ES

Today, the futures have finally cleared the key 1402 area--so for the first time since the March 17 lows, I am cautiously watching for the setup into a climatic selling point.

Things have pretty much gone as expected since my posts at the lows and the ES is up almost 150 points since the 1257 buy.

My 'forensics' post from April 2 at:

http://www.traders-t...?...st&p=363808

summed up the setup including the targets for this leg which are SPX 1407 and ES 1421.

We are nearing a key downtrend line at ES 1405-ish. It would not surprise me to see that line used as an ambush point--with the actual price high test coming near the target numbers I posted. Everybody and I do mean e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y sees that trend line, so they likely aren't going to accommodate everyone with an easy and profitable sell now, are they? Still seems to be a large contingent of bears holding and hoping and I speculate that those guys need to be separated from their money before this will be taken down again. A failure of that downtrend line to hold should do the trick to dash all bearish hope. Sorry to be so crass if you are one of those bears--but that is likely the way the goons are looking at things, in my opinion.

I am now tightening my stops for partials on the longer-term stuff to lock in the gains to date. I fully expect to be stopped out soon on those--possibly in the Fed volatility and that is okay by me. There is an additional 20 points between here and my reversal target, perhaps--but the most expensive points and most difficult to obtain are usually the one's closest to the target. Not much I can do here but just push up the trailing stops and see what happens. Frankly, I would be delighted to see them keep going and break this out--since bear markets are good for nobody.

I will not get short until I see a particular price/momentum divergence signature peculiar to bear markets that I look for. If it comes, then I will sell it all and make the switch in bias and join the dark side on selected hit and run attacks. When I get short--I will most likely be on the other side of the consensus if I get the entry right, but that is fine by me.

As of this morning my stop/reversal lines are as follows:

VST = 1398
ST = 1384
IT = 1311
LT = 1309

The trends are up if price is above and down if price crosses below.

...my .02