Nose-diving Tuesday

I watched the market at the beginning of the New York session (marked by the vertical green line) as it climbed slightly. Today was the day that I wanted to try out some basic pivot point moves. I also wanted to confirm some of the things I have been learning about how the market moves between two price points. So the first thing I did was to open a long position with a nice big S/L to take advantage of the fact that the price was likely to bend towards the pivot point at 118.86.

Moments later, the price nose-dived through every resistance on my five-point pivot table and made a run for support near 117.10 defined on the 9th of March around 11:00 AM GMT. I managed to short at 117.45 as the price headed south but got stopped out on a minor retracement.

For the past couple of days I have been stopped out almost exactly when the market turns. I take this to mean that my stops are more or less at the same place as other traders. Obviously, since this is a demo account, nobody but me can see my stops (so I don't have the luxury of complaining that somebody is hunting them). The few times I have seen the price squeak by above or below my stop indicates to me that I just need to be placing the stops 3-8 pips outside where other traders have them. This way, unless the price movement has really changed, their stops will get taken out and hopefully end the retracement before my stops are hit.