Day Trading Services, Market Commentary Schooloftrade

Today’s market action brought with it yet again numerous set-ups for all of our traders here at he School of Trade. All of our trades surprisingly came on the Crude Oil today (Symbol CL), even with its inventories number being released at 10:30am EST. Today’s trade total’s equaled 2 for 3, $200 in profit!

Our first trade set-up came shortly after the opening of the Crude Oil open outcry pits at 9:00am EST. Till then the market had been consolidating into a range around the $70-$72 price level, and it began to retrace of its current day highs, the opening of the pits began to send the market higher as buyers took control of the price. At 9:08am EST, after price had failed to fulfill a 2-step short qualification, we looked to enter with the short term trend of long with a Breaker set-up. Once momentum curled in our favor and the speed of the tape began to increase via our P.O.T indicator, we entered the Crude Oil (Symbol CL) long at 70.79. Once in the trade we began to watch our instruments closely, to better identify if the trade would continue its trend. With no dynamic levels of resistance in our way, we were able to take profits via our ATM strategy on NinjaTrader at +4 ticks (2 contracts), +8 ticks and then our final contract, which we trail to lock in more profits, gave us +12 ticks, for a total of +28 ticks on the trade! ($10/tick).

Our second trade came after the release of the Crude Oil Inventories number being released at 10:30am EST. The inventories increased to -4.7M from the week’s prior inventories of -5.9M. This new certainly disrupted the price of Crude Oil, and so we waited an extended length of time before taking our next trade, to ensure the added volatility was gone. After the market had calmed down, we looked for another possible set-up, the market began making a large rally into the 71.50 price level, so we knew a possible trade would be coming. At 10:55am EST, the Crude Oil market began its pullback after breaking the 71.50 level, but when it failed to create a James Wave pattern as well as a 2-step pattern, we then looked to take a Breaker to the long side. With all of our technical’s pointing in favor of our trade, we entered the market at a basis of 71.65; but due to our momentum shifting to the downside, we decided to exit the trade early to try and prevent losses, and ended closing the trade at a small loss of -2 ticks (4 contracts) totaling -8 ticks on the trade ($10/tick). As our screenshot shows though, our trade would have made us money, but all of our members at the school of trade know, we never guess what is going to happen in the market, there’s no predicting, just reacting to what actually happens!

Our third and final trade came towards the beginning of lunch for U.S traders, around 11:00am. The market had been trending down off its high’s and shorting into the 71.00 price level and lower. We began to notice though that the selling pressure was drying up, and the buyers had a chance to reclaim the market. At 11:24am EST we were finally given our opportunity to take the market long, when a pullback in price gave us a possible 2-step formation, we waited for price action to qualify the trade and then took it long with a basis of 70.90. Taking into consideration the market action at the time and especially the time of day we were trading at, we were very strict in keeping a tight leash on this trade. While in the trade, we noticed our momentum indicator was beginning to curl down ever so slightly, and with a decrease in the speed of tape, we decided it was best to take a scratch on this trade and get out at our entry price, instead of waiting and hoping the trade went in our favor. Nothing gained or lost on this trade, and the important lesson here was that, even though the trade did eventually go in our favor, we didn’t break our rules, and when our indicators told us to exit, we did.