A sudden selloff in the market that has the following characteristics:
-Often happens very early or late in the day
-Comes out of a pattern that doesn’t suggest such a break should occur
-Has no definitive catalyst or news that drives it
-Has much faster tempoProbably one of the most important and yet overlooked concepts in the market. The tempo is simply the ‘speed’ at which the market is moving. This is also referred to as confidence. Slow tempo is typical of range bound days where there is lots of responsive activity. Fast tempo occurs when there is initiating activity, and market is breaking out of a range. This is not to say that the market can’t have fast tempo on days when it is rotational or moving between the extremes of a value area. It certainly can. Effective intraday futures trading involves gauging the tempo and knowing that opportunities are fewer and smaller when the tempo is slow. See S.O.H. than the one that has already been established
-Is often short-lived and will retrace 100% soon after or the next day
A liquidation break happens when short term traders get overly long and all panic out at once. It is different from a stronger, more lasting correction in that there are usually only very short timeframe players involved, usually those who got most recently long at poor location.
