Lessons From A Downtrend Day

Each day I write a ‘daily summary’ I call my “Idealized Trades” reports (which will be available for subscription by next week) and I wanted to highlight a few lessons from today’s (June 22, 2009) intraday Type III “Trend Day Down” in the SPY 5-min chart.

I mentioned Sunday that odds strongly favored lower prices going forward in my post “Has the S&P 500 topped?” and today’s Trend Day down fell right in line with the daily price weakness I described in terms of different divergences and non-confirmations.

So we began with a large, 1.00% morning gap down in the S&P 500 (and other indexes) which should have clued you in to be expecting a range expansion and possible Trend Day move.

We began with new TICK lows sub 1,000 right off the bat and a negative breadth (bottom panel) reading of -1,700 which trended down all day and hit a final low of -2,372, confirming the new price lows all the way down.

From the morning, it was clear that the best plays were to short pullbacks and retracements to the falling 20 EMA, particularly if confirmed with some sort of reversal candle (like a doji, engulfing, or shooting star) - I marked most of these simple pullback trades with red arrows.

Generally, you would place a stop just above the 20 EMA and as the moving averages narrowed, you would then shift up to use the 50 EMA as a trailing stop.

So as we progressed, we kept seeing New TICK Lows and New Breadth Lows on the day until we got a climax and doji at 1:30 EST.  One could have aggressively played a long here and anticipated a ’rounded reversal’ or failed trend day (meaning to expect that as the low) but in this case, we see yet another example of how playing long or trying to call the ‘bottom’ on a trend day is a loser’s game.

Today was a “Type III” or “True” Trend Day in the sense that we got a large morning opening gap and the market internals confirmed as price made new lows, and finally price closed on the low of the day - a Textbook Example.

Learn from this day and - if your performance wasn’t all it could have been today - use the lessons you learned the next time a Trend Day occurs.  Also, for more background, view my featured post “21 Lessons on Trend Days.”

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