ES - Below is the market action for Thursday, 2009.01.29.  This may be hard to follow, but I feel is extremely interesting and important to understand.

As the market fell, since we didn't get a rebound at the 90° level and instead went an extra 30° to the 90+30 level (856.50, "A"), it wasn't surprising we had a larger pullback beyond the 45° level.  In this case, we rebounded to the 22.5° level (866.75, "B").  (Also note, measured from "A" upwards, we have a 90° level at 865.25, which would also have been a good entry point short.)

After the pullback, the target was the 180° level, which we went exactly to (850.50, "C").  After hitting the 180° level, we'd expect either a pullback to the 90° or a pullback to the 45° level.  In this case, we had the pullback to the 90° ("D"), which makes sense based on the location of "A".  After that pullback, we'd then expect to continue to fall below 180.  As you can see, we had that fall.

After the pullback, we had a fall to "E" (180+45+30=255).  Since this level held and we didn't go straight to 180+90, I consider this a "soft" pullback and one to be shorted at the retest of the 180° level ("F") down to the target of 180+90, which we hit going into the close.  We even had a 3.5 point bounce off that level, showing the strength of that level. 

Lesson