{"id":28273,"date":"2013-06-25T23:12:18","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T03:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/?p=28273"},"modified":"2023-04-25T17:34:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T21:34:16","slug":"divining-inflection-points-spy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/divining-inflection-points-spy","title":{"rendered":"Divining Inflection Points&#8211; $SPY"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From January to May 22nd I probably traded the SPY less then ten times in total.\u00a0Today marked the fourth consecutive day I traded the market via the SPY. I trade whatever is In Play. And right now the market is In Play. The most useful price level in the past three trading days has been 157.50. Useful in that it has allowed me to scale into positions with very favorable risk\/reward ratios.<\/p>\n<p>I identified this as a price on June 21st that I would be willing to commit capital for a market <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/finding-the-bounce-spy\">bounce play<\/a>. How I find important price levels, or as I refer to them as &#8220;inflection points&#8221; is one of the more frequently asked questions I receive. I don&#8217;t use moving averages or FIB levels to find these prices. They are determined by looking at charts on many time frames from daily down to five minutes. \u00a0 This particular level was support on the SPY daily chart from the final week of April (you can see it illustrated in the SPX \u00a0chart from this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/finding-the-bounce-spy\">post<\/a>). The level was actually SPY 158.30 at the time but as the SPY went ex-dividend on June 21 I head to adjust the level accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>So with an oversold market on June 21st I was able to establish a long against this level with about 15 cents of risk prior to the SPY bouncing $2. The following trading day we gapped below this level so I was prepared for some more downside, and when we bounced in the afternoon I used it as a place to <a href=\"http:\/\/stocktwits.com\/sspencer_smb\/message\/14262456\">get out<\/a> of my long position from 156. Today we gapped to 158.20 on the Open and my plan as shared in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/trader-90-trader-365\">AM Meeting<\/a> and via <a href=\"http:\/\/stocktwits.com\/sspencer_smb\/message\/14272937\">StockTwits <\/a>was to add to my overnight long if we pulled into 157.50 again. When we dropped out to this price on the Open The Tape looked like death but I stuck with the plan and added to my position. I was rewarded with a move back to 158.50 where I got flat.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/important-level-SPY-157.50.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-28276\" src=\"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/important-level-SPY-157.50.png\" alt=\"important level SPY 157.50\" width=\"472\" height=\"334\" srcset=\"\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/important-level-SPY-157.50.png 786w, \/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/important-level-SPY-157.50-300x212.png 300w, \/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/important-level-SPY-157.50-250x176.png 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 472px) 100vw, 472px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This daily chart from the past few days highlights the important of the level as well.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/daily-bars-spy-showing-157.50-level.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-28278\" src=\"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/daily-bars-spy-showing-157.50-level.png\" alt=\"daily bars spy showing 157.50 level\" width=\"445\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/daily-bars-spy-showing-157.50-level.png 445w, \/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/daily-bars-spy-showing-157.50-level-300x283.png 300w, \/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/daily-bars-spy-showing-157.50-level-250x235.png 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 445px) 100vw, 445px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Part of my job is identifying these important prices in advance so that if the market reaches them I will more effectively execute my trading plan. Short term trading is the toughest type of trading there is, because it requires the greatest number of decisions in the smallest increments of time, so anything you can do to lower that burden may lead to improved performance.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/sspencer_smb\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com\/follow_me-c.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Steven Spencer is the co-founder of SMB Capital and SMB University and has traded professionally for 17 years. His email is sspencer@smbcap.com.<\/p>\n<p>No relevant positions<\/p>\n<p>(the title of the post was intended to be ironic)<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/tradingworkshop.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-42831\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/smbwebinarsignup.jpg\" alt=\"tradingworkshop\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From January to May 22nd I probably traded the SPY less then ten times in total.\u00a0Today marked the fourth consecutive day I traded the market via the SPY. I trade whatever is In Play. And right now the market is In Play. The most useful price level in the past three trading days has been 157.50. Useful in that it &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/divining-inflection-points-spy\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":28276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,8,456],"tags":[4676,4690,3161],"class_list":["post-28273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-comments-2","category-steven_spencer_steves_blogs","category-trader_development","tag-day-trading","tag-trading-education","tag-trading-etf"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Divining Inflection Points-- $SPY | SMB Training<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/divining-inflection-points-spy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Divining Inflection Points-- $SPY | SMB Training\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From January to May 22nd I probably traded the SPY less then ten times in total.\u00a0Today marked the fourth consecutive day I traded the market via the SPY. 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Read More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/divining-inflection-points-spy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SMB Training Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/smbcap\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-06-26T03:12:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-04-25T21:34:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/important-level-SPY-157.50.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"786\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"556\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"sspencer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@smbcapital\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@smbcapital\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sspencer\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/divining-inflection-points-spy#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/divining-inflection-points-spy\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"sspencer\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/8eabc642d328f902a341eb510c67ef27\"},\"headline\":\"Divining Inflection Points&#8211; 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