Timing Expansions

Question: How did I time recent expansions? (For chart reference, this example is from November 2023)

Answer: Timing extensions is pretty hard and I don't get it right every time but I like paying attention to things that make me feel like the market is showing its hand.

In this scenario it was

We get multiple pushes up with no nuke

During bearish environment, we saw sweeps followed by immediate reversions to the downside. You'd see yesterday's "pump" deleted within a single hourly candle. This wasn't the case. Which led me to assume that...

The market is bullish but is rinsing out high leverage players and/or overeager market participants

Which made it more obvious that these choppy moves weren't weakness, but rather trying to get rid of the unnecessary fat before giving the meat of the move. Imagine a giant animal or something shaking off the water on its coat before moving so as to not get weighed down. Which lastly led me to...

We would be then hunting something to the downside to finish drawing out liquidity (since we've been poking upwards)

Once we swept the lows + went on to close back above. I just assumed that okay, that was a good enough rinse (OI, liquidations, technical levels).

Let's reference back to #1, in bearish trend, we swept highs then got immediate follow thru to the downside.

So if I'm assuming bullish... then we sweep lows, then follow thru to the upside. My argument would be nuked if it stayed there too long so that's how I came up with 24-48 hours.

Usually first 12hours = nothing if it's a relatively large OI wipe. Ppl repositioning/scared.

However after that.. you expect follow through.

Note

Key here is that there was nothing guaranteed. As a trader you're almost always working with partial information.. unless you know you're an insider.

It's important to make that distinction because you're always making assumptions and testing the market with it. There is no 100% strategy.