Day Trading Morning Prep Gold, Crude Oil, Dollar Index, Euro, E-mini Russell Futures

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Let’s begin our morning routine with the economic news for today’s trading session.

8:20 Gold & Currencies OPEN

8:30 Jobless Claims

8:30 Durable Goods Orders

9:00 Crude Oil OPEN

9:30 US Market OPEN

10:30 EIA Natural Gas Report

10:30 E-mini Reversal

11:00 Transition into Lunch

11:30 European Close / Live Webinar in our Trade Room

Looking at the news this morning our focus will be on the 830am jobs report then looking for volume to enter the market afterwards for us to trade with.

The concern right now is volume. Its the end of the first quarter so we know volume will be light through the end of march. We will be using news events to spark moves in the market, giving us trading opportunities.

We see GDP on FRIDAY at 830am, so looking at the last news event this morning @ 1030am we will look for volume to drop after 1045am this morning as traders wait for friday’s GDP report.

Lets look at the charts we’re watching this morning…

Dollar Index Futures

Just like we thought, the dollar bounced off support at 75.505 and then headed up to bounce off the overhead trend line resistance at 76.305. This move was very predicatable on such low volume, but with that low volume also comes a little confusion over the Dollar Index Futures Correlation.

We know the when there is low volume this correlation falls apart, and we saw times on wednesday where that certainly was the case.

The dollar now has plenty of room to drop back down to support while it trades in this sideways range, so lets use that to tell us which direction to trade today.

With the dollar dropping, im looking for buying opportunities on the markets we trade most, but remember, Im looking for the dollar to move quickly for the best moves, so watch the pace of tape indicator.

Crude Oil Futures

Crude Oil continues it rise this morning on low volume going into jobs @ 830am.

Looking at the 89range chart you can see we are in the middle of this massive bullish price channel. We want to focus on the highs and lows of the channel, so this shows us a red flag right away. We should consider today to be trading in the ‘middle’ of the range, so beware.

Now lets look at the 34range to see where our trading opportunities will be today…it doesnt look much easier from this point of view.

You can see we are trading around the highs of the blue price channel, but the price action at these highs is ‘expanding’ which means you can see higher highs but the same lows, which is always a red flag for sloppy price action.

At this point I dont see a sideways range yet, I dont see a well defined price channel, and I can see the low volume at this point means we may have to wait a little bit this morning to really get clarity on who controls price right now.

The one thing we DO know is the PHOD is below us, so expect prices to attract to the PHOD and PLOD which are both below current prices.

I will be looking at this chart again in about 15 mins, looking for more information from the traders on crude oil futures.

Gold Futures

Gold is still trading in the bullish price channel, above the wedge pattern from earlier in the month of march, and we see a few things to consider:

Dollar Correlation
Bullish Price Channel
Overhead Resistance
PHOD / PLOD
Sideways Range

First, we know the dollar is trying to drop to the previous LOD from wednesday, so falling DX will bring rising gold prices.

We are also in a bullish price channel, which means the long side can be assumed higher % today with the dollar dropping.

I want to buy the lows of the channel with a 2step price reversal or look to buy pullbacks when we break resistance with a wave pattern.

The key is not to buy the highs, wait to buy the pullback at support.

We also know that the resistance levels of 41.2 and 45.8 are major resistance. Consider the break of this resistance as a sign of BULLISH price action to come.

Again, dont buy the highs, wait for price to break above these levels and then buy a pullback.

I will be looking to SELL these levels of resistance first, then look to buy if they break new highs.

The PHOD and PLOD are both below us, so this will act like a price magnet. Look to sell the PHOD below 1426.1 and look to cover that short at the PLOD. We always look for this to attract price.

Lastly the sideways range below us, we will sell the highs of the range below 1436.0

Euro Currency Futures

E-mini Russell Futures

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