larry levin tips

The world of trading has many parts that seem a little foreign to new traders. There are plenty of catch phrases, symbols, and other banter that can be intimidating or even confusing at first. One of the biggest sources of confusion includes the shorthand that you see for many markets...

Before we get to the moral hazard piece, I have to mention rollover. Thursday is the first day of rollover, which is when the March ES futures contract changes (rolls) to June. We call it top step in the pit. In the past we would trade the new June contract on its first day (Thursday) but now...

I think trading with a specific plan is one of the most sensible things a trader can do. It helps you learn and identify key areas to watch for in a market. More importantly, it helps you avoid sabotaging yourself because it helps keep your emotions in check. One of the key components of a...

The market continues to wait on the news of the next Greek bailout. Each day that something might happen, the market grinds higher. When that something falls flat, the market goes flat again. After an early slide this morning, the market received the headlines below from Bloomberg and resumed...

You have often heard me say that the market is rigged, which it most certainly is via the Federal Reserves overall interest rate engineering, as well as outright manipulations through quantitative easing (QE), backdoor bailouts, POMO, massive swap lines, etc. Many of you believe that...

The market is dead. Continuing with last weeks theme there was no volume, no volatility, and no action of any kind. If the market isnt dead, it sure is in a very deep slumber. The range has been so tight for so long that when it does wake up, or come back to life, it should do so with a...

I had high hopes for Mondays trade when I said Are enough traders home from their holidays to make for good trading Monday? Thats a close call in my opinion; however, there just may be enough scheduled economic data releases, including the Fed, to make our first day of 2012 a good one...

Fridays early trade was higher on general optimism. The early rally ran into resistance and started its normal sideways (lack of) trend. Shortly into this sideways zone the news hit: lawsuits. On the face of it you wouldnt expect the news to drive down equities, but this is the only thing...

The market fell again Tuesday and although three down days in four is nothing for central banksters to truly worry about (and there is plenty of lower support in the S&P) it nevertheless is not going according to plan. The Feds QE1 plan did work it saved the markets from total annihilation...

Understanding support and resistance levels is an extremely important technical skill in any market, and I think it's absolutely critical if you plan on trading the S&P E-Mini market. Professional Floor Traders are aware of an entire range of major and minor support and resistance levels before...

Let me introduce you to one simple technique I've used to pick intraday market direction with 80% accuracy. Would you like to know if a particular trade has an 80% probability of working? Would you like to know exactly where to enter that trade, and where to exit? Would you like to trade this...

Monday was another Ramp & Camp day: it ramped higher on very low volume and set up a camp site. The volatility was ridiculously low again. For the vast majority of the session, the ES traded in a scant 3.50 point range despite being up over 35.00 points. All of it happened on Globex...

How often have you looked at a chart and tried to determine whether or not the market is really trending? How many times have you been fooled by your Stochastics or RSI indicators? How many times have you sold because your oscillators were screaming overbought then watched the market dip a...

Once again the markets experienced an early updraft due to short covering that was followed by yet another preposterous Hopium explosion. One more media source The Guardian broke a story that claimed the bankers get out of jail fund (the EFSF) would be leverage to 2-TRILLION Euros. And hey...

A friend of mine in the pit had been having a rough time lately when he asked me a typical question among us traders - How do I come back from a loss? Since he had been having a "rough patch" and not just one bad trade, I gave him the following advice that is to be used over a period of time...

The market exploded Monday on the nationalization news of Dexia, no additional sovereign downgrades (but that hasnt mattered recently anyway), and an announcement by Merkel & Sorkozy that they have, in essence, a plan to create a plan in the near future. When asked about the details, Sarkozy...

In the fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis, there have been moments that have been driven by pure fear. These are the moments when it can be hard to maintain your composure and trade your plan. Unfortunately, these big days are the times when you need that composure the most. Here is a...

Although there were two good economic data points Monday, the market was slammed. The Dow closed down -258 points, while the S&P500 closed down -32.19 points or -2.85%. The first report to be released was the construction spending data. It was expected to be another negative reading of...

On a candlestick chart, there is a pattern that technicians refer to as a doji. A doji has top and bottom shadows like a regular candlestick, but has practically no real body. This happens when the opening and closing price are the same, or so close that they just leave a sliver of a real body...

Stop orders are often used to try to protect profits. Take the stop order to another dimension and use it to reverse your position and open another trading possibility! When you place a stop order, it is only activated if the market trades at or through the stop price. These stop prices are...