2/19/14, Wednesday, no inventories today



Crude inventories are not always religiously released at 10:30 on Wednesday. At times when there is a market holiday or some extraordinary event they can get moved to Thursday or Friday, or even pushed to the next week. In those cases they are sometimes released at other times than 10:30.

There are really no trades here. The doji like bar by A would not have been a valid short, the trend simply retraced very erratically and we can't even say this is much of a bearish trend to speak of. B presents an interesting argument - a possible complex pullback into the bull begun at yesterday's pit close. But we have to be careful not to get too creative here. On this day the market was waiting for the Fed minutes, and in these cases the odds of odd behavior increases.

C looks like a possible pullback, but I would classify this as an inner range trade - the bull trend isn't that strong and we're inside of today's range so far.

So far as you can see, we've been pretty starved of setups. Several days in a row we're arriving to our screen and there's no money to be had. It's stressful, but that is one of the reasons we are testing this, we have to know for sure that several days can go by without a signal, and it doesn't matter how badly we may be in the hole, we have to sit and wait, or we'll be burning an even bigger hole in our account.

If you get irritated waiting for the fishie to come, you can always see how Ernie and Burt take care of things in such situations:

2/20/14, Thursday: INVENTORIES DAY



Crude inventories were scheduled on this day, but after noon. As you can see, the market provided absolutely zero opportunities, because traders were locked in wait of the report. While on regular inventory days we do get some decent motion before the report, we usually get them in the first half hour when the market is at its peak of liquidity. Here we just have a locked range.

It's your call if you want to get involved in the noon session after the report, but on this day the market only gave a setup for aggressive range traders (the noon portion of the chart is not shown).

indextrader7 

On a side note, it's hilarious that you are putting forward all this good work, and about the only comments you have gotten are things like, "Why are you using "we" so much?"

It is my responsibility to moderate the forum. Since you don't like the way I do it, it would be best for you to leave. I don't want you here with the constant negativity and complaining about the site.

Mike

2/21/14, Friday



1. We see that on the five minute, we have a down trend that breaks a line of support. A few days of ranging seem to finally be giving way to trend.
2. A solid bearish move without question.
3. A medium sized retrace.
4. A fairly neutral to bearish entry bar, not too thick.

Follow through is tricky here, we get a bouncy moment and only in the noon session does a second leg begin. Most likely we would either have broken even (loose management) or gotten away with an 0.5R profit.

The Globex session offers us some extra clues. We see another line of support turned resistance that is right next to entry bar 4, whereas the regular trading hours support line was higher. This gives us a bit more confidence with our entry.

2/24/14, Monday



1. The market started selling off by the high of yesterday, which also coincided with the close of the day before. We already saw some strong selling yesterday, even though the market gapped up significantly higher.
2. A pretty strong image of bears being in charge.
3. An accelerating pullback, which began right at yesterday's pit close. A bit scary of a pullback to watch, it could imply a reversal in the making.
4. An ugly entry bar if there ever was one, my least favorite kind. It is simply too thick to play, The 512 tick chart offered a better solution at i, though it was tested almost to the tick. A tricky situation indeed.

The trade ends up following through very well, but it's definitely not the most comfortable trade and may have easily been skipped due to the circumstances mentioned. Note how almost immediately the market embarked on a sharp reversal that made new daily highs.

2/25/14, Tuesday



1. We get a very strong gap down. We can see there was some serious selling going on during the Globex session on the 512 tick chart on the right.
2. After some hesitation the trend continues lower with earnest.
3. The retracement is of medium strength.
4. The entry bar is of a pretty good shape, but has a bullish close.

The Globex session shows us more confluence, the low point of the Globex trend aligns with the entry into this continuation.

Unfortunately, despite what appear to be good characteristics, the trade fails. A perfect example of how cherry setups can also fail. The reversal is pretty dramatic.

2/26/14, Wednesday: INVENTORIES DAY



1. We have a gapped up market and a tight pre-inventories range here.
2. We get an initial surge up.
3. The retracement is pretty sharp, as we've touched a previous resistance area (line).
4. The green bar does look like an inviting entry into a hot trend, but we get smacked here pretty hard as the market pulls all the way back into the pre-inventories range.

This is a pretty tough call to re-enter. The 512 tick chart shows that we could have done so if we had bought a breakout following the test. A tricky one to manage.

2/27/14, Thursday



1. The market started a heavy sell off near the top of yesterday's range.
2. We get a pretty strong and immediate sell off.
3. The pullback is fairly sharp.
4. The entry bar is not ideal, but is small enough to offer good risk reward.

Follow through on the first setup is perfect, it snaps right through it. Looking at this trade one could argue it is an inside range trade as it sits firmly within yesterday's fairly tight range. But I'm willing to overlook that in the opening of the day when the market is moving to set new session highs and lows.

The Globex session reveals a failed bullish breakout that began collapsing intensely, and that is in fact what we are trading here.

2a. Our second leg is even stronger than the first.
3a. The pullback is initially strong then weak.
4a. The entry bar is small, allowing a respectable entry. The Globex gives us an extra level to play off of.

The follow through is ideal, but then once again we get a sharp reversal.

2/28/14, Friday



This is once again a breakout test, but let's analyze it since it broke significant new ground and showed strength.

1. A range.
2. The range breaks out rather aggressively.
3. The retrace is rather messy and complicated.
4. The first entry bar results in an immediate stop out. It is likely aggressive considering the messy end this sudden, powerful trend is showing.
4a. A slightly better entry since it is close to a potential support area but not quite. The market ultimately peters out into the noon session.

The 512 tick chart shows that around i, there was a good aggressive complex pullback entry. However, the rest of this picture is more like a rangebound market than anything trending - the trend froze. The possibly climactic nature of the breakout may have hinted at this.

February 2014: overview


This month, out of 19 tradable days (we're excluding President's Day), 11 days had some form of potentially tradable activity, which was 58% of the time. While we did not apply exact rules to this idea yet, we already see that this month saw considerably more losses than last, on top of which opportunities came fairly rarely. Not a fun situation to be in of course, but that is real life.

We're going to get some more samples from March, and then perhaps we'll be able to start making some more intelligent takeaways.