Buying the pullback makes good sense after a strong rally, but it's a great way to lose money if you jump in too early or too late.

How can you find perfect timing when it comes to this classic play? The key lies in reading the clues of the charting landscape. It's natural for markets to correct after big rallies. This countertrend move lowers the emotional fires and sets up the ideal conditions for a swing back to higher prices.

But any pullback can turn into a reversal and trap your position in a downward spiral. So let's look at the types of pullbacks we want to buy and those that should be avoided at all costs.

Volume presents important evidence about a stock's intentions when it starts to pull back. Look for selling to contract when bars test lower prices. The most bullish volume shows a steady downslope in the histograms under the price bars. This suggests shareholders are hanging tough because they believe in higher prices. Alternatively, big red volume spikes show fear and may signal important tops.

Don't trade a pullback against a gap. There are two types of gaps you need to worry about. The first shows up on a high-volume move near the end of the rally. This corresponds with an exhaustion gap that warns traders a reversal is near. It also marks resistance after a stock finds support on the pullback and starts to rally again.

Second, don't buy into a gap down when the stock is pulling back unless it gets filled the same day. This is a tough one because falling stocks often find support right after the longs give up and sell into a gap down opening. The problem comes when the gap doesn't fill by day's end. This prints a bearish reversal on the price chart and attracts more selling.

The simplest entry comes from a pullback into a strong support level. Trend lines, old highs and Bollinger Bands ease selling pressure, and allow buyers to carry the market back in the other direction. The biggest problem with these falling-knife entries is usually psychological. The trader loses confidence while watching the intensity of the selloff and fails to act when it's time to pull the trigger.

A trip down to the 50-day moving average offers an excellent opportunity for dip buyers who want to hold positions for a few days or a few weeks. This price zone usually marks strong support after a rally. A market pulling back here also suggests early dip buyers got beat up on the ride down.

Pullbacks tend to feed on traders who buy too early. In other words, they buy and the market drops, stopping them out and forcing prices even lower. This downward spiral continues until prices reach a large pool of buying interest. This fresh demand often sits right at the 50-day moving average.

Many traders use Fibonacci retracements to uncover hidden support on a pullback. But this is a lot harder than it looks. Stocks commonly drop to three different retracement levels, and you can lose a lot of money when you pick the wrong one. Fortunately there are ways to focus in and locate the most likely support level.

Put the odds squarely in your favor by standing aside until price reaches a deep retracement that corresponds with other types of support. This means the safest strategy is to focus on the 62% retracement and look for intermediate averages or old highs at the same prices.

This process is called cross-verification. It works because it's self-fulfilling. Different traders look for different types of support in various pullback scenarios. Finding convergence of multiple support types at narrow price levels taps into this broad set of buying signals.

The intraday chart holds the key to pullback profits. Often, it's hard to make sense of a market pulling back on a daily chart. Fortunately trends evolve in all time frames, and traders can use the intraday chart to uncover hidden support and resistance levels.

Focus on the 60-minute chart because this gives you many days of intraday price bars to work with. Pull one up when you see a correction in progress, and start searching for common patterns, such as bull flags or double bottoms. These inflection points reveal low-risk entry prices for positions taken in much longer time frames.