Daily Commentary: December 23, 2024

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Keep Your Trading Light

Posted by Pete Stolcers on December 23
www.oneoption.com

The volume will be low and the ranges will be compressed.

PRE-OPEN MARKET COMMENTS MONDAY – Overseas markets were very quiet and the action will be light this week. If you force trades you will regret it. This is a time to lay low and to enjoy your time with friends and family. Normally, I would try to ride some long swing trades into year end, but we are sidelined. The price action told us to get out and that was a good decision. Now that we’ve seen a round of heavy selling, we are less inclined to buy on the notion that we will get a Santa Claus rally.

Bull markets are very hard to turn. It is a process and it doesn’t happen overnight. There’s nothing dire to suggest that we are going to see heavy selling pressure on Jan 2. I have a bearish market bias and I am going to do what I always do. I’m going to wait and see how things play out. Price action will tell me everything I need to know.

In the next week buy and sell programs will dominate the action. There is nothing to be learned from this noise. In the New Year I will be waiting for volume. When we have volume I want to see nice strong rallies reverse and I want to see drops that have difficulty recovering. I am going to keep my trade duration short-term until I get a clear sense of market direction.

Let’s say that the market has a nice drop to the 100-day MA in the first week of trading. I will find some nice day trading shorts. When the market finds support, I will be will day trade the long side. The market will bounce. Buyers have been conditioned to scoop dips. I will monitor the price action during the bounce. If the market struggles to regain the high, I will start considering longer-term bearish swing trades. The scenario I just outlined could take a month to play out. During that time we will have new information and conditions might change.

I am going to stay flexible. I have an opinion of where the market is going to go next, but I am going to trade what is in front of me.

You should do the same thing. Keep your exposure very small on both sides. Let’s wait for the volume to return and then let’s wait for one side or the other to show us signs that they are motivated.

The range from Friday is support and resistance. This is likely to be an inside day.

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