A - Pre-market, we drop below 60. I am including a 15 sec chart of this action. It almost appears as if there were no trades between 60 and 58, and yet when I plot the volume, that one bar is over 1000 contracts in pre-market! Would love an explanation if someone can shed some light.
Shorting below 60 is exactly what I was looking for, but this type of action was just a bit unfamiliar. Its interesting that we rally up after this drop and get to 60 again right at the open.
B - The second short I was trying to take, but just couldn't get the order in fast enough. The poke above 3560 and REJ at 3561 was just screaming for me to short. Not sure if I would have been filled mind you.
C - The REV at 3548 is unexpected. Now it certainly seems like a DB, but you can only be sure of this a few bars later.
D - We climb up to D, but for a few bars, we see that price can't rally past 57, so this looks like good confirmation to still be a in short, call it a failure to go above the opening high, and to even get to that 3560 level that was so important.
E - Here we form a higher low from C, but once again, this probably isn't obvious until a few bars later, where we break the 3560 level.
F - We do form a higher high here, but turn around yet again.
G - Here we form a higher low. If we drew in a DL connecting C and E, the action here at G is breaking the DL, but the break isn't severe, and within a couple of minutes, we reverse to back above the DL. It really takes me this long to figure out that we aren't going down anymore, even more so, perhaps not until we breach the highs of F and get above 3563. By this point, the trade to go long is of course gone.
H - I started to see this hinge form, and although price does break out the bottom of the hinge, I think it looks nicer if we just ignore that. So what we have is a hinge, with an apex of 3572. On closer inspection, this level of 72 happens to be the mean of the overnight range of 84 to 60. So it makes perfect sense why this hinge forms here, why we have this area of consolidation here. This of course wasn't arrived at pre-market, so it was of no use to me in real time, but plotting it in now for discussion. I don't really draw in means of ranges if the high and low hasn't been tested a few times. Hmmm... now that I look, I do see 84 being tested a few times, and 60 was of course tested many time in the few hours before open, so perhaps it should have been drawn in during prep. I'm just used to price going up and down many times within a range, not just testing the top, and down to the bottom and not back up again.
I - We break to the upside, and still are well above our DL. But since the move has gone so far from the bottom, I just don't want to think about entering a long for fear it will just turn around on me.
J - We hit the overnight high of 84 and appear to REV for a few mins, but it doesn't take.
K - Next we hit a high of 88, the mean from yesterday which was quite pronounced. This certainly looks like a much better short, but this too doesn't go far. We eventually do have a break of our DL and would have had a RET to go short now that I look at it closely, but I'm just not in the mood to look for trades anymore, and this would have led to a scratch anyway.
L - Break above 88 this time, which also doesn't go far. From here on in, we just go sideways.
The failure to that that initial short is where I went wrong today. I hesitated for a few seconds which is what cost me not getting in. The second thing that is bothering me is not seeing the long. I kept thinking we need to clear 3560 first, which I still think is sensible, and its probably not until we go above 3563 and for a new higher high that the long looks like a good trade, but its risky then of course. Maybe I should say we formed a higher low at E, but going above D at 3558 would have stopped me out for sure, and I just didn't want to go long below 3560 anyway.
So its a bit disappointing to not take any trades to day, especially since we went from 3550 to 3590. I am mostly worried about my short that I didn't get in on, even though that was only a 10 point trade at most, and yet I didn't even consider the chance to go long, which was 40 points (not that all 40 points could have been captured of course).
How to fix this? Hmmm.... the hesitation needs work. Looking for more confirmation I know is just silly, and too costly in terms of price risk. I also need to focus on price right now and not let previous failures to go above or below a certain level affect me too much. If price never broke these levels then it just wouldn't go anywhere. It sure is a balancing act, to remain open to price breaking a level, but being aware of that level as an area beyond which traders couldn't find a trade.
