Aarnog's Journal

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Aarnog said:
Coincidentally - GBP futures are trading at a premium right now (price right now > futures prices), which is a SIGNIFICANT bullish signal (for the near term, at least).

hey aarnog,

first off, nice journal. very nice structured top down analysis.
question: what do you look at and where to come to the above statement? would love to know. also why is that a bullish signal? could you explain please.

another thing: where do you look at COT's? i found that http://www.cotpricecharts.com/commitmentscurrent/ shows different open interest than barcharts.com.

thanks and good luck going full time soon!
 
TopFroxx said:
hey aarnog,

first off, nice journal. very nice structured top down analysis.
question: what do you look at and where to come to the above statement? would love to know. also why is that a bullish signal? could you explain please.

another thing: where do you look at COT's? i found that http://www.cotpricecharts.com/commitmentscurrent/ shows different open interest than barcharts.com.

thanks and good luck going full time soon!

Thanks, I appreciate that!

Unfortunately, I've lost all but that little blurb in my notes - the video that ICT posted containing futures information is long gone (at least, I can no longer find it). I'll try to track it down again though - he explains it better than I could. If I remember and can find the time, I'll do a bit of research into it as well. I also have a not about bullish futures divergences - I should see if I can find somewhere that charts them well.

Either way, I use barchart.com for my futures information, and for my COT information (I also use timingcharts.com, and cotbase.com for my COT information, because I find a lot of places aren't very accurate about it - I'm almost tempted to chart it myself).

Also - just closed out a trade on the Cable for +30 pips. Have another trade on the fiber that was +15, but is not looking like it might get closed at BE. Will see shortly.
 
Yowch!

Was looking to short the cable today (2 OTE levels + bearish sentiment + bearish SMT divergence between cable and fiber). Got hit with 2 full 30 pip losses. That makes me sad, and is going to take a couple days to recover from. Ah well, can't win 'em all!

On the plus side, my Fiber trade is currently up 20 pips, so that helps mitigate the loss somewhat.
 
And I'm back!

I took an extended leave. I was planning on starting up on the 6th, but decided that sleeping in for a week was going to be more fun. I wasn't wrong, but I definitely missed a couple of good trading opportunities. Oh well! Live and learn!

So, I'm starting back up tonight. We'll see if I can shake the rust off quickly, or if my first couple trades are going to be disasters.

Top down!

Treasury yields: Bearish divergence over the longer timeframe (from August - now the 5 year and 2 year failed to make higher highs, while the 10 and 30 year successfully made higher highs). Yields go down, USDX goes up (flight to quality and all). This makes sense, since seasonally we are in a time that is fairly bullish for the USD (and bearish for foreign currencies).

We also have bearish divergence on foreign yields, which makes sense - again, yields decrease, people go invest in cash - best cash market? USD.

COT: The only thing really catching my eye here is how overwhelmingly bearish the commercial traders are on the Cable. I have a feeling we're going to see a serious move downward in fairly short order.

Again - seasonally, we're in a time where things are bearish for foreign currencies, and bullish for the dollar - look for shorts on foreign currency!

The Cable:

1.6620 and 1.6750 are still the levels I'm watching on the higher time frames - I would be absolutely stunned if price didn't test at least one of those levels (if not both!). I am, overall, expecting a raid on the stops above 1.6750 before price falls downward (only 300 pips away - could be reached in a couple of good days!)

Drawing fib extensions from previous price swings, I'm seeing a lot of confluence at the 1.6700 level (extensions, 200% extensions, measured moves, etc). Just to sweeten the pot a bit.

Getting into the smaller time frames, it looks like we have an OTE short happening on the 4 hour, although I think that might be a bear trap on the way to moving higher (it looks like a pretty ugly bear flag, let's put it that way). If we bust above the 1.6470 level, I imagine we'll have a pretty easy time heading further north on the cable.

On the lowest time frames, the thing that really sticks out to me is the fact that we have been totally unable to break and hold below the 1.6350 level. I think that was the resting point on the way to the weekly highs at 1.6620 and 1.6750.

My plan is to take any longs that appear on the cable - if I do go short, it's going to be a very quick scalp. Once we reach the highs noted, I'll start switching my bias to short.

The Fiber:

Not seeing much interesting on the weekly -I'm not married to either direction. the 1.3830 level is one I'm finding interesting - maybe 1.4150 beyond that. I don't have much faith that the Fiber is going to head up that far though. I think it's probably going to hit that 1.3830 level and trade softer.

Going down to the daily - it looks to me like the 1.3830 level has already had everything cleared out. I think it's pretty much all downhill from here.

On the lower time frames, I'm basically looking at the 1.3720 level to take a position short. That seems to be about as high as I think the Euro will be able to push.

That's my analysis! Hope you enjoy it. Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments or anything.
 
Update:

Took 4 trades this week:

First trade - lost 30 pips on Tuesday (technically 60 - looks like there was an error and two entries were made. That's annoying) on a failed cable trade.

Wednesday - took a 10 pip loss before I realized that I was trading in the wrong direction - turned it around and made 30 pips on the Cable. Took a 20 pip winner on the Fiber as well.

Thursday - didn't trade

Friday - long Cable @ 1.6316. Rode the lightning. Currently up 115 pips. Pretty happy with that, given the not-terribly great week. Definitely met my 50 pip target this week.
 
Hi Aarnog,

Nice one. just wondering how did you manage to get in at 1.6316. Would be nice to hear your thoughts.

GL
 
TA entry that I can see (in retrospect it is easier!!) is an OTE entry off the pinbar (about 8:00GMT) rejection of support (low previous day at about 8:15GMT)

A gamble going into News, although often the good RR, say 5:1) makes it worthwhile
 
rod178 said:
Yes, how does one predict News

Good point, but usually I'll look for the news to predict the news, it helps with bias - then either AS low entry for a buy or maybe AS equilib point if price is already pushing up in Asia.

The BBC were reporting this on the day BEFORE the news release on retail sales.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25755889
 
The spikes on News are most often due to unexpected News, ie a fundamental change in fundamentals. As such we (ie the Retail punter) often get caught out, as the Smart Money is more likely to have the more up to date (sometimes seconds) fundamental data. As a rule, the generally available News has already been factored into the price.
 
Hey - sorry for the late replies, guys.

My thinking is this - the big players, the ones that actually move markets, already know what the numbers are going to be. Either they've received them ahead of time from an official source, or they've done their own research and they've come up with the numbers on their own.

Therefore, they know whether there will be any large differences between the forecast and the actual numbers. Then they set up their entries well ahead of time, and then the huge rush of liquidity from the actual news event itself acts as a catalyst for large, fast price moves.

If you know how to follow the footprint, then you can see where the smart money is loading up, and you can hop along for the ride.

As for that trade specifically, I figured that we haven't quite reached the bullish targets I'd set out, and that price was likely retracing to build up orders for the final push up into the 1.6620 or 1.6750 levels. Friday was a big news event, we were in a 4h OTE, hit a support level, price action was looking good, so I grabbed a trade - I figured I wouldn't be risking more than 8-10 pips anyway, so it was a pretty reasonable trade to take.

Honestly, I was only aiming for 30-50 pips. The 120 that I ended up with were just icing on the cake.
 
Just went long on the Cable @ 1.6412 - nested bullish OTE's + support levels.

edit: Order closed. Made about 15 pips. Pretty unhappy with the trade in general - was up 30 pips at one point, but didn't take profit. Probably going to go long again in NYO.
 
rod178 said:
Was the entry based upon OTE off AR low 29Jan2014?

OTE from Jan 20th/14, daily low - high.

as well, there was a nested OTE on the 5m chart on the 21st itself.
 
Went long on Cable @ 1.6465 (bad entry - entered way earlier than I should have. The support level was 1.6455). Currently +50 pips. Gonna wait a bit, see what price does, may just close at 50 pips profit.

Also, taking another trade on the Fiber - entry at 1.3540 (nested OTE longs again!) + support + USDX correlation + Cable correlation. Not looking for more than 20-30 on that one. Risking about 6 pips on it, too. Nothing too crazy with this trade.

update: Closed cable trade for +80. I am sleepy, and I made almost double my weekly goal in that one trade. I'm happy with that. Fiber trade is still running. Probably gonna hold it for another little while and see how it goes.
 
So, I slept last night, which was too bad because there was a nice long on the Euro right during London Open. Oh well, can't catch 'em all!

Either way, tonight I will be up, looking for a quick scalp and nothing more - maybe 20 pips on the cable long @ 1.6620?
 
I've gotten really bad at this trading journal thing - my apologies. Life is busy, and I'm finding it difficult to set aside the free time to actually get this done.

That said, here's my forecast for the week:

Bullish divergence on the USD Treasury yields (meaning, if yields correct and move bullishly, the USD will decrease in value).

Bullish divergence in the British and German and USD 10 year bonds as well (same story as above!)

Cable saw a big change in sentiment - lots of Commercials switching from bearish to bullish), and the Euro is seeing some extreme highs in the COT. Also a bullish signal.

USDX Failed to break the highs at the 81.30 level, and if it continues down below the low at 80.10 we could see some exaggerated movements upwards in the markets. If it doesn't break below that level, we'll have to rethink things.

Cable:

Price has been unable (or unwilling) to stay below 1.6300. Large retracement off of it last week. Not seeing too much else of real note.

Expectations:

Price trades lower into an OTE, possibly down to 1.6300 for one last test of it on Monday. Bullish the rest of the week - some areas of caution to watch, though - 1.6450, and 1.6515 look like pretty important levels of support. 1.6470 may be as well.

Fiber:

Hit an OTE and significant support level @ 1.3480 last week. Given the bullish fundamental bias, I am expecting price to move down into Monday/Tuesday, make the low (possible around 1.3520), and then move upward into Friday.

I will update my expectations as things develop during the week - hopefully I'll remember to note them here!
 
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