Found some time this weekend, so I started my scanners and here is my #SundaySwing 5/1 issue.
I’m not sure if I have to mention that I expect some more blood? I really tried to scan for some bullish short-term setups but none of the results are worth charting and writing about.
So instead I focus on shorter term Bear trades and we’ll see how this plays out. If market decides to revert or traps some more Bulls, be prepared to switch bias and don’t hold losers to long. Expiration is 5/20 for now.
Newsletter
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TLDR;
Blood on the streets, so puts! Short-term expirations, if the market decides to reverse, end the trades immediately.
$DKNG 5/20 13p < 13.64
$MU 5/20 65p < 68.02
$TSM 5/20 90p < 92.77
Since Bear market I do not plan to strictly hold the contracts into expiration or ITM, take profits and move on is the current game for me. Maybe leave some runners. I also, as always, chose cheaper contracts to buy some more and hold a runner after taking profits.
All depends on the actual market situation.
While $IWM worked great and was $3 ITM and of expiration, all the other ideas from this swing list failed, sadly.
Disclaimer: Not advice, instead these are my ideas based on my knowledge analyzing the charts for possible swing trades based on #TheStrat. So please always do your own due diligence before entering a trade.
Chart setups
Since I keep getting questions about the colors in my charts and setups:
I always chart in multiple time frames Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and 4-hour or 60min
Purple lines last months high&low
Orange lines last weeks high&low
Blueish lines last day high&low
Green lines are my targets
Sometimes white and yellow for intermediate targets or 50% rule setups
The brownish-boxes on the Daily and 4-hour chart you see sometimes show a gap that hasn’t filled yet.
If some of the broadening formation lines looking a bit curved, it’s because I changed the charts to a logarithmic scale, but they are still accurate.
Outlook
As always, lets take a look at $SPY and $QQQ for a rough prediction of what I think the market will do next. Or course, it’s just my interpretation, so keep that in mind!
Calendar for this week
$SPY
Obviously bearish, FTFC down, currently so signs of a reversal. Even short-term daily that massive 2d red candle from Friday needs above 425, which is 13 points away as of now.
My last annotated Broadening Formation on the Daily chart didn’t gave any support, we traded right through it, now $SPY aims for that next monthly Broadening Formation bottom at around 400.
Quarter is still inside, but near the 2d trigger at 410.64. Which the next target would be 404.00 from one year ago.
So overall, it doesn’t look great for the bulls and I don’t see any good ideas to being long here.
$QQQ
The big tech earnings we had last weeek didn’t helped to turn the market around, so as with $SPY, bearish is the way to go here. FTFC is obviously down and $QQQ broke the bottom of the monthly Broadening Formation last week.
Lets see if it can reclaim some losses, but I honestly don’t think so currently.
Longer term, 297.45 triggers Year 2u-2d, which isn’t that far away.
Profits and Stops
I usually target around 25-40% of profits on those swings and decide during the market hours if I leave a runner on a position or close the entire one.
To view the charts in full detail, click to open them in a new browser window.
$DKNG 5/20 13p < 13.64
I was shocked to see $DKNG trading down there, looking at the charts there is still some room to go down. If market remains bearish.
Idea here is to trade the Daily 3-2u-2d from Friday which also is a type of Shooter candle. Weekly and Monthly is obviously a continuation. I selected 5/20 expiration to buy some time, if 13.64 triggers, my targets are 13.06, that would trigger Monthly 3-2d-2d which then has 12.26 from the Weekly chart and 11.37 from the Monthly chart as next targets.
Keep in mind that $DKNG has earnings report on 5/6, so I will probably only old a runner if that contract is in profit during ER.
$MU 5/20 65p < 68.02
Another Daily trigger idea, $MU like the rest of the market was beaten down quite a bit and I see some more downside. The idea here is the Daily 2u-2d Shooter below 68.02. The first target is 67.06. Interesting next one is 65.86 which would trigger another Month 2d. Since $MU already hit its Monthly Magnitude from a while ago (November 2021) this only works if market remains bearish. The targets I marked on the charts below that monthly trigger are all chosen from the Weekly chart.
$TSM 5/20 90p < 92.77
Another semi trade idea, another continuation on the weekly and monthly. Idea here is the Daily 2u-1-2d Shooter below 92.77 from Friday. First target is 91.78 from the Daily chart. The next target 90.22 would also trigger the week and month 2d. Final target if this triggers is on the monthly 84.53.
The above contracts are just my ideas, I sometimes switch to a further expiration or closer to the money depending on the price action we get.
As always, no trigger no trade and stick to your stops!
With that — thanks for reading!
Have a nice green successful week!
Instead of backtesting, I papertraded $BTCUSD with #ICT concepts (FVG/OB).
Got stopped out on both trades. Stops way above the FVG entry candles.
Target was #TheStrat 12hr 2d-1-2d (38205.01), which worked a few mins later 🤷♂️
Is Crypto that different?
End of March they said:
“Seasonality in the market for April is always bullish”
“April is a trend month & most bullish of the year, green 80% of the last 20 years”
…
Market doesn’t care which season we have ;-)
Played around with some video editing today.
Result is this #ICT $NQ_F Long
Seems like I accidentally took the only long possibility today :-)
Enjoy and have a great weekend!
Hindsight $ES_F 1min chart annotating #ICT.
Was not on the trading desk the whole day, except last hour. Backtesting some #ICT concepts and see if I had spotted the move up before it happened.
Stops are pretty wide in current conditions, so 8 handles $ES_F is a huge stop.
It’s currently really quiet on my public timeline, since I take the market hours to watch and learn #ICT strategies.
I annotated the $ES_F 5min chart, in hindsight and this is what I came up with.
Thoughts?
$ES 15min, when you have the correct setup marked on the chart since 08:30AM and still don’t trust that we go that low. Tried to long $ES on small pumps and lost. Instead of trusting my setup #ICT
That way, I missed ~100 $ES handles… #Mental issue
$SPY 60min - Lets talk about Broadening Formations #TheStrat :-)
$GM - RevStrat 1-2d-2u > 40.45 #TheStrat
PT: 40.78, 41.34
$PLUG - possible 2d-2u > 26.94
Week 2d green
Month 2u red ⚠ (needs 28.79 for FTFC up)
$CVX - Actionable Inside Hammer 🔨 setup #TheStrat
FTFC up
2u-1-2u > 172.08
174.76 triggers Month 2u-2u
$NET - possible outside week? #SSS50PercentRule #TheStrat
Surprise, surprise!
Temperatures around freezing and snow on Friday ruined my plans to work on the outside of the house. Typical April weather.
So I had some time to scan through my watchlist of tickers to find some possible #TheStrat trade ideas for a mid-term swing.
For this weeks issue, I’m mainly bearish but found some call trade ideas as well. The two Put trades are very short-term, since we’re in April and May and those months are normally very bullish compared to the start of the year, so we might see a reversal here and the Puts are invalidated.
As written a few times before, in the current market you have to adapt quickly and not stick to a bias and try to hold and hope.
Also keep in mind that stock market is closed on Friday 4/15. Last trading day is 4/14 this week!
Newsletter
If you want to read my #SundaySwing ideas and some other posts I write right in your email inbox, you can subscribe to my totally free Newsletter.
TLDR;
Despite that I have a bearish bias, I found some trade ideas to the upside as well. So lets see how this plays out.
Quick and sad:
All longer swings $AAL, $LUV, $NIO triggered and failed. I exited all with a loss beginning of the week as market turned bearish and was glad I didn’t hold because of 6/17 expiration. I will maybe enter again if they hit their entry triggers again.
The only bearish play $PDD I had, ran in the other direction and gapped and never triggered. Strange behavior.
Disclaimer: Not advice, instead these are my ideas based on my knowledge analyzing the charts for possible swing trades based on #TheStrat. So please always do your own due diligence before entering a trade.
Chart setups
Since I keep getting questions about the colors in my charts and setups:
I always chart in multiple time frames Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and 4-hour or 60min
Purple lines last months high&low
Orange lines last weeks high&low
Blueish lines last day high&low
Green lines are my targets
Sometimes white and yellow for intermediate targets or 50% rule setups
The brownish-boxes on the Daily and 4-hour chart you see sometimes show a gap that hasn’t filled yet.
If some of the broadening formation lines looking a bit curved, it’s because I changed the charts to a logarithmic scale, but they are still accurate.
Outlook
As always, lets take a look at $SPY and $QQQ for a rough prediction of what I think the market will do next. Or course, it’s just my interpretation, so keep that in mind!
Calendar for upcoming week
$SPY
And bearish again, FTFC is completely red.
Long-term outlook
So this time I pull up the TradingView long-term Strat chart and show the Yearly, Qtr and Month to g
give some context.
So $SPY needs to break 462.07 this month first to turn bullish again and a 2u-2u continuation. To the downside there is more room, with 415.12 for a 2u-2d Bearish Reversal. This may sound far away, but $SPY traded at $410-420 6 weeks ago.
So even the longer timeframes are all red now. 421.91 is the #SSS50PercentRule yearly trigger for a possible outside year.
Short-term
I posted a 15min chart last week showing the $SPY Broadening Formation drawn from the 60min chart and it was at the top and we reversed right at this pivot point. So also for the short-term outlook I’m bearish. FTFC is down.
Gap filled on the Daily last week and reversed there. Month is still inside but deep red currently. Friday closed with a 2u-1 inside Day. $457.83 is needed next week for a 2d-2u Bullish Reversal Weekly, but since the week closed red and in the lower third that is a lot of work for the bulls.
$QQQ
Long-Term
Since $QQQ and $SPY move together, the long-term chart looks the same, except that $QQQ is even more red and Bulls have to put in more power to bring it back up.
Short-Term
Looks bearish, FTFC down. Weekly is close to take out the 345.57 from two weeks ago. Month is still inside in the middle, so that will take some bull extra strength to turn this around.
Profits and Stops
I usually target around 25-40% of profits on those swings and decide during the market hours if I leave a runner on a position or close the entire one.
To view the charts in full detail, click to open them in a new browser window.
$IWM 4/22 195p < 196.68
Back on the list, I like to trade IWM, because of liquid option chain and not that expensive premiums like SPY and QQQ. Since small cap stocks look bearish short-term, it’s an idea to the downside. FTFC is down, inside month close to take out last months low.
The idea here is a possible 2d-2d Weekly Continuation. Normally I don’t like continuation trades, but if you look on the weekly chart, you see that the last 3 weeks might form a compound bar to take out the 3 from week of March 14th.
Target is 191.88 but I placed some intermediate term targets on the Daily chart as well, 196.15, 192.88 both are ITM if they hit.
That 191.88 target triggers also the Monthly 2u-2d Bearish Reversal with the ultimate target of 187.92. But the expiration for the above contract is to short.
Therefore the 4/29 190p contract would also a valid option.
$TWTR 4/29 44p < 45.83
Musk news pumped the stock up, the idea here is that $TWTR fills the gap to the downside, since as you see on the daily it couldn’t hold the gap up from Monday.
So I’m eyeing on the Weekly 2u-2d Bearish Reversal below 45.83. The gap goes down to 40.96. If $TWTR triggers it may not go down to the gap in the next two weeks, so I chose the 44p to stay ATM and if it drills deeper these contracts should be very profitable as well.
$COP 4/22 105c > 103.31
A rare occurence, but since $COP looks strong with the possible 2d-2u Weekly Bullish Reversal hammer above 103.31, I added it to my list. First target is 105.14 and probably 107.52.
Sine $COP has earnings on 5/5 I don’t risk to trade into these. Also it’s at ATH so possible exhaustion risk as well. FTFC is up as well.
$XLF 5/20 39c > 38.36
Still an inside month and red, but above 38.58 it turns into FTFC up. The idea here is a possible 3-2d-2u Weekly above 38.36 with targets at 39.33, 39.52 and 40.00. Since these contracts are 5/20 expiration there is room left to the upside.
Above 40.00 would trigger a 2d-2u Month Reversal with possible 41.38 targets.
The 5/20 40c have lots of volume, but I go a bit closer ATM with the 39c, these are more spready, so mid-fill would be preferred. If not, the 40c would also a valid option, maybe even with the 6/17 40c expiration.
The above contracts are just my ideas, I sometimes switch to a further expiration or closer to the money depending on the price action we get.
As always, no trigger no trade and stick to your stops!
With that — thanks for reading!
Have a nice green successful week!
$QQQ Long-term chart
Below #SSS50PercentRule on the Yearly again 👀 #TheStrat
PSA: Due to lack of time this weekend, I probably won’t be able to create a #SundaySwing issue.
This is the first time since Oct 21, but due to the better weather other projects around our house outside have priority.
Maybe a short edition, but I can’t promise anything.
$SPY 15min 🤔 Broadening Formation drawn from 60min chart. #TheStrat
$NQ_F 60min Liquidity Purge&Revert
The annotations on this chart were drawn 3 days ago, just updated the exact lows for each day since then. Seems to work :-) #ICT
Trying to stick to the habit of journaling my papertrades and since today I found a good setup which I planned before ot happened, here is the journal and my thought process.
No hindsight this time, as you’ll see on the pictures, they were taken during that trade. But of course, still paper.
Note: I had to recreate the annotations because the screenshots I took during the trade showed all the information that I try to show as a development and thought process below, so if somethings seems a bit off or at one screenshot a box is there and on another it’s missing, I apologize.
TL;DR
If you don’t want to read and watch at all images, just scoll down to the Profit heading :)
Daily Bias = 🐻
I try to chart and backtest the Liquidity Purge & Revert concept from #ICT to build my daily bias. And since we hade a “purge” as we took out a major high last week, that was my starting point to see if this might work for me.
So I annotated the following $NQ 60min chart two days ago, and while this obviously didn’t worked yesterday, I pulled it out today again and see what happens.
I know that some started to try to not build a daily bias, but I like to concept of this, if it’s right the trading session is a lot of fun, as you see below. But if it’s wrong that it is a real problem, like yesterday. (Maybe more on this later)
Click on the images to open them in full size
This concept is pretty new to me and I have a lot of questions, that might get answered over time, so for now it could also be luck that it worked out today.
Charts without annotations
If you want to look for the setups for yourself, don’t scroll further, above are the naked charts without my annotations. Annotated below…
60min
So with bearish bias, I watched the London session 2AM-5AM and also NY 7AM-9AM as well as NY open 08:30AM to prepare like I do everyday when I find time to trade.
This was the 60min naked NQ chart
15min
On the 15min before open this was presented to me, now if you want to watch for yourself, don’t look further down :-)
5min
Based on that information I had on these three charts plus my daily bias I saw my chance to short NQ here.
Annotated charts
60min
After NQ traded above 4/4 high - the blue line 15174.50, I expected a reversal after I saw that drop down and the created imbalance there. The grey box is the FVG I saw in that timeframe.
The purple boxes are Orderblocks that I forgot to hide here, but you’ll see them shortly where I identified them.
So FVG spotted, now trailing it down, next 15min.
15min
First trade idea was the following one, trading up into the small OB in that FVG and then down.
But that not worked out, because I spotted another setup shortly after the above one. Which was the final trade.
Now in hindsight, it was more risky, because at that time the price could have traded back into the above Orderblock. I realized this later when I was in the trade, but did not thought about it when I entered. Have to keep this in mind for later.
5min with entry and Market Structure targets
The 5 minute chart showed me another slightly larger Orderblock and an imbalance, the one you saw above in purple already, now with the candles developed.
The above image, sadly shows a few candles to much when price traded already into the orderblock, I show the short-entry widget down below, apologies :)
So I saw my chance, went back to the 15min chart to draw the Market Structure Levels from Swing high->low to see what we can expect from this trade if it works.
I’m still unsure of the optimal placement, so I selected the obvious high and the most recent swing low, which gave the above levels.
At this point in the morning I did not even expect that we will go down that far, but at one point I have to trust the process.
Right at 09:30AM NQ traded into that FVG and Orderblock and triggered my LMT Sell order for 2 NQ contracts - paper! - and it worked from start to finish without even going up near the stop.
Profit
So, without further extra notes, the Profit taker was placed on the -3.0 level of the Market Structure Levels. The top of orderblock was my stop - 17 handles NQ so basically $680 for at least an expected 1:3 trade, this would be around the first -0.5 level 15059.75.
Short before NQ hit my profit taker, I took the last screenshot before exit:
At exit, the trade made $11.860 profit with just 2 NQ contracts hold the whole day. Crazy.
Final image, market still open, but I exited there and did not trailed it even more down.
New Month and a new quarter, so go lite and let the month open up and see how some of the tickers “open” their quarter, but there were a lot of inside Qtr, so this will get interesting for sure.
Since weather is getting better because of spring and I have a lot of DIY projects around the house to do, chart time is currently limited and I focus on other things more.
It is a weekend habit for me, to scan for possible swing setups with #TheStrat scans and approaches I try to find at least some good setups and post them here too.
Newsletter
If you want to read my #SundaySwing ideas and some other posts I write right in your email inbox, you can subscribe to my totally free Newsletter.
TLDR;
Going further out and buy some time is the motto of this issue, with one exception.
One shorter swing:
$PDD 4/14 39p < 41.69
Longer swings:
$AAL 6/17 20c > 18.45
$LUV 6/17 50c > 46.39
$NIO 6/17 30c > 23.86
Remember this trades are based on monthly triggers, so not only for the upcoming week, keep that in mind.
Also swings are still currently hard to trade because of the volatility.
$ORCL 5/20 87.5c - triggered and got stopped out, loss
$PYPL 4/14 125c - triggered and reached 1st target, than dropped, profitable
$LUV 4/14 45c - triggered and ITM, maybe roll out and over, see below
$IWM 5/20 220c - triggered and reversed with market, not traded.
Disclaimer: Not advice, instead these are my ideas based on my knowledge analyzing the charts for possible swing trades based on #TheStrat. So please always do your own due diligence before entering a trade.
Chart setups
Since I keep getting questions about the colors in my charts and setups:
I always chart in multiple time frames Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and 4-hour or 60min
Purple lines last months high&low
Orange lines last weeks high&low
Blueish lines last day high&low
Green lines are my targets
Sometimes white and yellow for intermediate targets or 50% rule setups
The brownish-boxes on the Daily and 4-hour chart you see sometimes show a gap that hasn’t filled yet.
If some of the broadening formation lines looking a bit curved, it’s because I changed the charts to a logarithmic scale, but they are still accurate.
Outlook
As always, lets take a look at $SPY and $QQQ for a rough prediction of what I think the market will do next. Or course, it’s just my interpretation, so keep that in mind!
$SPY
Conflict in times here but monthly 2u in April and we’re currently trading more in the upper range for a possible 2u-2u Continuation. However, the last week closed green but with a shooter-like candle and Friday has a red hammer-style candle. So lots of conflicts in here, no real prediction, could run in both directions, for now.
$QQQ
As written last week:
…$QQQ is a 2d green month and is already way above the Monthly 50% Rule trigger at 344.18. To get an outside month the target is 370.10 and this is possible
And $QQQ delivered and hit it’s target to go outside and after it hit it’s target it immediately reversed, so that’s why targets are so important to take profits.
Same conflicts as $SPY mentioned above, weekly shooter but green and month, obviously insight for now, but also closer to the upside trigger.
Profits and Stops
I usually target around 25-40% of profits on those swings and decide during the market hours if I leave a runner on a position or close the entire one.
To view the charts in full detail, click to open them in a new browser window.
$PDD 4/14 39p < 41.69
Starting with this short-term swing first, because Put may work, but often only for a short amount of time, so I will watch my targets here exactly and not risk a reversal.
I rewrote this section, because initially the idea was a 2u-1-2d Bearish Reversal Weekly below 39.84. But than I saw that this trigger is also the target from the Daily chart.
Since $PDD closed with a 2u red on Friday, the idea is an earlier entry for a possible 2u-2d Bearish Reversal on the Daily.
If this works out and hits the first target at 39.84, this than triggers the first idea, the 2u-1-2d Bearish Reversal Weekly below 39.84. Target is 38.50 and with the 4/14 expiration there is a bit of time left.
FTFC is down for extra confidence.
$AAL 6/17 20c > 18.45
The $AAL trade from a few weeks ago that is still valid with the 5/20 expiration. So this is not a copy&paste here.
The idea for this longer-term trade is a 1-2d-2u RevStrat Monthly above 18.45. Since the contracts are cheap and move slow for $AAL, I go with the 6/17 expiration and holiday season upfront, my confidence is high that this strike goes maybe ITM. Targets are all on the monthly 19.11, 19.76 and if all works in my prediction 20.16 as next and finally 20.56 (both from the weekly chart, because monthly would be to far away).
$LUV 6/17 50c > 46.39
Another airline, holiday season, re-opening. So I’m convinced that they should have some gas in thetank to take off. The 6/17 also has plenty of time and contracts aren’t that expensive.
The idea on $LUV is a 2d-2u Bullish Reversal Monthly above 46.39. My targets are 47.74, 48.31 and 49.38. The ladder two are from the weekly chart, because the next #TheStrat-like target on the monthly chart would be 52.79, th high of November ‘21, not sure if $LUV trades up into that. But for the fun, I marked it on the chart.
$NIO 6/17 30c > 23.86
I posted on Friday about a possible $NIO longer swing setup because of the green open, but we reversed a bit during the day and the monthly trigger is not that near, but I still think that $NIO might trigger above 23.86 the 2d-2u Bullish Reversal Month. This is also a PMG setup on the month, so the 6/17 contracts buys some time here and the 30c might get ITM if this trade works out.
Targets are 26.40 and 33.80. So a 6/17 25c might also be an option here.
As always, no trigger no trade and stick to your stops, we might see a reversal or a larger pullback before we run higher.