Risk On day

With Oil whipsawing all day today there have been very few trading opportunities without a lot of risk behind them (not for small accounts anyway) and such the day even though with a lot of movement could only have been a good day for traders that involve luck in their trading strategy. The day was dominated by OPEC possible news announcements uncertainty and on the immediate term any trend or direction could have been (and has been for that matter) annulated by an opposite action which lead to the many whipsaws we have seen. While yesterday it seemed that the direction is down and we will have a sustained move today Oil continued to fool around up and down at approximately the same levels as yesterday however that only adds more weight to the opinion according which we should and we will have a move that will be sustained and last longer. The expectations from this trader point of view is that the move will be on much lower volatility and the direction, for the moment, remains down (see the hourly chart bellow) as Oil is currently trading bellow the support resistance trading area of this week. All expectations, of course, are subject to change.
      

Extremes

Every now then then there is a day like today in the markets. A day that is out of the 2 standard deviations boundary, a day when charts are going off the grid or do some other strange things that are either supposed to not happen either have very small chances to happen. Oil acted strange from the first hours of the day from certain points of view, even when not moving at all as it was around 6AM this morning it was behaving odd according to some of my charts. The odd behaviour is not always a bad thing but it is certainly a dangerous thing, dangerous because of the unexpected ahead and almost all the moves Oil made today were in the unexpected area. After falling more than it was supposed to fall (the green arrow on the chart) it raised more than it has supposed to raise (the red arrow)  and those two moves were followed by a period of normality (the yellow rectangle) but that did not last long because as you can see after some news hit the wires it went off the grid. As I was saying the up trend is broken and Oil fooled around this week quite enough, meaning that a longer sustained move its expected. By the way it looks now that move is down and I would be surprised if it will not continue. The continuation could be less prominent in terms of points but it should last longer, however we can always expect the unexpected.         

All over the place

CL can be quite messy as you can see on the chart, today there were very few real trading opportunities most of the time chances were equal for both longs and shorts. Of course at the start of the day shorts were more appropriate and it went down, down to previous day low where it found support and started to trade messy around that level for a while, actually for a few hours. It did some stop hunting killing some longs that entered at the support just to get back slightly higher before the US session and then to continue higher in a messy short term uptrend. Given the current conditions both long trades and short trades can be winners as long as they are properly executed.
On a slightly longer view,  on the hourly chart, it could continue to go higher for a while however up until 58.80 it remains a shorts opportunity market.
     

CL today

Finishing Friday on the highs was not what I was expected from CL and, as I was thinking it would do Friday, it did today. CL started Monday session slightly bellow the high of Friday and continued down trough out the day but it was only after 1430 (GMT+2) when it was actually giving a hint of what followed. Up until then the session could have been considered a range. Volatility was normal most of the day with a surge at the start of US session.
We had a down start of this week with CL breaking the up trend of previous week - on a longer term the up trend is intact. I suppose we will not see a move above Friday highs tomorrow or if any, I bet on the fact that it will not be as sharp as today and not all at once which will mostly make speculators to favour short trades for a while today until the end of session and tomorrow morning. Looking at the hourly chart, the move down was big enough and most likely we should expect it to pause for a while given the fact that it has some support here formed in the previous 2 weeks. 

You really need to know what you`re doin`

CL can be the nightmare of day trading if you do not know what you are doing. It trades allover the place and it moves. Moving is good, you can not make money in any market if the market does not moves, but it certainly is not for beginners.
Today CL was in an up trend as it can be seen in the image from the left, the trend of today was a continuation from yesterday and at this point it suffers a breakdown which is a first sign of weakness on short term. Volatility was thin in the morning at the start of the session, at some point very thin just to gradually get closer to the average and a little above at some point in the afternoon.
It has been trading above the previous day high most of the day. On a longer term and a broadened view CL trades up and if it continues to go like this it might break 60 by the end of the year. Last days are mostly updays with sharp moves on the downside - which makes it so much more dangerous for daytraders.

Now of course since CL moves a lot more than ES (EP) I was having my attention with it most of the day which is why all my trades were placed in CL today.

Light Crude Oil trading or Light trading Crude Oil?

Whatever title you`d prefer today, for the first time in my life I`ve placed some trades on CL. Of course since its my second time when I actually open the CL chart not to speak of trading it, everything was done with caution and very light. At some point watching CL was like watching an interesting movie, I even got some popcorn as unlike ES (EP) which does not move or for that matter does not do anything in the European session most of the time, CL was providing me with permanently changing information's about what is it doing. It did not move much though but that's not the point the point is that its tradable in the EU session and most likely I could trade CL in the morning and ES (EP) in the afternoon during US session. What is even better is that I found a solution to trade whenever I`m in the mood. I can be lazy in the morning coz ES ~(EP) will provide the daily match in the afternoon or I can be lazy in the afternoon coz CL will provide that in the morning, for that matter  I could be lazy 6 days a week but, of course, that is not the point, the point is that the futures markets are providing the same thing as FX would have done if FX would have been a free market. Speaking of which if you are an profitable FX trader you should be careful to how many times the lighting struck you so to speak, if it happens to often its not a coincidence trust me. How would you observe that you ask? well by the time you know you have been defeated the market you will find out about the lighting also or it depends on the country? I`m not sure of that...whatever

Back in the game

After yesterday loss I`ve leaved some longs on because the session ended before me accepting that its a losing day. Could not make MT5 display just today PL correctly because of my yesterday position held overnight so I`m showing last 3 days which means the Net profit up to day this week. Obviously today I`ve recovered yesterday loss and make around 1% on top of it. Funny is that I could have made a lot more, and I mean a lot more yet I was not having the proper disposition for a long game. While I did recovered yesterday loss I did not recovered the $20K mistake so I`m still 15K in a drawdown. Like I told you with a little more mood for trading I could have recovered that today but...ES (EP) is not permanently active, the European session is many times very inactive and I find myself out of gas to trade heavily when it starts to move during US session. ES (EP) is yet to feel as comfortable as FX but then again I`ve watched that market for a much longer time than 2 months. Anyway, as comfortable or not, ES (EP) is providing a good game by itself but I`m thinking to trade some other contracts in the morning I need to find out what moves...maybe CL?