Today's CL trade

Today's trade was taken after price had moved down after the open.  I was looking to engage the overall up move near a demand zone, and my entry signal was on the 800 tick chart, after I had seen a LV delta imbalance bar. I put in a limit order and was filled straight away.  I took 1 tick of heat on this trade.  my stop loss was a tick below the LV bar for 8 ticks.

Price rallied about 20 ticks, but then retraced back down.  However, it rallied again, with a very large engulfing bar on the 800 tick chart.  After I had seen that, I moved my stop loss under the engulfing bar.

The next significant action was a break above the opening high.  This was done with force, and I was expecting my target of the Globex high to be hit.

Unfortunately, I saw a very bearish sign with a reverse HVC delta imbalance bar on the 2 minute chart and I was going to close my trade with 30 ticks there and then.  However, I pushed up my stop loss instead, and was stopped out for 22 ticks, after seeing the trade post a MFE of 48 ticks.  This was a R:R of 6 at the time.  Which by any standards is extremely good.  My eventual R:R was nearly 3, so it was still a good trade.

So, I have mixed feelings on this trade.  It was well planned and the entry was well executed, but I should have exited once I had seen the reverse signal and waited for another opportunity.

At this moment, price is above where I was stopped out and looks like it will reach my target..  Maybe I should have left it under the engulfing bar.  Anyway, I am not too disappointed.  There will be another opportunity.

Here are the charts:

Today's ES EOD analysis

My trading day was over once my trade was closed and I had finished for the day as I was going out to watch my football team, Manchester United.  Unfortunately we lost, so I am not too happy.

Anyway, when I returned home later and looked at the ES chart, I was absolutely amazed at the price action.  I presume there was some news announcement around 18:30 GMT (13:30 EST) as there was massive volume and a good reverse.  Probably some FOMC announcement, but I have not looked at today's economic calendar.

Anyway, here are some charts and I have commented on some of them where there were either a volume/engulfing related entries on the time based charts, or a RPM entries on the volume chart. There were some great opportunities all day, including a great engulfing signal after the open.

Here are the charts:

Today's Trade

I was unable to trade yesterday and missed a great breakout from the 5 min opening range.  Seems like I always take the wrong day off.

Anyway, I came to my desk late today.  It was after the OIA report. Last night API report was positive for price as it showed less supply than was expected, so I did expect some up move today, but that did not occur.

I looked at my 2K volume chart and today's down move looked like a bull flag, but price was in an intraday down move, so I was looking for shorts.  I missed out on a good short after price moved up to a SZ and I got a great reverse sell signal with a HVC engulfing bar.  I am really pissed off at missing that as I was not prepared at the time.  Yes, I was looking at the ES charts at the time. Stupid.

After this I did not see any more sell signals.  However, I then saw limit buy orders coming in just above a DZ on 2K vol chart.  And then, a very bullish engulfing signal, engulfing 2 bars, on the 800 tick chart, including limit sell orders.  As soon as I saw this, I took a long with 2 contracts, with the first target at 16 ticks, which was the same as the stop loss.

I did take some heat, but my stop loss held.  Once my first target was hit and price continued up, I moved my stop loss just below a CBO engulfing bar and left it there. 

My target was hit for 67 ticks on the 2nd contract.  However, If I was watching it at the time, I would have increased the target after price had broken above a HVC DD (limit sell) bar on the 800 tick chart.  And at this time of writing, price is at 97.40, which is nearly 100 ticks from my entry.  But I am quite happy with both my entry and trade management.  Total is 16 + 67 = 83 ticks.

Here are the screenshots

ES EOD charts

As I am only trading CL at the moment, I only look at ES intermittently during the trading hours.

Today, we saw a 11 point sell off.  The strange thing about this was that at the high there was a small RPM bar on the 5K vol chart, that only took 7 seconds from open to close.  We see 5K bars taking a small amount of time to complete at the close and open and on news related periods.  As this was not one of those, it was very unusual.  The other unusual thing was that on a 5K bar, there was 4902 buyers. 

After this bar, price fell 11 points.  The only thing I can think that happened here, was that a lot of stops was popped, and when I looked on the 15 min chart, I realised that this was at the high of a large 15 min CCH bar at the close of Fridays trading.

We know that the SM will use a holiday period to make their move and we may well be seeing the first shot of a large shakeout.  Or maybe, I am totally off base, and this was the beginning of a new buying wave.

Anyhow, if I was trading ES, I would just stick on what is going on each day, rather than making long term predictions.

 

 

EOD Analysis

Today I only took one trade.  It was in line with the trend after a retrace. It was very good entry when I had seen retrace exhaustion, with a CBO down bar closing in its middle, at a throwback zone.  I took 45 ticks profit, with very little heat.  So it was a good trade, based on how I hope to trade in the future - i.e the pullback in a confirmed trend.

I did miss an earlier trend trade on the open, due to not being properly prepared, and this is something I need to address.  There were further good trend re-entries after retraces, but 1 good trade is enough for me at the moment.  Maybe, in the future, when I become more confident, I will try to take more than 1 good trade.

Here are some charts:

Today's CL trade

I am posting this trade that I just took.  It is now 15:22 GMT (10:22 EST) and I am done for the day.

This was a pull back in an up trend that I entered after seeing exhaustion on the retrace just above a throwback zone.  I was able to hold for my target of 45 ticks.  I could have got 60 ticks, but I am not going to be greedy.

I wanted to enter long on the open, but I just missed it as I was distracted at the time and even though I could still have entered soon after the entry signal, I did not want to chase it, so I missed out on another potential 50 ticks.  Too bad.

Long weekend over

Well I have had a couple of days off from trading and I feel refreshed and ready to go.  I opened my NT platform today and once I saw the charts, I was surprised that there was so much trading volume for Friday.  Once I had seen this, I down loaded the monthly GOMI data recorded by a very generous individual from BMT, so I could look at Friday's price action in relation to the Delta Imbalance(divergence) tool. 

This tool (indicator) was created by another generous chap (Silvester17) from BMT trading.  I have also started using another of his price action tools on some of my charts, especially the Tick and range charts.  This shows the delta of each bar.  This is much better than using the Bid/Ask ladder (also known as the Footprint chart), as I am able to see more bars on the chart which gives me better visualisation of price action.

I have recently taken more with trend breakout trades, usually in frustration at missing a pull back entry, and they are usually successful.  However, when they have not been successful, I become emotional and vow never to take them again.  This sort of trading is counter intuitive to what I have learned from OTA, and probably the reason, why I have been reluctant to take them in the past.

I have been looking more closely at these breakout trades and believe, I can take more based on a volume or speed breakout from a basing zone after price has stalled in a trend.  So when I see a CCH or CBO breakout on a 1 min chart on CL, I will look to take the trade.  Also a RPM breakout on a tick or volume chart.  I will be keeping record of these trades going on just to see how they affect my trading.  However, my main entry will be on the pullback in a trend.

Here are some screenshots from Friday's price action on both CL and ES with analysis notes on the charts: