Definitions of Timeframes

In this series of posts I’m running about the U. S. stock market, I’m defining my timeframes this way:

Short Term – Daily bars chart, Intermediate Term – Weekly bars chart, Long Term - Monthly bars chart, Very Long Term – Quarterly bars chart.

Current Intermediate Term

Here’s the weekly bars chart of the so-called “Spiders”, ticker SPY, the exchange traded fund that tracks the S&P 500 index, for the last 13 months.

First, we see the crash in late ‘08, then the descent to the low in March of this year, followed by the robust retracement that we are still in. This retracement suffered a correction in July, which got stopped exactly at the Midas resistance curve that was launched from the local high in January.

Next, notice that there are three TopFinders fit to this chart. The first, the dotted curve, started from the low in March, and ended exactly at the end of that accelerated uptrend. This was followed by a sideways consolidation for several weeks, until, in early July, price launched into a new accelerated uptrend which is still going on.

The second TopFinder is fit to this current uptrend, and as of now, it is 73% done. Since this is an equivolume chart, where the horizontal axis is proportional to cumulative volume, I measured the horizontal length of this trend, from July 10th to yesterday, divided that distance by 0.73, which gives me the total distance from July 10th to the projected end of this uptrend, and that’s where the dotted red vertical line is located. So, that’s the location of the projected end to this trend. When the price bars get to this vertical line, the TopFinder will end, and we’ll know we’re at the end of this uptrend.

The upper red curve is a very significant Midas resistance curve that started in 2007. If you extrapolate that curve to the vertical line, and if you extrapolated the current price uptrend to the vertical line, they arrive at the same place, a price of about 114. So, that’s an approximate price target for this uptrend.

The third TopFinder shown here starts from the March low and is fitted to the July pullback. This one is 51% done. This illustrates the nested, fractal nature of TopFinders. This is a longer term TopFinder, and is not in conflict with the other one that’s running. The shorter term one that’s 73% complete could end, and price could pull back a bit, and then price could move on upwards to complete this longer term TopFinder.

Tweet This Post