Thursday, December 03, 2009

VIXEN and the Pivots

A VIXEN trading criterion that I've been remiss in discussing is the value of a pivot point overlay . . and yesterday's quick ride on the the Qs was a great example.
The VIX crossed the Qs right at 9:47 after coming off some opening volatility at R1 (this is bullish) and the early bullish sentiment was echoed by the NYAD chart on the right.
The 3 MAs signal was also confirming upslope along with the bullish parabolics.
Those readers who use my Schwab setup can toggle to 1 minute bars and see the little hairy bottom formation (9:45- 9:49) that was really the trigger.
For the next 25 minutes the Qs rose steadily, hitting clear resistance at R2 and forming an unusually long 30 minute squat bar before failing.
The easy exit trigger was broadcast by the NYAD's collapse at 10:34, midway through the Qs squat bar formation. This type of dramatic reversal in the NYAD is always worthy of close attention as it reflects the dominant momentum of the market and the odds of trading against it are slim to none, except for low volume NAZ stocks which may be news driven with their own momentum.
The Qs parabolics also supported the NYAD collapse by switching to SELL (cover) at 10:36, but the real hammer for this exit was the NYAD.
This trade turned out to be a nice little run from 44.20 to 44.46, producing a .26 gain over 49 minutes exposure.
Looking back at the trade I probably should have exited earlier around 10:18 when the NYAD first started to fizzle, but there were few confirming exit signals to support such a decision and (luckily) I wouldn't have increased my net gain.

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