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With regard to the silver (SI) chart, one of the signs to look for signs of strength is when the volume on the down bars is high and the market shows strength soon after. It is also necessary to qualify that I mean down bars near after a move down, as down bars near the tops can be real selling, especially if the bars high is above the previous bar (it went up and hit supply).
My reading of the weekly SI chart is bearish, but I mentioned an area of congestion, which can be a sign of accumulation. While I concluded that SI is in a bearish pattern, it is necessary to keep an open mind and to check for signs that the position is changing or if the analysis was wrong.
The attached chart shows three bars that illustrate how to use the volume on a daily chart. Notice that the bar in Sept shows high volume on an up bar and after that the market went sideways and then reversed.
In December, very high volume was seen on a down bar that closed near the low with wide spread on the price. That shows supply and it is bearish. The supply needs to be removed before the trend can reverse, but this bar may be a price level where the smaller traders are selling to larger traders. If it is bullish, to a degree, it does not look like accumulation has been completed.
Now compare the high volume bar in January to the bar in December. The price makes a new low, but the range is low compared to the December bar and the close is near the top of the bar. The reduction in volume shows that supply has reduced and the combination of the reduced spread and the close near the highs shows that demand has increased. The next few bars are up, which confirms the strength.
The VSA indicator for the December bar is "Potential Climactic Action", which means that the last sellers have sold (potentially that is - not for sure).
The Jan bar shows "Strength Coming In", which is a sign of strength where the volume is high on a down bar and the close is near the high and the spread is not too high. Again, this does not mean that the down move is over, but it may be the signs of accumulation that can be seen in the volume before a sustained rise occurs.
Notice that the bars I have highlighted are easy to spot as they are clearly much higher than the surrounding bars, so we know that they represent large commitments and that they have clear significance.
The weekly chart still looks troubling, but a retest of the lows near July 2012 at the 27 level may be a good place to watch for further signs of strength.
Ideally the weekly chart should start to show the high volume on the down bars followed by strength. The daily chart will show changes first, but the weekly chart gives a better overview.
This analysis is intended purely for educational reasons to show how volume is used in the VSA method.
Nice posts. I'm interested in your selection of instruments. I've recently expanded my instrument list as well. A couple of questions.
1. Which data feed are you using?
2. What is the criteria you use to decide the basket of instruments you trade? I'm not talking about setups but more Minimum volume/liquidity etc?
3. What type of slippage do you typically incur on these lower liquidity type of instruments such as feeder cattle?
4. Which economic reports do you consider before you trade if any?
1. Tradestation
2. As I do not trade large size, volume/liquidity is not an issue for me. I do look at the spreads, though (e.g., if I want to trade the resp. mini contracts - some of them have unfavorable spreads). I trade, when I see a setup. I started out trading ES only, but got tired once when I did not see one trade within several weeks... I thought, other markets might have opportunities when ES has none.
3. Given my small trade size (usually 1-3 contracts), I had no slippage issues so far.
4. Actually none. In this respect, my comment above is misleading. It just happened that I saw on various posts on Twitter & StockTwits that many people were waiting for this WASDE report to come out. My conclusion for the failed Feeder Cattle trade should have been only "Should have waited for the daily close in order to see how price reacted near support".
Thank you for asking these questions so that I can clarify.
That has been my conclusion also and I'm in full agreement with your approach. I have been trading seven instruments; 6E, ES, TF, NQ, GC, FDAX and CL. The only difference is I'm using volume profile to define support and resistance. When analyzing losing trades on these instruments the common theme has been the setups weren't ideal. With the expanded list I'm already seeing more attractive opportunities.
I've now expanded the list as per the attached.
To qualify for the list the instrument has to have a minimum of 800k volume per month. Out of the Soft ICE agricultural products of Coffee, Sugar, Cocoa and grains only Sugar seems to satisfy the criteria which trades over 2 million a month.
I notice you are trading Feeder cattle. That only has about 120k per month. The reason I've excluded these instruments so far is spread and likely slippage, although have no stats to confirm without doing some testing. Approximately what type of spread are you experiencing on Feeder cattle?
Cheers
DJ
ps I didn't realize tradestation included ICE US in their data feed hence the question.