One of the questions I receive most often is regarding trades based strictly on the tape. These occur far less frequently than in years past because of the masking of buyers/sellers by the HFTs but they still do occur from time to time. This morning I was trading AMLN on the Open as it was In Play due to an … Read More
Why I was leaning short (RVBD)
RVBD opened and held the 32 bid after gapping down miserably on the open. It popped almost two points from 32 and then was dominated by an aggressive seller(s). As RVBD made a pass at the 32 level from where it popped on the Open I got long again. This is one of our favorite technical set ups. But when … Read More
Traders Ask: Fake Order Flow?
Dear Bella, Thanks for writing your book as I’ve found it immensely useful! Regarding order flow, I’ve heard people saying that institutions and big traders place large buy orders hoping other traders bid in front of those orders. The institution will then sell those bids. In many ways it’s a game of cat-and-mouse that often goes unnoticed by new traders. … Read More
Finding good setups in a quiet tape
This blog is going to go over one of my recent trades in COG. Yesterday’s morning session was very quiet and I was having difficulty finding stocks that were really moving. I was able to establish during the first 15 minutes or so that I would trade a ‘range strategy” until the market structure changed. (more about this on another … Read More
First Ticks – Wrong Ticks
A look at a basic market tendency which forms one of the building blocks of price action.
Reading the Tape In Multiple Time Frames
I was trading V today for the third consecutive day. My initial bias was short based on the weakness on the tape I had seen during the prior two days. During yesterday’s two point pop in the SPYs I found it to be very telling That V barely bounced. So I came in today ready to get short again. The … Read More
Its Probably Going Up
I started trading AAPL around 10AM this morning. I noticed it held its small gap from the Open and that each time it was dropping below 202 it would quickly recover. I also noticed that each time it popped above 202.50 that it would fail to hold the bid and drop back down. My thought process was that AAPL had … Read More
A Trade2Hold: HAS Exit (if it trades against you)
Bella discusses where he exited his Trade2Hold short position in HAS today.