I think we can get to 81.20-.40 today, seems like some early rollover action is muting things here though.
This kind of mid-morning action lends itself to scalping. Are you strictly reading the tape, or are you using a small time frame chart as well? I practice scalping in sim a lot with CL, using a 1-min chart. For me, it's good practice for getting early entries into what I hope will be a stronger move.
Question for NoDoji if she happens to read this (or anybody): Do you see a short at the 9:15 or 9:20 bar? We have a move back to the EMA, which is inline with yesterday's close and then a doji and a shooting star. The shooting star seems to confirm the indecision by the bulls and that the bears are stepping in, and confirming that the EMA and yesterday's close are acting as resistance. Price makes a two tick move down and then reverses and makes a strong move upwards. The only thing I can think of is that there was a failed breakout at the lows. Also, the 1m charts have price above the EMA, but it was very shallow so anything to the downside would be back below the EMA on the 1m chart. It happened again at the 10:55 and 11:00 bars. I'm not really sure how to avoid them. I happened to be away from my screen the 2nd time, but I took the first one (in sim) and took a loss.
Gold way off its lows. Euro trying to make up its mind before London's close in 15 minutes. Copper still in positive. Oil was holding on at 82 when everything was breaching new lows (maybe due to rollover as Start pointed out, maybe a fund buying).
I have a chart up so I know my major s&r but only paying attention to DOM. I even programed hot keys, I feel like a pro At one point I was in 10 lots, even though I was only using the QM it was still exciting.
I saw the 9:15 bar as a potential with-trend short signal with a few options for entry. One entry is to short immediately upon the close of that bar. However, the strength of buying that occurred off the pivot low and the fact that the bar had a decent green body caused me to wait. I watched the 1-min chart for a possible short entry with small risk. The 9:20, 9:21 and 9:22 1-min bars set up a pivot low (82.53) and a lower high (82.62). At 9:23 I shorted 82.53, based on price pulling back from the slightly lower high on the micro time frame, but I was still concerned it could be a bear trap, again mainly because of that buying strength off the low. I've seen these traps so often that if I choose to take the bait, I don't give the trade an inch of room to fail. What I do is look for follow through on the price move I entered off of (whether a bar break or a pullback from a level on the 1-min chart). So I was watching for price to react with downside follow-through on the break of 82.50 (9:20 bar low) and then 82.48 (9:15 bar low), and if price stalled at all, I'd exit for a scratch, which is what I did when price only moved a couple ticks through that level and came back up. The bars at 10:55 and 11:00 were not signals for me because price was in a range there (kept finding support at the same place) and I don't trade ranges live. A break through 82.13 would be necessary for price to demonstrate a real direction there. (My trade times are PST.)
If I was being a good unbiased day trader, I would've had a buy stop 82.66 to take advantage of the bear trap and targeted min 20 ticks. But overall the chart looked so down-trendy that I waited for another short opportunity instead.
So you basically got in earlier than I did since I don't look at the 1m chart. I think there was something screwy with the sim because I actually wanted to short at 1 tick below the 9:15 bar, 82.46, but my sim got me in at 82.47. I am not sure how to differentiate the times where you'd take that trade or when you shouldn't. Another thought I had was that after a big spike down and then a failed break lower that we should expect two legs up, which we got before the reversal actually worked at a much clearer lower high. I made 2 stupid trades today. Kept playing the "it's just sim, let's see what happens" mentality. Got in 2 times and then it reversed immediately. Then I remembered I was taking trades during the 9:55 and 10:00 news. Stupid mistake, but good mistake to make in sim rather than live. I even checked the news before I opened my charts this morning, but I forgot. I did have 1 good trade around 10:30, long on a break of the 10:20 bar. Made a very weak break to new lows and failed. I was looking for a bigger move, but it went +11 and stalled so I just put in an order to get out at +11 and it hit 2 more times before triggering. It was sim though. After that it just seemed to stay in its range. Still trying to get the hang of this. I feel like I understand what I need to look for, but in real-time it's like, "well, maybe this is a trade." and then it ends up not working and after the fact I realize why, whether it has just been in a range or I don't have a good reason why I enter. The trades that work appear cleaner and always have a good reason why they are good trades. Even though I made 2 stupid trades right in the middle of the news, I really didn't have a valid reason why I took them other than it was sim and I just wanted to see what would happen. Going to try and go live on Monday. Thanks for you help, NoDoji! Is everyone switching to the new contract on Monday?