Market Update For Week Ending 3/5

 

Background on dark pools can be found at this link.

Recap from Last Week

So those Friday prints look to be more distribution for a total of $50B, and Monday's prints add to that for $56B.  That is a lot.   Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, they really didn't spend much ammunition whipsawing everyone.  It looked like we were out of the woods on Wednesday and many people went long only to have the HFT's dump the market.  The dark pools only distributed about $3.6B at those highs.  Maybe they are running out of ammo.  On Thursday and Friday, they  appear to be creating another demand zone in the 380 to 382.5 range (about $13.2B).  Price is currently below those levels, so it would not be advisable to load a boat with SPY until the pivot and R1 are cleared and tested.

This Week

On Monday, $2B more came in at the Friday low for a total of $4.1B at 380.   Then Monday and Tuesday prints came in totaling $15.4B at around 390.  Maybe they are building a new base after the dump to 380?  Wednesday is mostly "hidden" dark pool prints that come in after hours, $8.7B.  When that happens, look for a consolidation pattern for a target price.  A guess at price would be 385.  Then we see sell tranches going down to $381.24.  Monday and Tuesday prints are sells after seeing this.  Then Thursday high gets sold again.  $4B at 381.51 with more sell tranches going down to 372.60.  More after hours prints ($6.7B) and another consolidation pattern around 376.  Friday morning highs are sold, and we get a round trip back up over Thursday's high.  $4.1B at the low shows up and $2.9B at the high.  $4.4B after hours are printed, and that price is anyone's guess.  Price action would say they are at the lows, but Friday's chart has no reliable pattern to show were they might be.  

Couple of things worth noting.  On 2/23, prints for the 800 stocks my app follows were double the normal volume.  That resulted in giant splash up on 2/24 before the dump continued.  On 3/3, massive VXX prints showed up after hours before another leg down.  The boys at mission control appear to still hold the bulk of that VXX position.  Friday's prints showed another anomaly.  The heavy volume was almost solely in index funds.  Individual stocks were very light, and the heavy ones all look like sells at local highs.  The Friday prints on QQQ were double normal volume.  Crap high beta stocks got massacred this week.  Most are sitting on 25-50% losses.

Market Tops vs. Bottoms

I think finding tops is simple.  Watch for the boys holding price at a local high for 3-5 days with heavy prints.  A giant VXX print up there is confirmation.  Easy peasy.  

Bottoms don't seem to be that simple.  I've heard several things this week:

• Watch for rising BOP (balance of power) and rising TSV (time segmented volume)
• Buy the 2020 trend line
• Watch for a big spike in volatility 
• Fibonacci Retraces (and use a different fib if that doesn't work LOL)

I don't know if any of these work or not.  If they do, it doesn't look that obvious to me.  I'd love to hear more theories at brian@royseonline.com.  

Weekly Pivots

$389          R2

$385          R1

$383.92     Pivot

$376.42     S1

$373          S2

If you want to look at the data for yourself, a Google sheet can be found this link.  Retweet this link and follow me if you want to see more posts like this.

I've gotten a few questions about seeing these prints in real time.  For a $20 monthly Venmo payment, I will set you up on an email system that provides near real time updates on VXX, SPY, and QQQ.  That would also include access to the Google sheet with the data if Google provides authentication to your email system.  Ping me at brian@royseonline.com or @brianbalance on Twitter if you are interested.