Webinar

Bullion prices have been ratcheting lower in recent weeks, presumably bound for key midpoint supports that could conceivably fail. Although it's difficult to be disinterested in the outcome, we need to view the technical signs with coldly mechanical detachment. Indeed, our emotions will not serve us well in judging a market that has been going against us, as bullion has. With the foregoing in mind, and for better or worse, we took an especially close look at Comex Gold during this session.

We don’t often venture onto the tick chart, but we made an exception during this session to scrutinize a possible opportunity in December Gold. The opportunity was there, as it nearly always is in the micro time frame, but we learned yet again that the ability to execute the trade without even a moment of hesitation can be crucial. We also looked at a pattern that was tradable only because we paid close attention to the length of the B-C retracement. If your understanding of k-A segments and the “window rule” is fuzzy, this lesson may be helpful.

With the Dow off as much as 300 points on this particular morning, we nevertheless found a profitable trade against the trend in the E-Mini S&Ps. Our success entailed simply going with the flow, since the flow at the time we were looking for action was “up” on the very lesser charts that we typically use for camouflage. This session will be especially useful to index futures traders, since we rationalized each and every price squiggle up to and beyond the moment the trade was initiated. It was a “successful’ trade to the extent that it reached the ‘p’ midpoint where partial-profit taking was possible.

Scrutinizing December Gold’s charts for real-time trading opportunities, we were rewarded for our patience and diligence with a quick paper profit aboard a minor uptrend that unfolded within a larger bullish pattern. We conducted our analysis after the rally had already played out, but with the outcome masked beyond the right-hand edge of the screen. This learning technique is proving quite useful, since it allows us to come to charts with a speculative eye, not knowing how a trend had run its course.

We took a different tack on learning, retro-engineering gold’s chart so that we could “trade” it without knowing how things would turn out. It helped that gold futures were approaching a breakout threshold, since this create volatility swings with many impulse legs, both bullish and bearish. You may be surprised at what we found, as well as at the subtlety of the lessons we were able to learn.

A particularly slow day in a seemingly interminable stretch of slow weeks allowed us to focus on some subtle technical points that might otherwise have gone unremarked. On the technical premise of a strong dollar, we scrutinized the euro’s charts, which paradoxically looked strong but which on further inspection revealed some small but possibly significant signs of weakness. We then shifted our attention to the E-Mini S&P charts, turning them inside out to ferret out a tradable nuance. So that you can share in the suspense we felt poring over the charts, I’ll leave the outcome undivulged.

When I ascribe negative traits to trading vehicles such as the E-Mini S&Ps, it is for good reason. For in fact, when the little monster moves wildly up and down, sideways, or sometimes barely at all; and when it gallops a mile just to hit "your" stop-loss, it is in fact doing the instantaneous bidding of a thousand wild-eyed traders, each attempting to second-, third- and fourth-guess all others in the game at every moment. During this tutorial session, we examined this propensity of stocks, commodities and index futures to move as though they were out to cripple and maim anyone who would seek to make "easy money". Enjoy!

Bullion and the broad averages were nearly comatose when we looked in on them this morning, so we spent the hour, not hunting for the usual, easy trades, but peeling back layers of visual clues to see how we might have jumped into some losers. The Dollar Index in particular proved fertile ground for mistakenness. Students may find themselves agreeing that the way in which we were able to find, in retrospect, a rationale for having avoided trouble is one of the subtler teachable moments in the recorded library.

Is that peak internal -- or is it external? The answer is not always perfectly clear, but the good news is that you shouldn’t worry about it too much. It is the big picture that counts, and this session focuses quite intensively on Google charts to show you exactly how to relax. Our hour together concludes with an analysis of the Dollar Index that shows why the greenback is all but certain to head higher in the weeks and perhaps months ahead.