S&P 500 price levels to trade

[rimshot]

some ideas for you to consider based on my own life-long learning and practical experience + what I have learned from mentoring many other new or experienced investors/traders over the last four decades:

1. choose to master the craft of analysis first ... the financial benefits will follow if you learn the craft and understand what your own discipline is for managing risk and maximizing trade profits ... if you love your self-imposed trade entry and exit discipline, you will love the financial results ... in other words, love the mastery of your craft ... do NOT first love the pot of gold at the end of the "hope" rainbow

2. if the aspects of your day do not allow you avoid being distracted and at peace within your self, do not attempt to trade ... best to be productive with another activity you enjoy

3. find one or more trading buddies who are determined to learn how to master the craft of managing risk and maximizing trade profits ... share methods and mistakes and trade wins with each other, so you can learn from each other ... try to talk at least three times weekly by phone or via private chat software to ask each other questions about a chart setup or technical method of analysis and to share what you have actually accomplished in your practice trading or in your real trading with a specific method or tool for chart analysis.

4. read all you can that is written by John Bollinger (Bollinger Capital Management), and also read the authors he suggests that you read. Subscribe to his service called Equity Trader, so that you can learn what technical analysis tools are available to compliment the use of basic Bollinger Bands .. and see how to use his charting and indicator methods for SPY, QQQ and other symbols related to the instrument you wish to trade.

http://www.equitytrader.com/chart/?symbol=USB#adline=0*20&adosc=0*20&aroon=0*14&avgtr=0*14&bbaccumulation=0*20*2.0*0*30*2.1&bbdelta=0*10*3&bbimpulse=0&bbindex=0*20*0*3&bbpersist=0*125*0*150&bbstop=0*2012-05-14*1*0.02*0.2*1.5&bbtrend=0*20*50&bwdelta=0*1&bwdth=0&cci=0*21&chandelierstop=0*2012-05-14*1*10*3*0&charttype=bollingerbar&chop=0*14&cmo=0*14&conviction=0*5&dfa=0*50&dmi=0*14&expectation=0*1&formula_tab=0&ialine=0*10&iaosc=0*20&icebreaker=0*SPY&iiline=0*10&iiosc=1*21&kd=0*10*3*1&macd=0*12*26*9&mfi=0*14&movavg1=&movavg2=&movavg3=&movavgtype=no&mtm=0*12*10&normvol=1*50&nrsi=0*14&obv=0*10&overlay=1¶bolicstop=0*2012-05-14*1*0.02*0.2&perb=0*0*0&perbw=0*125&pm=0*0&pos=0*10*20&psychology=0*19*5&pvconf=0*20&pvt=0*10&qstk=0*14&rmi=0*4*14&roc=0*12&rs=1*SPX&rsi=0*14&samplerate=1&scale=0&spvol=0*10&spvolp=0*21&stochimp=0*10&stochrsi=0*14*14&symbols=CALM&tri=0*3*10&uos=0*5*10*20&vhf=0*14&vol=0*50&vos=0*10*20&vpci=0*5*20*3&vwmacd=0*12*26*9&wr=0*21&wynia=0*10&zigzag=0*0&;

5. most important, be 100% confident in yourself and your inner calm OR walk away from the computer until you are in that state.

Honestly answer the question you must be realistic about:

That you are 100% willing to invest the time and mental energy to master the craft of technical analysis and risk/reward analysis and execution. Do NOT trade until you have:

1. determined you will actually follow through and do all the work necessary to master your technical analysis craft. AND

2. you have actually accomplished mastering your technical analysis craft plus you have established a rules-based "system" for quantifying financial risk and financial reward for each trade you are contemplating and you have actually developed a timing method for your trade entry, exit and the stop-loss order value.

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here are some telling tweets from John over the years:

John Bollinger @bbands

Old wisdom: "The most bullish thing a market can do is get overbought and stay so." So, how do we know when the end is near? "Divergences."

John Bollinger @bbands

Three Pushes to a High should be confirmed by %b, BandWidth and BBTrend.

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notes from John regarding groupings of Technical Indicators:

* some indicators may serve multiple purposes and appear more than once.

Supply/Demand
Are securities under accumulation or distribution?

Momentum
How fast are we going?

Market State
Are we trending or in a consolidation?

Direction
What direction are we moving in?

Power
In what direction are the big moves occurring?

Range
Where are we in relation to history?

Overbought/Oversold
Have we come too far, too fast?

Volatility
How volatile is it?

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From a certain perspective Bollinger Bands® can be seen as a combination of trend and volatility information. The middle band provides the trend information and the standard deviation calculation provides the volatility information.

trend = sma(last, n)

volatility = stdev(last, n)

middleBB = trend

upperBB = trend + m * volatility

lowerBB = trend + m * volatility

Where the defaults are n = 20 and m = 2, sma() returns a simple moving average and stdev() returns the population standard deviation measure.

I created the first two Bollinger Band indicators in the early '80s.
They measured where we were in relation to the bands and how wide the bands were.

%b™ (last = lowerBB()) / (upperBB - lowerBB)

BandWidth™ = (upperBB - lowerBB) / middleBB

that is where I left it for years, until later I experimented with BBDelta™, which was the single-period price change as a function of Bollinger Bands.

BBDelta = (last – last[-1}) / (upperBB – lowerBB)

Moving along I created BBImpulse™, which is the single-period change in %b .

BBImpulse = %b - %b[-1]

I realized that BBDelta and BBImpulse were too highly correlated to be useful together, so I examined the core principles of each and morphed BBDelta into BBMomentum™, which is n-period momentum as a function of Bollinger Bands, where the default for n is one half the length on the Bollinger Band calculation period.

BBMomentum = (last – last[-n]) / (upperBB – lowerBB)

(For those that like and wish to continue using BBDelta, I note that it is a special case of BBMomentum where n = 1.)

Surveying the territory after creating BBImpulse and BBMomentum, the way forward sprung into clear relief and I started assembling the rest of the indicators that form the current BB Indicator Suite. The hardest was the volume indicator, BBAccumulation™, a measure of supply and demand.