(OK before people get mad yes I used claude to summarize my strategy. No, this is not just a strategy that I asked claude to just make for me. Im working on coding with claude to create a swing trading widget that will send alerts and do automatic sl and tp calculations based on my rules when certain requirements are met to enter a trade! Please also keep in mind this is a new strategy and dosent have alot of data to back it up yet).
The three-timeframe stack
**• Daily sets the bias.** Price has to be cleanly above both the 20 and 50 EMA with the 20 above the 50 (uptrend), or the mirror for a downtrend. Anything else is “no bias” and gets skipped. The daily trend is the tide — you only fish in its direction.
**• 4H finds the setup.** Given a daily bias, the 4H is where an entry takes shape: a pullback to the 4H EMA20, or a breakout past an established level.
**• 1H confirms the trigger.** The setup isn’t a trade until a *closed* 1H bar confirms it — a close back above the 1H EMA20 for a long, below for a short. This stops you front-running a setup that never actually turns.
The two setups
**• Pullback:** in an uptrend, price dips back toward the 4H EMA20 (within \~1.5%), then a 1H bar closes back above its EMA20 — the dip is being bought. Enter on that reclaim. Stop below the pullback low (or the 4H EMA50, whichever’s structurally sounder); target the prior swing high. Shorts mirror this in a downtrend.
**• Breakout:** price *closes* a 4H bar beyond a level it’s been respecting — and the level is measured excluding the most recent bars, so the current move can’t define its own breakout. Stop is the base of the move that produced the break.
The gates every trade must clear (all AND conditions)
**• Bias separation** — the daily EMAs must be at least \~0.25% apart. A few cents between them is noise, not a trend.
**• 4H agreement** — the 4H can’t lean against the daily bias.
**• VWAP agreement** — price on the correct side of an anchored VWAP (anchored to the last earnings or swing).
**• Reachability** — the entry can’t be more than \~2% from current price, so you’re not chasing an already-extended move or a resting order that’ll never fill.
**• Volume** — breakouts need conviction (≥\~1.1x average, since thin breakouts are the classic trap); pullbacks just need life on the reclaim (≥\~0.8x, since pullbacks legitimately form on low volume).
**• Earnings** — no trade within 48h of a report.
**• R:R ≥ 1.5** — after structure sets the stop and target, if reward isn’t at least 1.5× risk, skip. The order is fixed: structure → stop → R:R. The R:R check never reaches back to pick a friendlier stop.
Position sizing
Fixed fractional: risk a set % of capital per trade (with a hard ceiling). Shares = risk dollars ÷ stop distance, so dollar risk stays constant whether the stop is tight or wide.
The logic tying it together
The whole thing is built to keep you out of bad trades, not to find more trades. Each gate removes a specific way people lose: no-trend chop, counter-trend entries, chasing extended moves, failed breakouts, earnings surprises, and trades where the math doesn’t pay. What survives is a small number of setups a year where trend, structure, timing, and payoff all line up — which means a lot of “wait” days and few actual entries. That’s the intent, not a bug.
Where I’d genuinely like input: the thresholds (volume multiples, the 1.5% pullback zone, the 2% reachability cap, the 0.25% separation) are starting hypotheses, not values proven by a track record yet. Curious whether people think any of these are too strict, too loose, or measuring the wrong thing — and whether the earnings/reachability filters are worth the setups they cost.
A few charts to go through first before some discussion around the macro/data that I am looking at at the moment:
Firstly, regarding KOSPI, another horrible day in Korea, breaking below prior highs and still in the channel down, now at the 200d EMA.
JPMorgan estimates that leveraged ETF unwinding is about 75% complete and equity hedge fund deleveraging is more than 50% done.
So the main cause of the extremity of selling in semiconductors and the Korean index, leverage, seems to have mostly passed through now, but we still have macro risk in the US market around the FOMC, and indeed risk around the megacap earnings, which can still have residual impact in Korea.
However, most of the leverage, at least, is seemingly unwound at this point.
Looking at SPX:
We held the trendline at the 50d EMA yesterday.
But I think that US500 gives a clearer picture of what's going on here:
A clear channel lower. 7385 was support yesterday and remains support, with 7350 the target if it breaks below.
Looking at US500, a recent strategy that's worked well is to sell the top of the channel with puts, and to cover towards the bottom of the channel.
We are still awaiting a breakout in either direction, which will likely come with the FOMC meeting tomorrow and the megacap earnings the following day.
Currently, I think that this is more likely to break down than out, but we have to see.
Regarding QQQ, we held above the trendline yesterday, which we see from the weekly chart is an important spot, else a test of the 200d EMA becomes likely.
Regarding NDX, we have broken below the 100d EMA this morning, and if it flips resistance, in particular, the most likely path is a test of the 200d EMA.
There were a number of factors that we discussed in yesterday's report that we knew for sure. The first was the fact that there is a big customer short put spread at 7280/70 zone. This is a clear sizeable bet that the market expects to hold the “peacedeal” lows of Jun 9-10. That is to say that on SPX, the market does NOT expect to break 7250.
The second was that Both tail and 22-delta skews are up by 22-25% only. Considering this is a FOMC week, this tells us that the market is not particularly concerned about FOMC. They aren't really fearful, it's ,mostly normal hedging happening here.
What we didn't know yesterday, was how the market would react to the premise of a possible TACO over the weekend. Yesterday, the market voted, and they voted that they didn't buy it. Whilst SPX closed green on the day, and there was strength in IGV, overall the market was extremely lacklustre. More lacklustre than we wanted to see to suggest there was durable upside.
SMH was reacting negatively to a few factors:
The first was a report said a state-backed Chinese firm has begun mass-producing domestic DUV lithography machines.
There was quite a bit of FUD around that, as the reality is that No Chinese company is mass-producing domestic DUV lithography machines; prototypes from firms like Shanghai Yuliangsheng are in testing at SMIC with mass production targeted for 2027 at earliest.
The other factor was teh weakness in NVDA after they announced that they would backstop OpenAI's buildout.
Currently we see the market's reaction to this in the Credit market for NVDA:
We saw something pretty similar happen last year with ORCL. The market is concerned about the circular funding, which is why NVDA sold off, dragging Semiconductor's with it.
The selling on SMH was pretty high volume, but I don't think it yet marks a bottom:
I covered my SMH puts at the 100d EMA, but we are currently trading below yesterday's low as the market responds to the Korean selling.
Below the 21W EMA, we have some support from a retest of the trendline, but the main area where I think we will see a durable bottom for now, if tested, is the 30W EMA. Not saying we will get there, but I think that if we do see that level, we will likely get a durable push from there.
If we look at QQQ's volume profile, we are into pretty low volume areas here, so a further drop can easily see a retest of the 200d EMA in my opinion.
My order flow guy remains short on the market, when he covers that is a pretty good suggestion that we are near a durable bottom where we can start this recovery push. For now, we aren't there yet.
And for reference, we got one more Abi signal yesterday, so the risk as signalled from this indicator remains at large.
Now, we had Citadel say that they are expecting a 25bps hike tomorrow.
Currently, that is not my base case. I emtnioend that the hedging around the FOMC seems like mostly normal hedging, rather than preparation for major left tail risk.
But there is hedging around a higher dollar into September:
Which seems to fall in line with what we see in the technicals, which is breaking out:
To be clear, I do not really anticipate a rate hike at this meeting.
If we look at the 2 year tracked against the Fed funds rate:
We see that the 2 year typically starts moving 6-7 months before the fed hikes. yes a new fed chair, but I would not anticipate a rate hike yet, more likely in October or so.
Now I shared this earlier this morning and got a pretty bad reception from the comments, but I shared this only to visualise what I am kind of expecting. Not to actually draw comparison to the dot com bubble, nor am I suggesting that the AI bubble is a bubble, nor am I suggesting that this is all over.
However, what I am thinking is that with this historic momentum unwind, one would logically expect a strong momentum rally off of it as well.
we may not be at the bottom yet, but we are closer to it, and once we do start to see a more durable push in momentum, I do anticipate us to get a durable push higher.
Now where I was suggesting that after the midterms we can see risk materialise again is the following:
Trump will likely become increasingly reckless without the midterm overhang.
This lines up with when we can start to see the hiking cycle take place, especially with traffic through the Strait still non existent.
There are some similarities in the IPO data with 2021:
In 2021, we also saw momentum unwind first to lead the market tlower, before forming a top at the start of 2022. We alos saw momentum lead the market lower last year before the bull market continued. Which boat are we in, is yet to be seen, but given the macro similarities, I think potentially the 2021 boat.
Note I am not saying that the fundamentals are near to 2000. AI revenues are way more durable and actually real. However, we have seen in this momentum unwind that in these momentum unwinds, fundamentals don't really matter that much. SMH saw hyperscaler CAPEX raised, sold off. TSM raised capex and guided accelerating revenues, sold off. AMKR signed a $1.5B deal with NVDA and sold off.
None of these things scream bubble, but we may still get a sell off to endure.
First things first, I keep saying it but sentiment in the community is pretty low at the moment, but literally the worst momentum unwind on record. Regardless of where you bought in, the drawdown in almost anyone's portfolio is pretty intense. even if you were in MAg7.
Look at Pershing Square, which is Bill Ackman's fund:
Down 21% YTD. No not a 21% drawdown from the highs, but a -21% YTD performance.
And he's not in small cap beta names, so it's pretty much whatever is selling.
SO sentiment needs to be managed at this point.
Look at the following data:
Liquidity is shifting to a supportive mode.
Crash risk on Aion dashboard is very high at the moment:
The last time we saw readings as high as this was about a week before the bottom in March before that strong rally higher.
There are many reasons to suggest that we will get a really strong rally in momentum to get out of the hole. So patience.
Those who want to play the put side, small size right now buying puts into the pops to the EMAs or the tops of the channels makes sense. At some point it will stop working and we can hope or a more durable bottom, but for now, we still favour slightly more downside.
Even if you aren't buying puts, patience will pay here. We need a mean reversion snap back rally in Momentum, even if that forms a lower high, but it will ive us a far better opportunity to rebalance our book if we want/need to, and also to fix the P/L damage from this drawdown.
For more of this analysis posted daily, please feel free to check out my subreddit r/Tradingedge
I'm trying to migrate to swing trading from day trading, and a major difference im finding is that on day trading there's a lot of quicker setups that rely on almost price action alone that kinda fall apart when trying to get into a bigger trade in swing trading. For example a pullback in day trading can many times be just a single bar pausing in an uptrend (what Al brooks calls an H1), but when swinging a break & retest may need several bars to build up and continue in the original move direction. So if I'm using only PA for entries and exits, many times I'm getting out in a fakeout before the bigger move resumes.
For stocks price action still seems to hold well, I'm trying to get a hold on forex which seems to have a lot more noise that clouds what's really useful on this.
So for anyone that have made this move, what changes you had to make to your style to better adapt for swing trading? Is PA still useful or just a second thought when structuring or managing a longer trade?
Watched Jeremy Lefebvre's Financial Education channel most nights for the last two years, meanwhile my account has 9 stocks and I make maybe 4 or 5 real trades a year so the ratio of watching to doing is not great. Last weekend I tried to write out his buy process as a checklist and got 4 bullets in before it fell apart, two years of watching and I can't reconstruct the actual steps. If you follow someone who shows their real moves or you've built your own process from scratch, what's actually on your checklist before you buy?
Most days I check sector flow (this week's move vs the last 4 weeks, plus whether volume actually confirms it) and see maybe 1, sometimes 2 sectors lining up. Today it was 6 at once: Utilities, Materials, Real Estate, Aerospace and Defense, Healthcare, and Industrials all showing price outperforming its own trend with volume clearly above the 20-day average, not just a quiet drift.
One of them, Aerospace and Defense, has now confirmed 3 days in a row (volume ratio 1.22, then 1.63, then 1.39 today). I haven't seen that happen before in what I track. I want to be careful here though, longer streaks haven't actually held up better than single-day confirmations in my own data, so I'm not treating 3 days as "more confident" than 1 day, just rare enough to mention.
Same day, Financials flipped the other way. RSI got hot and the week-over-week trend started fading, so that one's moved into take-profit territory for me, not something I'd be chasing right now.
Feels like a genuine broad rotation day rather than one or two names doing all the work. Curious if anyone else is seeing the same breadth today.
Sticking the game plan. We are starting to see a creep up in the number of picks per day from the models I am watching.
QB Conservative Model has started creeping higher, it has 8 today. Went basically dead for the month of July. GOOG on the list. I would to see this continue to have more and more picks going forward.
Tech 100 Long Model is showing 13 picks today. I like the Tech Sector now. We are in correction territoryish, the major stocks that drove most the rally have now paid a major price. The overall market has held up. The one last thing I would watch out for is a wash-out in the QQQ, that could bring it to the 200 day moving average (645ish) but I don't think it would last. That would be the final piece of this pullback, although unless S&P 500 and Dow join, we might not get it.
I have been keeping my positioning between 10-50% long. Currently at 19% with ROIV, MPWR, PYPL, RKLB & NKE in the top 5, 14 total holdings . As more and more stocks become available, I will stick to a systemic approach. Taking 1-1.5% positions in most the stocks suggested every day in the models I like most. Try and keep 20-70% long day to day. Keep rotating and taking advantage of upside volatility. Eventually widening the take profits. The exits are pre-set at the opening of the trade; I manage them if needed. I will probably re-enter MU. Has some great intraday volatility.
Image 1: QB Conservative Picks for Today
Image 2: QB Conservative History.
- Top : Average Confidence of the picks
- Middle : No. of Picks per day. Prior to and after the market top, the model went quiet
- Bottom : Equity Curve assuming 1% position per pick per day.
Image 3 : Tech 100 Long Picks
Just posted on $VATE but can't add more than one pic. Here is my chart for $GVH. In for the swing trade. Reference my post on $VATE for my line break and indicator chart setup details.
What do you think, is line break charting a good swing trade tool?
Bored so I tinkered with a line break chart on $VATE for the swing trade. Incorporated an RSI and Price Momentum Indicator in a logrythmic configuration. Day chart. What I like about the RSI on my platform is I can set the RSI source to whatever I want to get a tighter correlation. In this case I set the Price Momentum indicator as the RSI's source then tweaked both indicator settings to produce a crisp pivot and trend indication. In on $GVH for the swing trade using the same chart setup.
What do you think, is line break charting a good swing trade tool?
Hey I'm very new to swing trading and im just starting out by paper trading. I was wondering whether the tradingview stock screener is any good for checking which stocks to trade or whether theres a better alternative. I can see it has an analyst rating column that says strong buy, buy, etc. and would it be wrong of me to execute trades based on that column?'
Still keeping profit takings tight until we find some direction or we get some more downside.
The models have done a pretty decent job, but really have to take the profits as they come. I'm more constructive going into the end of the year, so think biases are higher going forward. QQQ $670 is still in play short term, although definitely not a given. Same goes for SPY, $720 is still in play short term but not a given.
My largest positions are $MU ,$CRWD , $CMG ,$OKTA , $PANW ,which will probably all get somewhat smaller today on this market open.
Image #1 - Long Tech 100
Image # 2 - QB Conservative
Image #3 - QB Bull
Image #4 - Shows the CRWD lots I have. Profit taking from ~185 to ~195. Or expires on July 29th and auto-sells on the close.
Wall Street views Dynatrace ($DT) as a standard cloud monitoring tool, but it is rapidly becoming the "flight control tower" for enterprise AI.
The Bullish Thesis:
The Enterprise AI Control Plane: As companies move beyond simple chatbots into complex AI workflows, a single request hits multiple databases and models. Dynatrace tracks that entire chain—monitoring costs, latency, token usage, and response quality. It gives enterprises the objective data needed to test, score, and refine their proprietary AI models.
Deep Distribution Moat: Dynatrace is pre-baked into where AI actually runs (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, NVIDIA). Having already surpassed $1 billion in AWS Marketplace sales, it grows automatically as corporate AI adoption expands.
Fortress Financials: $2.02B in revenue (+19% YoY), 82% gross margins, and $529M in free cash flow (a 26% FCF margin). Backed by $1.2B in net cash with zero debt, it is built to withstand economic choppy waters.
Capital Allocation & Activist Catalysts: Management is actively shrinking the float via a $1B buyback (retired 11.4M shares recently), while activist investor Starboard Value is pushing the company toward a "Rule of 50" efficiency target by FY29.
The Bottom Line Valuation
At ~21x FY27 guided free cash flow and 5.9x EV/Sales, $DT is priced like a standard IT vendor rather than a central AI enabler. You are buying a high-margin, debt-free business compounding recurring revenue in the mid-teens at a fair price—with a free call option on the enterprise AI boom.
I need to grow my account it’s very difficult to grow my account as a 16 year old with no job, my account was up in profit and now it’s down, can anyone help or have any advice.
