WTI Crude Oil Trading

Hi! I just trade fractals, but not technical ones. Fractals is telling that a first pullback is done and it should continue higher, but it could be a double pullback to 56.xx area. So right now for me there no good entry for selling or buying, but if you see 56.xx is a good buy. That is what i mean

LC, already in the sell, could have taken profit a few bars back but greed got the better of me(that's me there) the trend is still down for the moment so it could give me BE or minimal profit, mental note to self, opportunist profit is the way to go, don't be greedy, D

Good spike down on the half hour bar, game still inplay.

Relevant question.

Years ago after I thought I understood volume, I started brainstorming how to get reliable data, since getting a lot of noise (delayed often aswell) sentiments, 'volume' ratios, etc that's available is lacking in either update speed, information-wise or as simple as you mention, not a big enough amount of data to be considered herd behavior.

I've touched this topic many times in my journey here and I'm gonna link to it.

I'm gonna share as much as I can, without given all my development away
But yes, 'the golden nugget' is what volume sources to use and how to obtain those

Tomorrow's EIA inventory data will be interesting. The risk looks tilted to the townside given the resistance at the ~$58.50 level. If we see inventories depleted we could get a break above that level. However, on an inventory build wqe should see some selling. Either way, I advise staying out of the market for this data release given the liquidity will be dry. Good luck out there!

This is WTI on a 15M since the start of the week:

Lol @ Opportunistic profit....but i share similar sentiment its the incremental pips or profit that adds up and eventually makes it all worth it at the end....


Noting some bearish divergence on the oil setups(crude and brent) so maybe another pullback on the cards but till the head is invalidated i remain net bullish on it....

Equities and the Plunge Protection Teams


The Problem Areas

Debts, interest rates, and bubbles in stocks, real estate, and several other markets.

National economies are now strongly linked to equities markets. Deep stock market crashes could wreck national economies.

The Great Unraveling

Banks and other financial organizations are awash with issued debts and derivative exposures. The danger comes from a possible failure of a major institution—recall that the Lehman collapse in 2008 nearly brought the house down. Unchecked, such a failure could cascade through the financial system in a great unraveling of debts, derivatives, and third-party guarantees with consequences that can reach across countries and personal economic status.

Interest Rates: Inflation and Defaults

Monetary and price inflations and defaults on debts and other obligations would put strong upward pressure on interest rates. However, normal market-determined interest rates, which are well above the current artificially-depressed rates, would cause interest costs on debts—public and private—to expand to unmanageable levels.

Outcomes

Collapsing bubbles in stocks, real estate, and other markets would lead to general collapse of economies and intense economic hardships for people. This would lead to serious, often violent, social reactions and the turnover of many governments. Many populations around the world are already at their flash points.

Therefore, the bubbles must be continued by whatever means central banks and governments can devise. Interest rates must be kept down. Stock and real estate markets must be propped up.

The fragile, elevated levels of stock and bond markets can, and likely will, lead to serious crashes from time to time. Enter the plunge protection teams, which are already in action in Japan, Europe, and probably China. This is going on to a lesser degree in the US.

The depth of market crashes in the US has strong implications for the US and global economies. From the point of view of governments and major financial institutions, the crashes must be contained and repaired.

Equities, oil, and other commodities are not likely to reach the scale of the 1920s and 1930s depressions that affected the world in the near future. These markets will be propped up until some point is reached where they can no longer be propped up. So, during the next few years, perhaps decades, stocks might not have 50% declines and gold prices might not soar into the stratosphere.

Like government people and bankers, traders might best pretend and pretend and pretend. Until that doesn't work anymore.

Great post!

Seems the indis turned +ve so we may have a slight dip but looks to be going higher, will close short as early as I can, D

Position turned, buy 58.35

I expected a push higher overnight, see what London open brings, API news out today

I'm not sure if the PPT is a real group, but it would be useful. I've witnessed a few really bad days where the Dow was down 400pts, then 500pts, then crash mode starts and it drops hundreds of points more in a matter of minutes. It's rare that happens, but during those times having someone there to provide liquidity is incredibly important. Once liquidity is gone that 500 point loss could be 1,000 points, or 2,000, or wherever the circuit breaker kicks in. Without liquidity, there might not be a bid at any price... Anything can happen so having a buyer step in like the PPT would be useful.

Brent Oil overview
Let’s start reading in the first half of November.
I plot the orange range lines from 06/high and 08/low
1- SLKT (Trap for breakout bulls)
2- SLKB (Trap for breakdown bears)

Since that time we got a bullish rally.
Let’ study its character.
C > (A+B)/2
E > (C+D)/2
Well, market is demonstrating bullish behavior as rallies tend to resume after 50% pullback.
That is why I plotted up-ward channel lines. I expect it will be valid in mid-term.
Note also, price is settling above top range orange line.

Rushi noted big zone of weakness on the background. It seems to me, bulls will produce an attempt to struggle through it.
Follow My Thread

I think oil has a bearish look atm but still bull longer term

Caution for the bulls below 58.13

Jun 29
"It's all floating. The market is constantly alive and changing, including the volume. That's why any type of lag with volume/positions/sentiment (I mentioned some of this in the second post) is barely profitable or useless

Jun 29
"Some of the classic ways (which unfortunately aren't valuable/lagging) to approach this theory are the COT (Commitment of Traders) report published by the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) or with CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) that shows lagging weekly updated data on open interest on futures and options. The spot FX market is way bigger than the futures and options market and this report is barely profitable and doesn't give you a view of the 'amateurs' activity on the overall FX market. Another method is finding sentiment index on sites, which unfortunately also is data insufficient and won't give you the bigger picture of what's going on or able to give a visual image of the market situation.
Volume trading in general in forex is very complex and it's difficult to find useful data. In theory, it would be necessary to have inside information from the biggest brokers to get a clearer overview of the actual overall in-depth sentiment positions and orders from private clients.

Jul 9
It's a percentage summary of the raw retail volume data.
That means, for example, if let's say that the GBP is pointing down 50%, then it tells that 50% of all retail positions activity was selling GBP.
Which, according to the theory, would mean buying 50% of raw volume data or whatever else way you wanna trade it, there are many opportunities.
The only disadvantage about 'just' knowing the percentage, is not knowing the raw volume total.
Let's say there were two days in a row with 50% volume selling GBP, if the total volume was twice as large on one of the days, it would mean to adjust the percentage according to the total volume if ones want to trade EXACTLY against/opposite of retail volume.

Jul 12
I'm sharing whatever I can without giving away my edge and risk other copying my source.
Tug of war is volume and price compared and closer looking at flows = speed of increase and decrease in the two. It also takes volume size compared to 'normal' into consideration

Jul 14
I haven't mentioned, that this theory and method can be applied to other markets than FX as well, as long as there is enough client liquidity in those market.
This, for example, can be stock-indices, gold, and oil.

Jul 15
Contrarian: Finally became in a position of broad market overview raw retail client data. Been testing this theory for many years with all possible data sources I could find, but got burned some times because of unreliable insufficient (liquidity) data.

Aug 17
My data not is not anything shady or mysterious and I don't get my data from others.
A tip: In reality all traders could extract retail volume data from their retail broker, if they want so look into such data information. The process of this however, can be rather difficult. Even though this data might be insufficient, it should provide a semi realistic overview of overall volume.

Aug 26
Well, I understand your point and it's valid if you believe there aren't parties targeting, speculating and even manipulating against the unknowing 'amateurs'. Retail volume, in my eyes, is seen as milking cows for many parties. And yes I would agree, that having data from your own broker probably would be insufficient, however, it might still provide somewhat of an overview.

Aug 28
The essence is acting desk/broker and makes the opposite of retail herds trades,
I'm trying to prove that it is profitable, especially when traded the whole matrix of 28 pairs.
Haha you're right
The faster I update the more precise, but yes it should be possible to automate it.

Sep 9
A great difficulty/challenge and something that been leading me astray a lot, been being able to constantly having the complete overview of everything that's going on, while simultaneously updating some of the data manually.
Including putting every dot together when both looking at calculations and visual graphs. Since some of the data/showings are historical and something is only at glimpse/ like a snapshot. So since it's not fully automated it's a lot to wrap one's head around.
Also when not sure what's best (testing and optimizing data endlessly) and has to test the same two variables (price and volume) together in more than 15 different ways. Each approach taking a lot of manhours in data calculation, backtest, forward test and analysis. Precision is so important when looking at price/volume divergence.

Sep 9
I'll continue opening up and educating what I discover + sharing knowledge/information.
For now, my plan is not to sell any volume source data, indicator, software, tool or spreadsheet, (I didn't make some of the software and indicator, I made tools, spreadsheet calculations and own indicators from raw volume data I extract/receive from third part)

Sep 10
I spent years searching for valid and reliable volume data as well. Problem being lack of real-time and update speed. I looked into both sentiments, COT report, CME option and futures data, polls, etc - everything that could provide a somewhat indication of herd behavior.
Most data available to the public is an overall sentiment, insufficient, lagging and delayed. No market maker is interested in us getting the same information as them, hence we would be able to see through their manipulation.
Eiter we gotta go 'take it' the providers/brokers (you would need programming/coding skills and you could dig into mql (or other software api) or,
find out who provided the data to the brokers.

A lot happened since, but still, my 'Tug of war' thread shows the journey and testing my volume r&d has been through ^
https://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=928287 text from this thread

Hi Lekkim, As far as I remember you were going a different route with your trading, I think it was partnership/fund management how did that go for you?

Just ignore if I'm being too nosey

Well yes and no, Sponge

Haha never too nosey, I'm literally asking you to challenge me on my beliefs
If you are referring to the latest update in tug of war thread, then we didn't get started on that.
I want to be able to show this face-to-face, potential interested been more interested in how I did it right and with me can't share key details online. So I hope for the 'right' serious trader to stumble upon my work and catch the interest. Or wait enough time to start myself, since I have a hard time starting with real low bank (big risk in terms of dedication of time and no else income etc, you get it)

It's not a secret that I'm open for partnerships and I search and trying to accumulate decent starting capital my self. But I'm not interested in selling, because what I assume I might get for selling it in parts, ain't worth it, because I believe the potential to be greater. So sharing in on FF to take a temp on this forum to see, if I might find a likeminded volume geek, haha In the meantime I also started to be active on the forum where I share all my experience, since helping fellow traders is a lovely side-bonus

'Finished' system is also kinda new, only 1,5 months since the latest update. So it's fine to get used to looking at it, I'm in no hurry.
If I had a live record it would help my case though, I should consider this but so time-consuming and many 'conservative' traders don't give a fck if it's not yeeears of record.
Patience is a virtue, isn't that what they say.

Yes patience is a virtue and I have none of it

Good luck with your search

Feel free to post your ideas on oil here just to keep your hand in ha