David Tablish | Oct 07, 2013 01:05AM ET
In this report I want to continue looking at the precious metals stock indexes and the consolidation patterns that have been building out since the June low. The reason I’m spending so much time looking at this possible consolidation area is so you can get a feel, in real time, for how breakouts and backtest work. There is no better way to learn how the markets work than to watch how things unfold moment by moment. It's easy to say after the fact, 'yes I should have done this or that', but real time doesn’t give you the luxury of 20/20 hindsight.
I’m going to start with the 2 hour, 6 month line charts that I showed a couple of weeks ago before the flash rally. They looked like they were on the verge of breaking down at the time. I think the flash rally just delayed the inevitable. It may not feel like it but a lot of work has been going on behind the scenes with the breakout and backtesting taking time to complete. As you will see, everything up to this point is still working out as planned except for the flash rally. Keep in mind when I posted these charts we were still trading inside the bearish expanding rising wedges.
Let's start with the strongest of the precious metals stock indexes the HUI, It now shows the breakout and a half hearted backtest so far. You can also see the H&S consolidation pattern that is part of the bearish expanding rising wedge consolidation pattern that shows up on the other PM stock indexes as well.
There is also a much bigger H&S pattern in play at this time with the left shoulder formed back in July. The last point of interest is the red bearish falling wedge that is forming basically right on the bottom blue rail of the expanding rising wedge and the H&S neckline. Note the beakout gap and the backtest last week to the underside of the neckline and the bottom blue rail that ended up being the 4th reversal point in the red falling wedge.
So far everything was working out beautifully. I drew in the solid black uptrend rail connecting the 2008 low and the low we just made. When the HUI started to move lower after backtesting the neckline from below I really thought the price action would break through the solid black uptrend rail with no problem as the H&S top was in place. As you can see when the HUI declined back down to the black rail, it didn’t give way and the HUI started to rally creating the double bottom. This was a very trickey situation as we had the H&S top in place and a double bottom that had just held. We were short at the time and I had to decide very quickly if that was the correct position to be in as the double bottom held and the HUI was rallying strongly up.
Long story short, we exited our short position and went long. Once above the neckline, red arrow, it felt like the bull market was taking off again and the place to be was to the long side. This is why following the price action is so important. The rally stalled out at the blue arrow, which we now see as the right shoulder of a bigger H&S topping pattern. I held my ground on the backtest from the top side just as you would have expected, as the support and resistance rail suggested should now hold as support, green arrows. The moment of truth came when the HUI broke below the black dashed support and resistance rail with a strong move.
I said at the time this wasn’t supposed to happen if the bullish case was in place. We exited our short position with a small loss to break even. At that point we backtested the black support and resistance rail from below and is when we took our initial position in DUST on December 2nd I believe. I used the red circle to show how we were interacting with the neckline, which is part of the support and resistance rail and the solid black uptrend rail. The Chartology worked its magic within the red circle as you can see. The price action backtested the neckline and then when the uptrend rail was broken to the downside it backtested it as well. This was as clear a signal as you could get that the false breakout above the neckline or the support and resistance rail was nothing more than a bull trap that caught many bulls by surprise including me. I was lucky enough to have Chartology on my side so by following the price action we were able to get out of our precious metals stocks and ride the whole bear market impulse leg down using DUST, DSLV and DGLD.
Now you can see our blue bearish expanding rising wedge. There is a very good possibility that this pattern is showing us the halfway point of the major decline that started at the top of the right shoulder on the bigger H&S top that I’ll show you in a minute.
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