3/15/12 Oil Futures.

Today, unlike yesterday, was very exasperating. It goes like that. You get maybe two smooth days a week and three exasperating days. That's why it's important to be paying attention on smooth days.

Anyway, I stayed up late talking to a buddy online, again. So I entered a trade, figuring I had an entry close to the top. It went mostly sideways throughout the night, then BAM, came crashing down, but only part way. It went down 50 pips, so I moved my stoploss to one pip ahead of break even. Then the SOB meandered right up and kissed my stop by ONE pip and stopped me out! Right at the top of that reversal. They KNOW where your stops are, because they own the brokerages.

So anyway, I made ONE pip there. I did not take profit after the 50 pips, because it was not at a level at which I thought it would reverse. Also, you have to go for the full 100 to cover entries that go against you. You can't just take half trades.



Anyway, then for like the second or third day in a row I overslept, so I missed the morning fireworks. However this time that is actually a GOOD thing, as the top was a total fakeout. Price action comes up and reverses, like it's gonna hunt your stops, then goes shooting back up. But they KNOW that YOU know what they are doing. So it's a fakeout! BAM, they take it way down in the opposite direction. That WOULD have been a 20 pip loss right there.


Now I had a couple entries on the bottom, but I did not trade them as I was so astounded by what had occurred. Treachery was afoot! Anyway what happened is that I got bored and ended up chasing the trade halfway up. You can see my entry on the chart at 105.60. I figured it would meander up another 50 pips into the afternoon.

Something about it just didn't seem right, though. The purple lines kept going inside the yellow lines, and the velocity of price action seemed a bit off. It just made me feel uneasy being that, to avoid my stoploss getting hunted again as had happened in the morning, and as had also happened two days ago, what I did was I put a super wide stop loss, going all the way down to the bottom where I SHOULD have entered. Now it's unusual for stop hunting to go THAT far, but it's neither impossible nor unheard of. And guess what...


The whole thing collapsed out for like 200 pips! Good thing that I, as a wise and wary trader had EXITED this trade just a few minutes before, settling for only 20 pips! There was an entry there in the opposite direction, plus the thing with the purple and yellow lines was tweaking me so I just got out. I could have lost that entire 50 pip stoploss!

So I suppose I COULD have reversed the trade to see how far down it would go, but I didn't do that. To be honest, I had just turned my head and started scanning some microfilm for a science website I might soon be working on. LOL. No sooner do I turn my head than the floor falls WAAAAY the hell out, 200 pips!

I left the fibonacci analysis on here. That's one of my trade secrets! I usually take those off before I save my charts, so I don't post them with that on here. Anyway, price action went sideways for awhile, then bolted straight upwards! Right up to the 61.8 fib level. That's where I actually got an entry. Remember, this is a counter-trend system.

I didn't take it though, because there was too much volatility. What would have happened was that I would have taken the entry, price would have bounced around, hit my stop for a loss of 20 pips, then came right back down to where I would have entered. In fact that's what it did, but being that I hadn't entered, I didn't lose anything.

I would have covered that loss, plus an extra 20 pips if I re-entered, but after all THAT, I just figured I'd take my net 20 pips and be happy.

3/14/12 Oil Futures

These are my charts from yesterday. Of course being that I didn't trade at all yesterday, everything went smooth as silk. LOL. I mean, just one entry to the next, clear signals, which all agreed, pretty much no ambiguity at all.

Check out the charts:


There was a fairly innocuous entry around 8am, which normally one would only take for 20 pips, but that's when New York comes online, so I'd likely have ridden that one. Thats about 80 pips right there. We'll say 60 to be conservative, just in case I would've gotten in and out late.

Then there's that huge run up. You see how price turned down a bit, then bolts straight upward. Well that's stop hunting. The price action is turned downward, so everyone goes short. Then the Illuminati call the "Working Group on Financial Markets" and they turn it around just far enough to hit 80% of the stoplosses, then allow it to continue down again, which it did here in significant fashion. So if you know what's happening there, it's an entry signal to the downside. BAM! 100 pips, to approximate very conservatively.

When the Bollinger Bands (purple lines) move inside of the Keltner Channel (yellow lines,) that indicates a significant move in price action is going to occur. Those are some technical indicators of my own that I have added to these charts. Just by way of explanation. The MACD oscillator on the bottom will help to show which direction that movement is going to go.

Anyway, so you see all these factors come together here, and it's clear what is going on. Then BAM! It goes crashing down, but at the bottom, you get another plethora of entry signals. This is significant after certain levels. You look for it there, because you suspect a reversal is coming. Well it did. I wouldn't have just taken this for 20 pips. I would expect this to meander up slowly into the afternoon, with occasional zigzags for purposes of stop hunting.



Here we see the same chart, from later in the afternoon. It meandered up, took a pretty obvious entry at the top, if there was any doubt, it angled downward at the top, although it did hit a significant level as well. Anyway, there were numerous entry signals at the top. So you could get in for 100 pips and just chill. And BAM! 150 pips. Not bad.

There might be some danger that you might think it is a bottom when it turned back up about 1pm (13:00) however, there is an entry there to the downside. This actually is a centennial here, so I would expect alot of traders would use that as a target at which to exit or scale down. If you take profit there, that is fine too. I would however also stay in after the initial 100 pips, just being that it was crashing down so hard that it was likely to continue. Let your winners run!

To summarize: The initial swing was conservatively about 60 pips. We'll say the second wave downward was 100. Then it meandered up, we'll say 80. Then back down for 150, all with superclear entries and no disagreeing indicators. Truly a day to have overslept and then run errands. LOL. 390 pips all in all, left on the table!

Oil Futures 3/13/12

Today I totally screwed the pooch. LOL. I ended up with about 25 pips, but I could have had over 200. Another "woulda coulda shoulda" type day, Mercury Retrograde and all.

First of all, I stayed up too late talking to my buddy on the internet. Well, actually I was watching the overnight market, but it never made a move. I entered twice, but nothing came of it. Just sideways action.

Anyway, I woke up late, and had to chase the morning wave. This is dangerous. You need to nail these moves at the top, because when you do that, your stop loss is 20 pips above that. If you jump in half way down, then you need to either put your stop loss way up at the top or you need to risk your stops getting hunted. This actually happened to me later in the day. It's very common. Anyway, I caught the morning wave and got 45 pips out of it, which isn't bad but I only really caught less than half of the wave.

I entered at 106.36 and Got out at about 105.90. I calculated the 100 pips from the top of the move, but the initial entry was at about 106.70. I put a green X there on the chart. And it actually ended up going down to 105.70 too.


Ok now, one of the reasons I got out of the trade at 105.90 was that there was also an entry signal there for a trade in the other direction. I didn't trade it, because I had a headache due to lack of sleep, so after that first trade I just slept for another hour or so.

It's not easy to deconstruct what I "would have" done if I'd have been in a trade, but there was another entry signal there for a trade going the other way. You try to catch the bottom after that large first wave and ride that back up to the top. So I had one entry, but that got stopped out. Then there was another reversal signal at that lower level, so I'd have gotten in there and rode that up for at least the first 100 pips. Being that it was charging hard at the 100 pip level, I would have probably just stayed in. Sometimes it goes for 150 or 200 pips. Anyway, entry was 105.70, so at 106.70 it was still charging hard. Therefore I'd ride it up to 107.20. That was pretty much the top.


Anyway, if I would have just reversed the trade at the top of this last trade, I would have been fine. Price went up a little from there, but not enough that it would have hit my stop. It went up to about 107.38.

Anyway, it went mostly sideways for awhile, then started to break downwards. Afternoons haven't been very eventful lately. There was another entry around 107.20, so let's say I entered around there. Price moved downward within a channel throughout the afternoon, with a couple of spikes, which stopped out all the people who were chasing this trade, including myself.

I ran an errand for a friend, then came back and got in late. I used the regular 20 pip stoploss, and price broke right out of the channel, went up and hit it! That sort of thing is uncanny. LOL. Brokers know where most of the people put their stops. You really have to get in at the top. If you get in late, you risk getting stop hunted, OR if you use really wide stops, you risk price action reversing and losing a whole bunch of pips when it goes all the way up and hits your wide stops.

Anyway, I entered a couple trades in the afternoon, but I didn't hit it at the top. The first one got stopped out for -20 pips, the next one I just jumped out for +1 pip.


So this is a good lesson in trading psychology. Be ready. Pay attention! LOL. I missed out on about 55 pips in the first trade, 150 in the second one and in the third trade of the day, I should've had 60 but I actually netted -19. (Lost 20, but gained 1.) THAT, is not the fault of the system. That's the fault of the trader!

Still, I had a great time trading, and that's what demo accounts are for! Getting into the zone.

OIl Futures 3/12/12

Ended with 65 pips all in all. Had a couple trades last night trying to nail the top, but then I just crashed. I wanted to be sure I was awake for the bottom on the morning session. Basically I missed out on about 100 pips there.

As you can see, I was in the trade. I nailed the top and entered at 106.83. I exited a little later and just decided to get some sleep. Exited at 106.71. There was some weird glitch where it entered right there and then I exited that. I might've hit the reverse button or something on accident.


I also added Bollinger Bands, a Keltner Channel and the MACD. You can see on the chart here that price action goes all the way down to around 105.90. I would've probably taken it for the 100 pips, although I think it did go down 150. It'll be on the next chart.

Not sure what I did on this next chart. You can see where the entries are plotted and where I exited the trades, it's marked STOP. That's either where my stoploss was hit or where I exited manually. I know I had at least one trade where I tried to hit the bottom but it went lower.

I entered at 105.69 and got stopped out at 105.49. I guess I had one earlier, that I exited at 105.71. That was probably a manual exit. I got signals it was gonna go lower so I jumped out. Don't recall exactly. Anyway, I jumped back in at 105.46 and hit my 100 pip target at 106.46. Woo Hoo!



For the afternoon, I expected price to decline, so I tried to hit the top. I got close, but I just took it for a small trade. Entered at 106.42, exited at 106.37 for 5 pips. Didn't really go anywhere for the afternoon, just kind of ran sideways.

Oil Futures 3/9/12

Here are my charts for the day. I overslept Non-Farm Payrolls so I missed all the excitement. My plan here is to get in on the daily low, and take price action all the way back up. I would have missed on THREE entries, but nailed it on the fourth one. Each time I missed, it would've cost me 20 pips, so that would be 60 in all. Then when I nailed it, I'd go up for a hundred pips, which would 40 net, but I'd also let it "run" for the extra 50. So that's 150 all in all, with 90 pips net.
After that, I'd be trying to hit the top and take that downward.
Entries are in green circles, exits are red circles. Here's the chart:


Here's a later chart. I met my friend for lunch, so I didn't trade this either, although you can see where I jumped in with a few trades to see if I could nail the top. I missed four times, so I would've ended up with only 20 pips net here, since it went for about 100. After this I expect price action to fizzle out for the day.


I need to find another indicator for highs and lows. Perhaps an average daily range indicator. I do have regular entry signals, but I was using them a bit loosely here. Still, 110 pips overall, not a bad day.