Re: S&P 500
ha ha, since your all being so nice, I will give you my magic indicators.
This bit was already posted in the 'international index trading' thread except for the bold part:
That's what I got (the last of the 3 big down moves in the range at the top would result in one more push higher which would only be a lower high).
Huge spike in CDS spreads, even the bund has moved higher than the UST.
Last time we got a spike like this in spreads, it frontran the subsequent piling into 'safe havens'.
Financial ETFs are down, financials have been strongly correlated with the 'risk trade'.
Many 'risk trades' are now over-crowded, huge net speculative long positions and vice-versa in 'safe haven trades'.
Monetary restriction and targeted fiscal expansion in China is now taking place, great for longer-term real growth, bad for short-term financial markets IMO.
Gold even rallied last night, as opposed to Friday when it also came off. Interestingly, gold was correlating with equities on the first of those big risk off nights. Inflation is low and economic uncertainty was low after stimulus and liquidity pump, yet gold held it's worth, it must be a play on currencies. Notice on one of those big down nights in that final top range, gold decoupled and actually rallied when 'risk' came off?
Even got financial regulation moving closer and closer to the forefront which will effectively lower financials prices and the expansion of credit. Many CBs looking at moping up liquidity to that end also.
Above market earnings reports are prooving less and less of a bid for equities (factoring in of top-line growth may already be over).
You also had the shift from small caps outperforming large caps for a period, to vice-versa.
On shorter-term timing, I was talking to TH about how whilst prices were at highs, there were fewer and fewer stocks making 52wk highs and more actually making 52 wk lows. This was while the advance/decline line was also in overbought territory. Perfect scenario for a pullback as far as market breadth.
As far as VSA, all the way up the rally, you would get price moving to highs, and flirting with it, before going through. I.e. there was no supply up there yet demand was enough to keep price sticking on highs when it got there and moving through even if on low volume.
Yet, the highest point of this rally was on basically no volume, and failed to push higher. You also saw the last of the 3 big down nights on the lowest volume of all 3 of them. Demand was running dry. The moves higher on low volume which also failed to push and hold near that candle which set the high on low volume were a bearish sign.
I.e. the entire rally saw little supply, yet demand present. This time saw little supply, but no demand present.
Obviously, there was a huge stockpile of longs, and once price fell below the level of those 3 big volume down candles, you would be nearly guaranteed to have a few panicking for the exits.
Magic magic. Not. Underlying fundamentals and reading of psychology (strong earnings results producing fewer and fewer bids), combined with market internals, combined with simple VSA was enough in this case. Hope this helps.
My long gold/short financials in the gold thread is explained by this same post. The short AUD/USD had a few more elements which were explained in the AUD thread but which aligns with the 'risk off' scenario explained here. Short Euro was also an easy one, but that is an entirely different and long winded global macro explanation. Then there was an easy short USD/JPY at 95 but once again, long winded and different explanation.