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I'm curious what other traders do with regard to corrections in the larger bull market, especially when it comes to timing swing trades as opposed to intraday trades. I can think of a few possible approaches:
1. Ignore the corrections; trust the larger trend and stay long.
2. Exit longs when it looks like a correction is taking shape, then look to reenter on a dip, either to a prior support level or a specified percentage decline.
3. Exit longs when it looks like a correction is taking shape, then reenter when market gives signs that the uptrend is resuming; i.e., instead of buying on the dip, buy on a breakout back to the upside.
For my longer term accounts (401(k) etc.), I follow approach 1. For shorter term trades I tend to follow approach 3. I'm not convinced this is the best approach and would be interested in hearing from others.
My basic experience has been that the market declines faster than it rises (fear is stronger than greed I guess), so I like to stand aside when it starts going down, even in the context of a larger uptrend. I never have much idea how far to expect it to fall so I usually don't try to "pick a bottom" during the selloff. Instead I'll resume my long bias only after the market starts moving up again in convincing fashion. As a result I'm not getting the cheapest entry on the resumption of the uptrend but instead one that feels safer.
Markets have been sideways and choppy the last two days, with the bulk of the movement happening after hours. It's been a very successful trading week for me but primarily from my swing trades rather than my day trades. There have been other times during the bull market run when the only real way to participate in a move to the upside was to hold overnight and that dynamic may be taking hold again.
No trading tomorrow so the three-day weekend may shake things up a bit.
I don't know how non-scalpers trade these last few days. The ES produced 50 bars for the entire day on a 4 range chart! CL and GC are the only markets moving.
Approach 1 worked in the past, it only becomes a problem if overfitted to an 80-? year volatility regime.
Most traders can only trade bull/bear flags in an already established trend. The problem with swing trades is once you bring leverage in and let time extend to make a trade "swing", the same way intraday traders handle futures trades is basically equity trading.
The real problem is how dull it gets talking about 401k strategy. It is a shame though most Americans are stuck with the laughable "financial advisor" ..
As 2 bit pikers we need to accept "the machines" getting it right with so much liquidity as they did this week.
The machine "getting it right" is not going to change until the plug gets pulled on liquidity. Volatility is stochastic and the machines can only model...you can't build 2d visual "charts" of such a process.
Intraday trading you need to make it a binary bet if you are going short or long strategy wise for that day based on vol. ..and then keep making that same bet.
If you play that way then you want to only be shorting ranges until price hits your bank roll.
Do you buy breakouts or pullbacks after the breakouts? For swing trading, if the market has completed a correction and is on another impulsive upwave, I would expect that there will be lower risk buying opportunities after the initial breakout.
I am currently looking at the concept of "value". If the market has started on a new uptrend, buying opportunities would be when the price has traded below "value". I am using the ADXVMA as a proxy for value (see the attached 60 min chart of SPY). I am interested to know if there are traders in the forum who would wait for such pullbacks and how they would time their entries.
Waiting for a pullback is certainly a viable option. In the context of the current uptrend, however, we've tended to see really strong moves that have rocketed up from the breakout point without much pullback.
I've attached a daily chart showing what I've been looking at when timing my swing trades. I use a 12EMA on the daily chart and try to stay long when the market's above the 12EMA, then get defensive when below. If there's a close call (like we saw a few weeks ago in the aftermath of the Japan earthquake) then I'll wait for further confirmation by waiting for a break above the prior day's high.
I've circled bars where price had been below the 12EMA and then moves convincingly above over the past few legs of the uptrend. I've been regarding these as a "declaration" that the uptrend is ready to resume. If this current leg plays out like the past ones have, then the best entry would likely be the close of the declaration day (Wednesday of this week).
Thanks for sharing, especially on how you use the 12EMA on the daily chart to identify trend. I use SMA(3,-3) i.e. 3 period simple moving average shifted forward by 3 period on the daily chart and weekly chart. Price closing above SMA(3,-3) indicates uptrend, while closing below it indicates downtrend.
Thanks. This seems to give a pretty similar signal to the 12EMA but tends to follow price more closely. Do you tend to trade more from the daily chart or weekly chart using this method?
I noticed a few potential "whipsaw" situations where the daily closed below the line while the weekly was still above, for instance in Sept. and Oct. 2010. Would you exit a long based on the daily chart or wait for confirmation on the weekly?