The 1720.00 stop-loss I’d advised ejected us profitably from a two-contract long, leaving us with the task of re-establishing a bullish position in the days ahead. Dispensing with couldawouldashoulda hindsight, we can reasonably surmise that taking partial profits on long positions will always be key, since pullbacks are likely to grow even nastier as this bull market progresses. The idea is to reduce our cost basis sufficiently via partial profit-taking so that we can comfortably hold at least a small piece of the original position without being overly concerned about its inevitable swoons.
For purposes of trading the futures today, the nearest ‘external’ peak we can leverage for “camouflage” lies at 1739.20 (see inset). A rally exceeding that peak would surely attract more interest than we should prefer, but that shouldn’t rule out a ‘camo’ entry attempt. My recommendation is to take the trade if the B-C pullback occurs from no higher than 1739.50. You should further limit your risk by stopping yourself out if the futures noodle around the ‘x’ entry price for more than a minute or so.
Camouflageurs could try entering nearer current levels by finding a suitable ABC pattern on the very lesser charts. However, at the moment, even scrutinizing the 1-minute chart, I am unable to improve on 1739.20. _______ UPDATE ( 11:31 a.m.): Wow. The futures are trading almost exactly where they were yesterday ay this time, but that belies the take-no-prisoners viciousness of price action in the intervening 24 hours. If you’re interested in how this played out relative to any camouflage opportunities we might have found, the best ‘X’ entry ‘X’ I can find, using the 3-minute chart, lay at 1738.00 (around 12:45 a.m. EST); at 1743.00 (12:57 a.m.; but you had better have exited 75% of the position at the 1747.20 target, since the futures fell $10 after topping at 1747.90); and at 1746.30 (8:36 a.m.; however, if you’d held more than one contract after the futures topped within $1.10 of the 1751.70 target, you’d have gotten slammed by the subsequent collapse — to a so-far low this morning at 1732.60. Also, that last entry would need to have anticipated, via a timed buy-stop, the bullish C-D stampede to the top that followed an impulse leg that was much too strong to be exclusively ours.