Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Opening range Breakout and pullback


Often the first bar alone acts as an opening range. The first breakout beyond the bar fails and the price attempts to break the other end. If the other end closes strong, i.e., closes above the range and gives two or three bars that do not reverse the breakout, there is a very strong chance that the eventual pullback can be traded for a swing position to the measured move of the size of the range, especially if the pullback is two legged.

Today was a small range version of the scenario. Bar1's low was breached but turned into a first reversal. The correct entry was above b3, which did not trigger but we did get an entry above b5. When there is a large overlap among the reversal bars, often the price comes down to take out the stop below the entry bar as it did today on b22. When the distance between the low of the entry bar and the prior swing low is small, this is a good limit entry with a stop below the previous swing low. Regardless, the pullback into b22 was a 2 legged pullback to a higher low and brought in buyers.

The price moved three legs to a final flag (FF) at b43 to 49. A double top at b58 was a failed attempt to break above the FF. The market ended up making a second attempt to breakout of the range and failed to below the low of the day.

No comments:

Post a Comment