Day Trading Futures For Beginners, Market Commentary

In today’s current market conditions, it says a lot of the School of Trade’s consistent trading results, and today was no different, yet another profitable trading session. Today we were able to scalp out three trades on the Crude Oil, going 2 for 3 with a total profit of +$290.00 while trading with 4 Contracts. After seeing the Crude Oil’s price collapsing about $3/barrel yesterday, the crude market slowly took back most of yesterday’s decline with today’s strong rally with a slow but steady uptrend since the beginning of electronic trading this morning. The start of the open outcry pits and U.S equities open brought prices back down, but since then, they have been slowly crawling back towards the $72/barrel price level. Let review the trades we took today….

Our first trade of the day came earlier than usual, and before the start of the open outcry pits at 9:00am EST. We had noticed that price had been retracing most of the morning, and thought that there might be a brief change in trend because of the increase in volume coming into the market. After the Crude Oil had made a strong push into the 71.50 price level, we began to see weakness in the buying pressure and looked to take a trend reversal trade with the 2-step set-up. At 8:35am EST we entered short on the Crude Oil (Symbol CL) with a 2-Step at 71 35. With the stochastics curling in our favor to the downside, we quickly noticed the pace of the tape speed up with more sellers entering the market and were able to close our trade with a profit of +3 ticks (2 contracts) for a total of +6ticks on the trade ($10/tick) (+$60).

Once the open outcry pits and the U.S equities market opened, we noticed the sellers really began to take control of price and try to push it back down below the $71/barrel price level. With the short term trend being down now, we looked to scalp a few ticks on this trend with either our James Wave set-up or our newest trade set-up the Breaker. At 9:49am EST we finally got our chance to take the Crude Oil short (Symbol CL) with a Breaker set-up at 71.11. We watch price action closely to see if our first target would get executed, but when we noticed our momentum indicator had begun to curl against us, and the P.O.T indicator went red, we decided to close out our trade at scratch, +/- 0 Ticks.

Our third and final trade of the morning came shortly after our second at 10:09am EST and once again on the Crude Oil (Symbol CL). Price action had made a clear double bottom on the $71.00 level and so we began to look for a trade set-up to the long side. Once price had given us a swing high, we decided that a Breaker set-up long was qualified, and entered the market at 10:09am EST with a basis of 71.35. Momentum quickly curled in our favor and some substantial buyers also entered the market, sending it higher within seconds, we quickly realized our first two targets of +4 ticks (2 contracts), +8 ticks (1 contract) had already been filled, with our final contract trailing behind our trigger line, we let it run for an additional +7 ticks (1 contract) for a total of +23 ticks ($10/tick) (+$230).