Tomorrow I'll make an effort to mark up charts in real time with potential trades. It's not my style to take all setups that present themselves; I prefer to take no more than 3-4 trades per day and thus tend to be highly selective. There's a lot of "gray area" in my charts and if I have any doubt about what I'm seeing, I pass.

For purposes of this thread I'll try to set that aside for the next few days and mark what I see while it's happening, which should be a good learning exercise.

Attached is a chart showing my analysis of CL this morning. Only one trade, a short that produced around a 40 tick profit, which is enough for me so I'll probably call it a day.

A few notes about how I trade CL specifically:

1. I do not take countertrend trades on CL. Moves too quickly; just not the right instrument for countertrend.

2. I am careful around round numbers (94, 95, etc.) as CL frequently seems to react to these areas. I will generally set a profit target close to the round number, not counting on a move much beyond it. That was the case today, where 94 also happened to be a prior low, so I set my profit target at 94.03 (a few ticks above so I'm more likely to get filled) anticipating support below 94.

3. I don't like to trade right away after the opening bell (vertical red line on my chart). I watch for a while to see what's shaping up before committing myself.

Today I saw signs that CL didn't "want" to go higher, and so was looking to enter on the first confirmed signs of a downtrend. The actual entry (point 4 on the attached chart) was not a picture-perfect bounce off the SMA, as in this case price pierced pretty far through the SMA before reversing. This still looks like a good short setup to me, so long as price reverses before hitting the upper envelope. By waiting for price to break the low of the prior bar before entering, I end up getting a low-risk entry. I placed the stop just over the swing high a bar or two prior to my entry, which was just a few ticks. This turned out to be a favorable risk:reward setup.

Thanks for your CL analysis. Perfect entry, congratulations. The entry was also at EMA 55 and VWAP I have additionally on my charts. And there was a divergence in the stochastics.
I stopped trading CL with the beginning of the libya crisis when CL began to move crazy. Perhaps I´ll have a look at it again soon.

Here is a YM trade from this morning. A "near miss"; came close to a 20 tick profit but it reversed and ended up with a 1 tick loss. Perhaps I could have handled that exit better.

I don't trade CL on inventory days, at least not until after the excitement from the announcement has worn off, so I'm focused on YM for the moment.

Update showing my thoughts on how YM is setting up so far.

Latest update.

worldwary 

Here is a YM trade from this morning. A "near miss"; came close to a 20 tick profit but it reversed and ended up with a 1 tick loss. Perhaps I could have handled that exit better. I don't trade CL on inventory days, at least not until after the excitement from the announcement has worn off, so I'm focused on YM for the moment.

Hi worldwary, nice thread you have here. I did check a YM chart and i wanted to explore a different angle to look at some finer details. I do not trade the YM so here i have the benefit of hindsights but i think some of my observations could be helpfull. Personaly, i would have entered before your entry and i explain why on the chart provided.

Latest update. A couple of long trades presented themselves, one win and one loss. Small net gain on the day so far trading just with-trend setups. Have not seen any compelling chop or countertrend setups yet today.

trendisyourfriend 

Hi worldwary, nice thread you have here. I did check a YM chart and i wanted to explore a different angle to look at some finer details. I do not trade the YM so here i have the benefit of hindsights but i think some of my observations could be helpfull. Personaly, i would have entered before your entry and i explain why on the chart provided.

Thanks, appreciate the input. The kind of volume analysis you're doing here (is this market profile?) is a skillset I have never developed. Definitely something for me to explore further but for now it's like speaking a foreign language.

No trades the last couple of hours due to news. Pace of trading has slowed to a crawl now; market holding its breath before Fed press conference it seems.