Friday, November 18, 2011

Paging Pythagoras: With Yesterday's Market Action Many Triangles Break Down (DIA; SPY)

Or should we be channeling Thales?
From Slope of Hope:
Today's post will have to be short as I'm going out soon and will be out for most of the day. I have to be out most of Monday morning as well so Monday's post may also be short.

Obviously the symmetrical triangle broke downwards yesterday and broke down hard enough that I think it is unlikely to be a false break. This is disappointing from a probabilities perspective, mainly as these triangles are poor performers on downwards breakouts, with only a 48% chance of reaching the target in a break down. That statistic is in a bull market and Bulkowski hasn't even given a statistic for these in a bear market as they don't qualify as a high probability pattern in either direction in a bear market. You can see Bulkowski's page on these here.

Nonetheless a lot of technical damage was done yesterday and I'm expecting to see more downside. The triangle target, for what it's worth, is 1155 on ES, and I'm looking for at least a test of main ES support at 1185.

ES ended the day in a consolidation range yesterday and has broken up from that range overnight. In doing so ES broke the tight declining channel for the decline from the high on Wednesday and I have two potential upside targets today. The first is the test of broken triangle support in the 1227.50 area, and the second is the important support/resistance level in the 1238-40 area. On an hourly close over 1240 I would start to seriously consider the possibility that yesterday's break down was a false break:
I'm not expecting that though and one reason for that is that NQ also broke important support in the 2280 area yesterday. This should lead to more downside, and that support break has so far been retested and held overnight...MORE