Two hours counts as a long-term trend these days, and woe to the trader who takes a position home overnight with expectations of exiting at higher, or lower, prices. He’s liable to see both, but in such rapid succession that a profitable exit will be most difficult to achieve. Be that as it may, the futures were impulsively bullish at day’s end, subject to the buoyant force of the pattern shown. A 2110.75 print would trip a conventional ‘buy’ signal, and although we rarely use such signals any more, this one would likely get you safe passage to p=2115.75, provided the signal is flashed in the middle of the U.S. night. Keep in mind that we still have a 2138.00 target above that is worth shorting aggressively, assuming it’s ever reached. _______ UPDATE (9:32 a.m. EDT): The trade worked more or less as promised, tripping the 2110.75 entry signal at around 2:05 a.m., and finally reaching the 2115.75 target five-and-a-half hours later. This was a tedious slog just to book a $250 profit per contract, but it could have been automated on most trading platforms to be executed while you slept. The overnight high fell short of a not-very-ambitious p2 at 2120.75 — about par for a stock market that, even trading at record highs, still looks like hell. Incidentally, if you bought four contracts or a multiple thereof initially, you would still be long half the position with an adjusted cost basis of 2105.75 and a third contract offered at p2, o-c-o with an impulsive stop on the ‘5’.
