Following this morning’s bullish jump up, the FTSE 100 traded within a tight range for several hours until it eventually gave up the day’s gains as fast as it could, dropping rapidly back down at 3:30pm onwards. I only managed to get in one other trade shorting at 6010 off an intra-day resistance level and closing out for a handful as the market pulled back up from the 6100 level and looked to be heading back up to the top of the range.

Overnight the market had been pretty flat and only proceeded to turn up during the pre-market session. Taken two trades this morning the first being a support / resistance play at the 6066 level with further confluence as price had also extended past the upper trendline on a downward sloping channel and just pulled back into it that channel – unfortunately it was stopped out 10 minutes later for 20 points. The second trade was a MACD divergence trade as price spiked up beyond the 6100 level, which I closed out for 15 points.

It was a good start to the week but unfortunately I didn’t manage to keep that momentum going and was getting a little sloppy towards the end of the week. The points tally was positive which I guess was the main thing.

So what made it a tough week? On Monday we had some heavy buying during the out-of-hours Asian session, but once the market opened it headed back down quite sharply. I think I got short trading the MATD (morning after trend day) and had a good read on the market up to then…

The FTSE 100 index reversed later that afternoon and really took off from there, recovering over 300 points from Monday’s low, trading within the upwards trending channel until Thursday afternoon. Think I was a little surprised with the strength of the pullback given the rest of the news (e.g. the FED planning to raise interest rates), and couldn’t bring myself to really get totally in sync with the market this week.

Looking back at the chart now it would have been good to hold a portion of my trades for over a day or two. Additionally there were several good opportunities to add to longs during the course of the week, especially as price fell back to the lower trendline along the channel or the 20-period moving average.

I’ve also marked out Fibonacci extensions on the chart and as you can see the marked has fallen through the 50% retracement level. In hindsight I was expecting the 38.2% level to hold on Friday; partially why I took that counter-trend trade which unfortunately lost me 20 points. Will be interesting to see if the FTSE makes it down to the 70.5% level (ICT OTE), as that will be an ideal area to get long. Watch out for that 5950 level … remember, you heard it here first!!

Also noticed that my charts are getting really messy by the end of the week with too many levels which can get confusing at times. Normally I start off marking my charts over the weekend and mark up the key levels on the daily and hourly charts in pink (bold line). I then go down to the 15 and 5 minute charts to draw in the intraday support levels plus the high and low of the previous day in red (thin line). On Monday morning my charts look relatively clean, however, during the course of the week more intraday support and resistance levels are defined and added so by Friday the 5 minute chart gets a little noisy!

Only one more week to go before Christmas … Perhaps we may have a Santa rally the week after and close out 2015 with a bang! Have a great weekend!

There were several scenarios playing out in my head today and all the more confusing as it was triple witching day – I guess the big question came down to if we were we going to hold onto our gains from yesterday or sell off? As it turned out the market did both, it consolidated for much of the day and then sold off as the US markets opened.

I had already managed to close out this mornings trade for over 10 points. There were two more trades to report for the day, the first being an interchanging support and resistance play at 6080 which was closed out for a couple of points. In hindsight I should have held the trade longer as per my original plan, and ideally closed it at the 6066 level.

The second trade was a long taken at the 6066 level which was stopped out for 20 points. The FTSE had just bounced off a double bottom formation and the MACD histogram had crossed the zero line. I placed the trade as price came back to the 20EMA expecting the market to push back up to the 6090 level, instead it headed back down the other way rather quickly.