Indice S&P 500

The Macro Importance of the 4.23 Breakout or Fake-out

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We are at an incredibly interesting and unique point in SPX. I am fascinated to see how this ends up resolving.

Based on everything I know, these things predict extreme trend events come next.

First let's take a moment to qualify the idea the 4.23 is going to be important. The idea of using a line generated by a multiple of a swing that happened almost 20 years ago to make decision on what will happen in the next years sounds silly. I know that. But look at what happened on all of the previous fibs. Seeing is believing.

This doesn't tell me the 4.23 has to be important, but it supports the idea it may be. If you bet any of the previous fibs would not be important, you'd have been wrong. All of these did their thing in one way or another at one point. It's quite incredibly, really. Especially if you understand that these pullback/breaks levels are common any time you use these fibs in a developing trend. They tend to react to the same levels in the same ways. Then it happens on the Big Stage .It's amazing.

And if it continues, the next thing is ultra amazing.

The 4.23 head fake has disastrous forecasts. In the full play out of the 4.23 rejection we return to the 1.27 fib. In this case, that'd be a Depression style event. When a trend forms through fibs having all these pullback/break reactions and it gets to the 4.23, if the trend fails there -a massive mean reversion move happens.

When applied to a decade long rally, that would be horrific. This is the macro bear risk I have discussed at length, generally taking shorts into the fibs and covering/reversing long into supports). In the grand scheme of things the 4.23 area would be seen to have been essentially the top with some wild blow off action above it that turned into a head fake. We'd be right in the end times. A lot of nuance is needed for real trading but in a historical analysis it'd be seen that we were at the high now.

On the other hand, if the 4.23 breaks we usually see a move that is equal in size to all of the move before but happens in a fraction of the time. 4.23 breaks can be a wild with all supports/resistances being easily broken in big persistent candles. 4.23 breaks are rare, but they tend to put you into the most exceptional of price moves.

For context, when a 4.23 breaks when I am trading them on a 15 min chart prices are moving that fast I generally don't have time to do much. Even if I am sitting there watching at the exact moment it kicks off. It's like this;

"Wow! Okay I need to think what to ... WOW!".

Prices are moving too fast to process any reasonable plan. By the time you consider the situation you're in, you're in a totally different one. Nice conditions to be trailing stops. Hard to enter into.

The magnitude of a 4.23 break here would be astonishing based on the previously discussed norms. It'd predict that SPX would go into a move where it was doubling from the high. Furthermore, it was doing it in a tiny fraction of the time it took the previous rally.

For our doubling number it'd be best to take the breakout of the 4.23. Let's call it 5000 to keep it simple. Would give us an upside target of 10,000 in SPX without accounting for any stop hunting or overshoots. It would also imply that this happens in a crash up type of move. "Crash" being defined as a strong and sustained breaks of SR levels with no big reactions.

When it comes to tactical trading this is a total nightmare at this moment in time with the suggestion of massive profits (with potentially easy markets) in the coming year or so. At this point in time it's very tricky. If you accept the premise that either we're in a head fake over the 4.23 and a very aggressive rejection is coming or we're now into the start of what will become hyper over performance in the trend you have to consider this as a bit of a limbo point where there could be a chance to do well one way or the other but if you screw up something terrible will happen to you.

If it was a 4.23 fake out we'd have a super strong sell off. There could then be a big bull trap coming up to a double top/spike out and this would then turn into the most sensational of crashes down to under the 4.23- as the macro uptrend experiences what will become its first major trend failure.

The action in that move short term would be insane. There could be some late month rejection here (or next month) and then a massive monthly engulfing candle. We could see a month -20% or so and then see follow through down months. The amount the market could drop and how fast it'd be predicted to drop make it enticing to bet on this.

To bet on this, you have to bet into the rallies. There are too many times we dip and rip to try to sell after bear candles etc. They produce too many false signals. You can end up losing money even if you hit the big trade eventually. Betting on rallies allows you higher RR and when there are short term pullbacks you can get stops into even.

But that leads us to the headache ...

If we're inside a real breakout of the 4.23, we're in the foothills of what will become the most exceptional of rallies. During this, we should see massive high momentum moves up. These will generally go from one resistance level to another. Said differently, you'll see the spikes that seem ideal to fade into the levels you think are the levels to fade - and they won't be levels to fade.

Conversely, the bull strategy would have you aggressively buying all dips and breakouts. When you see momentum looking to get in one it quickly. If it pulls back, all the better. Doesn't matter if you take a string of losses because if you end up in lower at the end and it makes a new high you'll be net up on the round trip. The trend is going to be accommodating and it's only going to get better and better. You can't lose on the upside, and if you come at it in a really attacking way you could perhaps position before a massive upside move.

But you might be doing that into the very end of the trend and have all sorts of sickening gap risk/slippage risk and margin call risk.

Of course, the 4.23 thing might end up not even being important. But from the lens I see markets through, I have to think it will be. If it's not, I'll be surprised. And it makes me believe that whatever way it goes there has to be something exceptional.

When it comes to these juxtaposed outcomes watching price is not all that helpful. Because this can happen in an up move.
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With this happening in a down move.
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It can be really hard to tell things apart until the point where you've lost is crossed.

If we break the high and you think we're going higher, it's important to be aware of the risk of a bigger pullback. But it can just break and run, too.
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Or to the downside it could break abruptly.
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Breaks more commonly have traps in them and would look something like this.
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So we have a unique situation where I think it's fully justifiable to expect there would be exceptional moves with the market going up 100% or down over 60% - and both of these would be expected to happen within a short period of time. Bulk of it over a couple years. But the nuances of how to go about positioning in a risk efficient way are tricky.

On the bear side, you should be fading this rally and looking to build positions into drops as they develop. But if you're doing that against a bull trend you'll get decent entries if you're good with resistances but build up a position into support and end up down/even on all your entries. And you'll lose a lot of entries with no reaction - so you'll lose overall.

On the buy side you should be aggressively accumulating and buying close to supports but in the 4.23 head fake thesis this would be literally the worst time in your life to do that.

If you're buying and we go up and breakout, you should buy more. But if it's a breakout/correction then you'll get nailed. You can buy more into the correction but you might be "Exit liquidity" in the dump. In the dump, you can short aggressively but are liable to get cut up a dozen different ways.

This set of dilemmas are always something faced when you're trading at a binary inflection point. Even on small charts when we trade at 1.61/2.61 and 4.23 levels this set of paradoxes exist and are tricky to know exactly what's best to to do - on the Big Stage, it's mindboggling the different things that may happen. And daunting knowing the different traps.

If this 4.23 thing is going to be right, the one thing that is sure is there's going to be well above average chances to make big money when the 4.23 decision is resolved.

The 4.23 rejection would be a terrible event. And with who knows what types of real world impacts/reasons. From an intellectual standpoint it is fascinating. If we went into that style of crash now we'd have done it off basic TA patterns, mirroring major crashes of the past and even the interest rates cycles would have been the same as previous bubbles. In the final analysis of it, almost all aspects of the formation and bust of the bubble would have been foreseeable with basic pattern matching ideas. All of the things that have happened in the last 50 years and then all of the crazy things that'd have to happen for a depression crash in the years to come - all foreseeable with extremely basic pattern ideas. The fact everything has matched as well as it has so far trading through the fibs is already remarkable. If it was punctured by a mean reversion fat tail ... wow! On a personal level, even just in the minor drops of 2020, 2022 and recent one it's clear to see indices going down a lot is going to really hurt people. At this point we're just seeing this in speculators but it makes me think about what this would be like on a grand scale. It'd not be nice.

The 4.23 breakout thesis is fascinating and exhilarating. A prospect of heading into the major boom section of a mega trend and having full awareness of that being what you're heading into and approximately where you can expect that to end up going. These would be conditions where someone who knows what they're doing can make insane amounts of money. Even just showing up will make money (as long as you don't end up overstaying). In this extreme doubling event we would still be predicting bad times ahead - but they'd be differed by a couple of years. From a selfish point of view this would all seem great. To benefit from a bubble and be able to bet on a spectacular reversal later. From a humanistic point of view it seems like it'd only cause greater devastation later. No one cares now because we're back at all time highs and boohoo anyone who sold the bottom, but at the lows of April there were anti suicide posts pinned in trading forums. That's how bad things are now on a 20% drop. Think how much worse they'd get if mania develops more.


It's an interesting time. For the sake of sanity and profitability I am doing my best to be as agnostic as possible about what the outcome will be. Plan for all, execute as suitable. I hope we see the 4.23 break. It's the better of the trading ops (Since it offers two massive swings) and if we can crash up or down by the same amount of points, who cares which way it goes? Trading long can be logistically easier in many ways, so it'd be the preference if all else was equal. And being a bear is tiring. It's particularly tiring having to explain to people stating a statistical observation on a SR level doesn't mean you're depressed, angry, a shill and having a different opinion about markets does not mean you hate them. So they don't have to try to fight with you. Every 5 mins...

If you're a bull and say something will go from 100 to 130. And it goes to 40 then it goes to 129 ... you were always right. That's what people say. If you're a bear at 100 and it goes to 120 then 40 you were an idiot that got lucky eventually. I always find that funny about social media.

We're in interesting times. If my 4.23 hypothesis turns out to be correct we're heading into the history books. It's just a question of "For what?.

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