The glacier

A glacier grinds on very slowly, destroying anything that stands in its way. Occasionally it seems to recede a bit, but before you know, it continues with the grind. For some reason there are only bullish glaciers. Bears tend to fall quickly, which makes traders love shorting more than going long.

How do you recognize a glacier early in the day? A failed L2 is a good indication. A shaved bear bar that does not tick below is another good indication. One and two tick pullbacks below previous bars is a very strong indication. Today, all these signs made themselves known within the first hour. The first failed L2 gave the first strong buy signal of the day.

A very obvious 2 legged pullback near the ema on b22 was probably the easiest to read signal of the day. The hardest signal to read was the failed L2 and then A2 at b67. When there are overlapping and inside bars, every inside bar is a possible signal. If it does trigger, it becomes an L or H. Basically b55 triggered the first H1 and b59 and b65 triggered an L1 and an L2. b68 triggered an H2 and almost failed. Reading H and L into TTRs is very error-prone. Its simpler to look at them in terms of breakouts and failed breakouts. b55 attempted a first breakout. b58 and b65 were two attempts to fail the breakout. A failed breakout should result in a measured move down, so both the failures were unsuccessful. At this point the next breakout is a high probability candidate for success. The next breakout occurred at b68 and given the overlap, a pullback was to be expected.

b75 inside bar was a very strong exit signal and a good place to close out a slow and steady day.

A glacier is seen by some as buying by institutions and as distribution by others. Often two or three days after a glacier there is a down day.