I’m what’s called a “retail trader,” which just means I trade independently and not for a firm. Technically anyone with a Robinhood account is a retail trader too but I digress. The premise of how I trade and what I capitalize on is short term changes in price where I take high volume positions (lots of shares for a short period of time, relatively speaking). I’m basically looking for moves institutions are creating and I hop on for the ride. Most retail traders (not your average joes) have either a long or short bias where we’re able to recognize weakness or strength more easily; my bias is short and I haven’t seen the S&P500 look this weak in a long time. On Tuesday from 8-10 am it basically stopped trading. Not like trading was halted but the volume dried up and hardly any shares were being swapped for 2 straight hours, like hundreds of shares per minute vs the usual tens of thousands. That’s the institutions working in unison to make a decision - are they going to buy at these levels or sell. Yesterday and today it looks like there’s indecision.. we’re not getting broad-stroke movement in either direction. My personal opinion is that it’s coming down. I’m not sure how far but from what I’m seeing it doesn’t look like we’re heading back to highs; to me it looks like we may go back to Obama lows. We’ll see ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: here's a picture of what I'm talking about from Tuesday's session. The bright red box is the lack of volume (hardly any shares traded). The last volume bar of the day on the far right is 14 million shares in 15 minutes, for reference. FYI, this is a look at a 15-minute chart.
I’m what’s called a “retail trader,” which just means I trade independently and not for a firm. Technically anyone with a Robinhood account is a retail trader too but I digress. The premise of how I trade and what I capitalize on is short term changes in price where I take high volume positions (lots of shares for a short period of time, relatively speaking). I’m basically looking for moves institutions are creating and I hop on for the ride. Most retail traders (not your average joes) have either a long or short bias where we’re able to recognize weakness or strength more easily; my bias is short and I haven’t seen the S&P500 look this weak in a long time. On Tuesday from 8-10 am it basically stopped trading. Not like trading was halted but the volume dried up and hardly any shares were being swapped for 2 straight hours, like hundreds of shares per minute vs the usual tens of thousands. That’s the institutions working in unison to make a decision - are they going to buy at these levels or sell. Yesterday and today it looks like there’s indecision.. we’re not getting broad-stroke movement in either direction. My personal opinion is that it’s coming down. I’m not sure how far but from what I’m seeing it doesn’t look like we’re heading back to highs; to me it looks like we may go back to Obama lows. We’ll see ¯_(ツ)_/¯