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.