Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Using Fibonacci on my final trade

I wanted to point out how I used Fibonacci numbers to make my final trade today. Initially I was playing for an Elliott Wave pattern as price plummeted and then violently retraced. However, I noticed that price pretty much stopped at Fibonacci's 50% retracement level. This gave me a concrete area to place my stop once I was in the trade which I took as price hovered around that 50% level.

I placed my stop just beyond the 61.8% level because I knew that if the price broke out from there, the edge on this trade had disappeared. After placing my trade I used a tool in Tradestation to determine my target for the trade called the Fibonacci Price Extension.
This is capture of my actual trade at the end of the day including the Fibonacci Price Extension. I plotted the extension from the beginning of the swing down and then up into the swing high--or the "flag". Tradestation plotted the "extension" of the price from that point giving me Fibonacci targets for my trade.

I expected a larger move than actually happened. But when price stopped right on the 61.8% extension twice, I knew it was time to take my profits and run. Price hung out there for one more bar before heading up the rest of the day.

Normally, my target for a "flag" like that is the 100% extension. But when you see price fail to break levels above, it might be time to take your profits and run.

1 comment:

Scott said...

Good to hear from you again, Rick. Hope things are going well for you.