emini.ninja

Thanks for replying Steve. Just curious - did you mean profit-taking resulted in the move down? I was interested in the subsequent move up yesterday and the explosive move today. Is the move merely speculation based on the Iran situation or is there a technical side to it that I didn't see (that other traders might possibly have seen)?

Folks that trade or follow light sweet crude would have noticed the nice rebound from two days ago. I for one wasn't expecting it to retrace. I'm interested to know if other CL traders were expecting the retrace, and if so, why? Was there a technical reason to the move? I'm interested in what your thoughts are for the move between Feb 29 and March 01. Link to larger chart on Finviz

I do watch the DOM regularly (at least whenever I trade), mostly to watch for breakouts. However, given the advent of HFT and the resultant loss of tradeable information in the Level II, I'm not sure L2 is very useful anymore. My understanding is that orders submitted by HFT engines are often Fill-Or-Kill (FOK), Iceberg or completely hidden which takes away from the information content of the order book. Although Aversano's reply makes logical sense, I'm not sure that is the behavior I've been seeing in light sweet crude. Oftentimes in spite of 'thin' resistance (borrowing joshdance's term), prices will fall back ('reverse' if you will) even if no fundamental news is publicly available. Therefore my question - does price move merely based on supply/demand. Am I not seeing something?

After trading a little less than two years (just getting my feet wet), I'm beginning to take a step back from the TA, price action, patterns, MP etc., and find myself asking the age-old question - what moves prices? At the macro level I understand there are several factors that include fundamental and technical, that drive price changes; however, at the micro level, is it unadulterated and pure supply-demand?

> she will move I couldn't agree more! I've been watching the CL for a few weeks now and have seen her go. Sometimes I'll trade it small during its relatively lull periods. The last few days have been crazy, to say the least. I primarily just trade the price, which is why I'm curious to see the fundamental side of crude, which, if I'm not mistaken, drives it more than anything else.

Thanks biko77. Phil's report sounds interesting. I'll give it a read.

Does anyone know of any good journals, threads or blogs that discuss trades in light sweet crude oil? WSJ reported today's (1/4/2011) drop as 'profit-taking' (http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110104-710517.html), which I find hard to believe. I'd like to see real traders blog/journal their perspectives on what really happened

Thanks DaKine. I'll take a look at your recommendations.

I find the concept of tape reading and order flow analysis fascinating. However, it seems to me that there are not too many traders who exclusively, or perhaps even primarily, rely on tape reading for their entry/exit decisions. I've also found that different people have different definitions of what tape reading comprises of! If you use tape reading and order flow analysis to time your trades, can you please elaborate on what is tape reading and what is actually being 'read' (T&S or L2 or other etc). If you can expound, it will be much appreciated - or even if you just recommend resources, I'll still be grateful. Thanks for your help!

This is really weird - I'm not sure why I'm feeling like this. Perhaps someone who's experienced can help me out. Watching the index futures trade at 3 in the morning on Monday (6/28) made my gut wrench telling me to go short. I had just prematurely exited (stop triggered) a short position in the indices from a couple of days ago. Not sure if that was the reason, but I couldn't bring myself to re-enter and go short, even though my TA (and gut) was telling me to. Here's the problem: I continue to feel this in my gut although I don't have any open positions!!! Has anyone gone through something similar? If you did, what was your experience? Thanks for your help!

Yes, I should have. I'm just beginning to explore futures. So far I've always closed my positions before the expiration. This is the first time I'm considering a longer term position with futures. Thanks for the help!

I'm long on a soon-to-expire natural gas futures contract (05-2010 NG). How do I make sure that I continue to be in the long position event after the current contract expires? I trade with Interactive Brokers.