out of 8 years of really tepid growth.

Hopefully Volente is right sooner than later and he can have his victory lap.

To be honest though, this doesn't sound much like trading and more so investing. I'm not saying a trader has to put on a few positions every day, but even swing traders are probably putting on at least a few a week. With the weekly charts you mention, and the huge stops or targets you have, there really isn't much to do most weeks.

 

[Anthony T Whelihan]

Stocks go up, and stocks go down; people look up, but refuse to look down.