Max Pain Calculator

I use SPY to get levels for the SP500 index

After posting an image referring to nutty volatility of the market, I got the following email

Hi Vlad,

Good post…a typical broken AL…and I would have lost again.     How can I learn how to profit from these?    Any advice, help, indicators, whatever is appreciated.

Thanks,
GH

My Response:

Hey GH,
not sure if you followed previous advice trying to look for bigger
ambushes , especially daily high to low ones.

Yesterday you would have waited till 2 pm for that one , daily high - low:

but it would have been well worth it as it  bounced for unanswered 15 points or 60ticks! in half an hour… the one you referring to was  a smaller ambush, during trading hours we would expect at least some reaction, but not only was it NO TRADE ZONE last hour, it was last minutes of the week, so really there was no business attempting anything on that one.

Here is another example, also from yesterday overnight action, as i posted live on my blog daily high - low ambush, was tagged overnight within few ticks and was the overall low of the day! an bounced for a significant amount of points.
http://esecfutures.com/2009/04/23/april-23rd-intranight-futures-analysis/

Patience pays with these things, especially before you get a good feel how smaller intraday ambushes react

Hope that helps

Cheers

Vlad

p.s.
last week was incredibly volatile and weird… EVERYONE was getting chopped up

The idea of being a Trader is not TO TRADE, but to make money (for most people), sometimes there will be several 1 day high low or 2 day or even weekly high/low ambushes on the same day, and some days there will be none, but being patient is key with these set ups.

I will be doing a post later on this weekend or week on picking higher probability ambushes for Trading Strategies section. Sign up for the mailing list on the right to be sure you get an update when that happens.

Have a great rest of the weekend

Vlad

Hey Traders,

Today I am adding new Q & A Category to the blog.

Every once in a while I get questions from newer traders about various strategies used in my futures analysis, without claiming to be an expert by any means, I reply with what I have found to work better for particular set ups and approaches. If I find that some of the replies could be useful for other traders as well I will be posting them in this Q & A category of the blog, also, while in building stages of the site, some of the question will inspire posts for Trading Strategies part of ESECFutures and will help this site currently in Beta of Beta stage come together.

To contact me simply fill out the Contact Form

Also, please share any strategies that work for you so that I could share them with others

Cheers

Vlad
p.s.
I might not have time or knowledge to answer all of the emails, but I will do my best to point you in the right direction.