Good post and explanation on the Dollar and inter-market implications.

Connie (Brown) is quite complicated and somewhat controversial (to me at least) in her methods but they seem to work well for her and she does have some excellent, fresh ideas I think. She keeps her Gann methodology secret which she claims is her big “Money Maker” but freely shares Fibonacci techniques. I’m still trying out her methods as I understand them and am finding some things – particularly not using spike highs and lows – useful for a clearer picture. I have a lot of respect for her, but do get bogged down in details as she has a knack for explaining every little squiggle in an oscillator which can be overwhelming.

It may be that the more advanced settings do come with SC.com membership, which is what I use. I haven’t seen the default (non-member) settings in quite some time on the site. It’s under advanced settings to the right of where you enter the indicator parameters.

Yes, gaps skew price based indicators, but they recalibrate once the gap is factored out. It was interesting that price still respected them, despite this fact during Thursday’s trading.

Spot on too. StockCharts does a good job with their charts, and there are some downloads for TradeStation that try to take care of it (eliminating the gap from calculation) but generally, if there’s a gap that is larger than $0.20, it’s generally best to ignore all indicators until that gap is factored out of the price data.

It happened to be of use in this example, but this was more the exception to the rule than the rule. Gaps skew all price-based indicators until the data falls out of the data set.

Precisely. Today’s (Friday’s) action has already been volatile, and the market is constricting/winding down into a range. A little push outside the range – particularly to the downside – could lead to a fresh impulse move.

True, particularly if we’re viewing a log or arithmetic scale, among other considerations.

In my experience, bear flags have 45 degree angular retracements on an arithmetic scale, so I see it as a confirmation for a possible bear flag trade.

I posted a Dollar Index chart which I believe will have implications for the market – particularly commodity related stocks. http://www.speculativemeasures.com

I see you’ve mentioned Constance Brown a few times, along with your references to confluence. I read her book a few weeks ago and still haven’t made up my mind on her application of Fibonacci’s for price projections (vs merely retracements). I’d love to here more of your experiences with it.

PS still can’t get anything but Bollinger band “Lines” to appear on stockcharts. I’ve concluded you must not be using the free charts, for I do not see where there are any settings affecting how it is displayed.

Seems as though the opening gap ought to screw up the moving averages. Does it?

RP: minor point, but it’s quad witching, bud.

Sp closed as a daily DOJI = clear bear alert

This is particularly true as we are edging above 50 day M Av ….which cd well prove to be a ‘false break’

Add to mix triple witching