All the major indices experienced a fair bit of intraday travel on Tuesday. That said, if you missed the late morning slide or early afternoon rebound, you probably fell asleep during the final two and half hours as the SPDR S&P500 ETF (SPY) rotated in a roughly 30-cent range.
Looking ahead to Wednesday's session, our intraday SPY levels are largely unchanged. As you can see on the chart below, I want to use 186.07/186.13 as my intraday pivot. All trading above that pivot encourages buyers to target 186.75, while everything beneath it shines a light on 185.17/185.22.
Tuesday's late day surge in the fuel cell stocks has me reviewing the charts of Plug Power (PLUG), Ballard Power Systems (BLDP) and FuelCell Energy (FCEL). However, since the apparent catalyst for Tuesday's late day spike was a comment from PLUG's CEO in regards to a major new deal, we'll focus our efforts on that company's stock chart. As a reminder though, all three of the aforementioned names tend to track each other. So if you're trading one, I'd suggest keeping a close eye on all three (if nothing else than for short term directional clues).
As with all speculative trades or investments, it's imperative that you approach the fuel cell stocks without emotion or bias. If you're day-trading these names (as I am), please remember that they fall far faster than they rise. Caveat emptor.
T-Mobile (TMUS) has been on my watchlist for several weeks now. And while you can read through my comments on the chart below, the bottom line is that I love this chart to make an eventual move higher. All that's needed now is a bit of broad market momentum to help the bulls catch a tail wind.
Moving on to gold futures, I must begin by assuring you that while I'm no tinfoil hat-wearing gold-bug, I absolutely love trading both the metal and the miners. And when it comes the metals, I find it particularly important to remember that trends, both bullish and bearish, tend to persist far longer than you believe logical.
With that in mind, I am looking for the current (short-term) downtrend in gold futures to stabilize and attract buyers a bit beneath the contracts 50-day simple moving average (SMA). As you can see on the chart below, I've drawn in an up trending price channel. Simply put, I am looking for any whoosh beneath the 50-day SMA, and into the two up-sloping green trendlines, to completely cut of supply.
The last chart we're going to look at today is the dollar-denominated, Nikkei 225 futures contract. And before you throw this chart aside because you don't trade Nikkei futures, keep in mind that you could always consider a Japanese equity ETF like the iShares MSCI Japan (EWJ) or Wisdom Tree Japan Hedged Equity (DXJ).
For those unfamiliar with the construction of these two ETFs, it's important to remember that the DXJ, in addition to representing a long Japanese equities position, also hedges its exposure to the Japanese currency via short yen forward and futures contracts.
Any trading or volume profile related questions can be posted in the comments section below, emailed to me at parkcityyeti@gmail.com or posted to my twitter feed @ByrneRWS
