0845 Sold 2 ZB 106 20. Looking for a break below. NN cycle sell. 2nd of the day. Target 106 15. Update 0850 The 0835 cycle time turned out to be important.
0901 Closed ZB's 106 24. I believe I'm done for the day unless something spectacular comes along. All in all a very minimal profit for the week. Certainly not worth the time invested. Something to consider when you trade real money and are thinking of trading full-time.
I watched the market off and on and finally decided to short at 1120 CST. Sold 2 ZB's 107. While waiting for that price (see my postings about the 00's), I analysed my hourly and daily chart as I'd noticed something interesting since January of this year. Ordinarily I don't consider the hourly or daily high on my list of priorities. Of course analysis of the trend is important, and for that reason (as well as price levels) I always study them, but I never pay attention to signals from them. During the tail end of my postings in February as well as all of my postings starting in June, I've maintained my NN cycle and NN RVI indicators on my daily and hourly chart. As I mentioned, I look and take note of a buy/sell signal on them but I don't let it influence my trading decision other than as confirmation. While closing up things for the weekend, I decided to go over the hourly and daily in the ZB's just to see how the indicators did. This time I really took a close look. What I saw gave me pause and will require further study over the weekend. The NN's nailed ZB turns to include calling for entry hours / days before key reports that went in the predicted direction. Since I've been focusing exclusively on getting out in the morning and remaining flat, trading off of the one hour or daily chart has never appealed to me. However, now that I see the above results, as well as definite confirmation with the price projection and Tipping Hand prices, I need to pursue analysis of the hourly and daily NN activity further. With that in mind, I think it is time to leave this thread for awhile as I did back in February. I will be holding on to my 2 ZB's for quite a while, perhaps up to 12 days or longer. It is all based on the above, plus something else I saw. Immediate short term target is 104 30. Longer term I'm looking for an approach to 100, but I'll settle for 102 09.
luckyhonda, I haven't held overnight in ages so I have no rules I follow. Ordinarily, today, Tuesday, I would have been a buyer of ZB right after the report when we were breaking 107 03 => 107 05. This would have been good for at least 7 ticks. I might day trade some ZN's if the opportunity arises in the next couple of weeks.
Closed the ZB's for a loss. While I had a rather large stop set, even much higher than the 107 20's, I'm not prepared to wait so long for the move down. I'm standing aside for now. No opinion. My belief is that the current world tensions are not supportive of holding for any length of time. Who knows what kind of strikes will happen over the weekend? Where would you put your money given the circumstances? Oil, gold, and the all time favorite, US bonds.
I'm not going to post my blow by blow trades for a while due to time constraints as well as my earlier post about wanting to explore the longer term. However, FYI, I inititated a daytrade short with multiple contracts near my stop price. UPDATE 0806 CST Well, we just hit 107 11. Bye bye loss. Nothing further to add. 107 07 is a possible target for this trade.
Carefully waiting on any daytrades and taking the plunge if they come up. Shorting 2 ZB's 106 17. Will continue to short all the way up to 106 20. Initial target is a re-test of 106 12 followed by 106 03. I don't want to sound cocky, but I am so confident on this trade that I'll accept a risk of a run to 106 25 and continue to short. The ideal entry was 106 19 or higher, but as I haven't been daytrading recently, I wanted to get in on the bounce up from the low and 106 17 looked good. Note that consolidation and lack of follow through means accept any price between 106 17 and 106 12.
Unfortunately things didn't work out the way I expected. Usually this type of trade should go in your favor within 30 minutes of the bounce from the low off of a 0730 report. The longer it went on the less inclined I became to add more contracts at 106 20. When we approached the 0900 Bernake hour that was an indication that things were not going as expected. You could have gotten out at 106 22 at that point. I held on to 106 25 and got stopped out. I set it at 106 25 as I thought he couldn't possibly say anything that would be interpreted in a positive fashion. Ha, ha. My thoughts were the 0900 hour would be the push to lower levels. As I listened, I personally thought his comments could be interpreted either way. The major players thought otherwise.
Interesting aside. As the trade went on and we were still at the 106 20 level, I started getting a nagging feeling in my gut about "V" days. Prior to 0900, I went back to my posts on 03 Feb 2006, which was the last "V" day of significance for me. Pull up the chart. Uncanny isn't it? http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62839&perpage=6&pagenumber=27