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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.
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.
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?
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.