I have always taken into account daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly levels that I have calculated in making trading decisions on all instruments I trade.
What I would like to do in this journal is focus solely on Crude using only these levels as decision points. Although some of these trades will be actual trades I take in a live account, the purpose of this journal will be a "what if" I took every trade. The purpose of this journal is to see whether using these levels on Crude provides an edge, without taking anything else into consideration. I hope that makes sense. As defined above this will be referred to as system #1. Any tweaks to this method will be referred to as system #2, etc.
I will try and post entries / exits, reversals before each day along with charts when that is applicable.
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As an example, with today being the last day of the month and the last day of the week, playing the bounce between the weekly and monthly level would have worked out very well.
Will see what Monday brings and post system #1 trades then.
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The journal trades for today if price touches levels will be:
Short @ 97.72 : Target 96.80
If price continues upward, 2nd contract added to short @ 99.70
New target will be posted at that time if triggered.
Chart to follow ... price almost at entry of 97.72
Target of 96.80 is not shown on this chart but is a level from last week that statistically has a good chance of being revisited. If not, and we continue upwards, 99.70 area would trigger another short.
I know there are a lot of ticks to be won and lost between these levels, but for this journal I am more interested in letting the levels play out and not scalping or daytrading. I think other journals are doing a very good job of that.
Yesterdays chart displayed incorrect weekly levels. I use an efs I wrote that automatically pulls prices for CL and other instruments and calculates these value. Occasionally at the very start of a week / month the values returned are not exactly correct and are not updated properly until the 8:30 open (central time). I will try and be more aware of this before posting before the open. It did not alter the open trade that was taken yesterday in the journal.
7/2/2013 signals
Close the open short position and reverse to long position if 96.85 hit
Add to short position if 99.55 hit
Interesting journal. I have been trading HTF levels off of CL . Looks like you are fading the extremes...
How would you react if the BO above 99 is a real BO and does not pull back? What if the break down below 97 is real and continues?
I have found that BO's in CL can be rapid and prolonged at times with small pullbacks. This has not been as much the case recently, but did happen in 2012. How do you account for this if it happens? Do you have any sort of stop?
Thanks,
Wolf
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Looking back in hindsight, 98.45 would have been a better short entry. 98.45 is a monthly level that was tested / re-tested a few times last month. A break and hold of this area and 99.55 is probably a decent bet.
In general, during slower markets I will use the daily levels more. During more volatile or trending periods I try to keep my focus on the weekly, monthly, or quarterly levels and use the daily levels only as a confirmation or sometimes not at all.
But let's let it play out. My interest is in the long run, do these levels provide an edge or not as a stand alone tool.
In my opinion these levels are more containment levels than breakout levels.
The majority of the time, but not always of course, if price breaks a level, there is a high percentage that it will revisit that area before continuing on or failing altogether.
But maybe CL is a little different beast. The question for me in regards to these levels and CL are how best to interpret the signal and the timing of that signal.
Here are five different views.
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Quarterly
Yearly
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I am going to modify my approach with regards to CL in this journal. I am as convinced as ever that these levels work on CL just as well as they have for me on other instruments, but interpreting the reaction to those levels has been unique to CL, at least this week.
I will be back after I run some more simulations and will begin again with system #2 as stated in the first post.
In the meantime we are only on the 3rd day of the month and the first monthly level is already in play. This has been a very strong upward move. Unless some massive selling pressure arrives I think 102.80 (1st monthly level) is the next upside target. It is only 6:30 am central time and we are already above the upper daily level (100.76).
One last post for a while. I am going to let some modifications I made run in automated / simulated mode against a live data feed and see where the PNL ends up after a few weeks.
If any of you trade levels or believe in the concept feel free to comment and we can exchange ideas / concepts. Best of luck. Crude has certainly been an interesting trade the last few weeks.
On a discretionary basis, I would love see a pullback to the 104.9 / 104.5 range to get long with a target of 106.25.
Obviously a very strong month for crude but price was rejected at the monthly 2nd standard deviation level. Since then we have dipped below the Quarterly 1st standard deviation level but re-tested that again today.
No chart, will attach later. As I see it 105.30 (former level) is now the battle line to determine if we go down and touch 104.44 or we break thru and rally back up to 105.9
Correction ... If 105.3 level holds then 104.58 would be the next downside target. It is the 2nd standard deviation daily level. Price rarely blows past that 2nd level in one day. 105.9 is still the upside target should 105.3 not hold.
Have found at least temporary support at the weekly level mentioned earlier at 104.44. Would love to see a push here to 105.58 area if we can get it. Would be looking to short in that area if price stalls.
Bounced off of 1st daily level of 104.08 If we get continued selling pressure the remainder of this week and early next week, then we will re-test the 1st monthly level of 102.80. We bounced off of the 2nd std dev monthly a while back as posted earlier.
There doesn't seem to be much interest in level trading here. I think it just doesn't feel right for many. Trading tick by tick is exhausting, at least for me.
If you think these levels have any merit and could be useful in your trading drop me a msg. I have found over the years that these levels are also calculated and used by many option traders so imo these are definitely not voodoo numbers.
A break AND hold above 105.90 and this short will be exited. Otherwise the weekly would be a nice place to reduce size and let the rest ride to see if the monthly level mentioned earlier of 102.80 is in play.
15 min chart of where this trade is at currently. Roughly 70 ticks profit at this moment. Will watch to make sure that does not all evaporate if we should find some buyers this morning.
104.18 (1st daily level down) is the next level in play. If we get there I would expect we stall and bounce a bit before deciding if we retrace or continue the downslide.
The highlighted level area of (104.44 to 104.58) is the range I am watching to see if we can hold above before even thinking of a long side counter trend play.
Not a CL chart, but one of daily Gold with monthly and yearly levels. This is the one trade this year I missed that I am kicking myself over.
I had Gold on my radar but fell asleep at the wheel the last several months waiting for a high probability long setup for a longer term play.
GLD came down and bounced right off the bottom Yearly 2nd standard deviation level. So "statistically" there is a 95% chance that GLD will finish out the year at or above that level.
Since hitting the yearly 2nd level on June 28, GLD has rallied and bounced off of the July upper Monthly 1st standard deviation level. That move alone between the two levels is 1464 ticks.
Since the 102.8 target was hit, not a lot of action either way. 102.8 Monthly level seems to be holding at least for now as support. If that remains I suspect we drift back up to the first daily level of 103.30. If not, downside target is on the chart.
Not a CL chart but one of a daily S&P (SPX) with the 1st yearly level sitting right next to this months 1st monthly level. Probably a little hard to see on the chart since the levels are almost right on top of each other.
This level has attracted and held price near for quite a while.
Will probably post one or two charts tomorrow if there is any action, but since Thursday is a new month with new levels that seems a good place to stop the thread. Thanks for reading.
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I think we need a break and hold of the 103.30 to 103.45 before the shorts will let go of their positions. We have peeked above this level a few times today and price has been pushed back down. If we break and hold, 104.35 is the first upside target.
If price above the levels mentioned above is rejected then I suspect 101.36 level is a good possibility by end of day tomorrow.
Thought this chart was worthy of posting. Wednesday we tagged the 1st daily lower level and bounced, Thursday we tagged the 1st daily upper level and pulled back slightly, then today we have run up to the 1st daily upper level and are stalling there currently.
imo, 109.93 (Fridays daily upper level) is the line in the sand for long / short today. CL has tested that level quite a few times in the last 24 hours of trading and we have just now had two closes (hourly) below that level. It's pretty clear this is tipping point for todays trading.
Pattern still holds. Still looking to close out short around 106.22 range. A break AND hold above 107.92 then the downtrend is broken and it will be time to cover and look for next opportunity.
Boxed between yesterdays ranges. The top of the box keeps getting tested and the upper half of the box is where all the price action has remained. Sure feels like a long signal wants to pop here.
Crude, 107.92 level held for roughly 24 hours but was constantly be probed. Short was in the money several times but was holding for the weekly lower level which looks doubtful at this point. Should have followed my gut with my prior post ... you could see the upward pressure building against the 107.92 level.
Gold is already down to the daily 2nd lower level. I am looking to nibble long here with price under this level as a stop. It is against the trend but statistically by the end of day, 96% of the time price will close at or above this level (1331.6).
