PNC Financial Buy Signals Range Bars vs. 15 min.

PNC had multiple set-up long entries for day trading today. I want to show you the difference trading the stock today using a 15 minute chart versus using a .25 range bar chart. Clearly you can see the advantage of using the range bar charts today with your first buy signal entry at 50.05 at 9:42am rather than 50.69 at 11:45am. The multiple buy signals on the .25 range bars allowed you to build a nice position with 5 entries; whereas, the 15 min chart only had 2 entries.

S & P Inverse Correlation with the Volatility Index

Since the market meltdown a year ago I have been watching the Volatility Index (VIX) trade in an inverse correlation with the S & P 500 (SPX). As long as the VIX trends lower I will be bullish on the SPX on a longer time frame.

Trading American Express Earnings

Earnings season is my favorite time of year to trade. The increase in volatility provides some nice trade setups for equities. Last week daytraders had quite a few. AXP gave a long entry (35.37) before earnings Thursday on a pullback, then a strong close at 36.49 and a high of 36.80. After the earnings on Friday we had a sell short signal (35.71) on a pullback in to a weak close of 34.64 and a low of 34.26.