There be Value in Fundamentals!

When I first started trading I was all about the Technical Analysis, but now I'm seeing the value of fundamentals. Right now I'm trying to tabulate all, or at least the important crude oil market movers. As of right now I have the EIA Petroleum Report, and Jobless Claims. I am sure that there are many more since the U.S. dollar is directly related to crude oil prices (inversely related, I should say), along with other major commodities. So, whatever affects the U.S. dollar, will in turn affect crude oil prices.

Here's the trades I made today, and also what I made in the last three days (be lazy about posting them):

USD/CAD (BUY)
Entry: 1.02486
Exit: 1.02557
Profit/Loss: +71

----------Yesterday----------

Crude Oil (BUY)
Entry: 98.71
Exit: 98.82
Profit/Loss: +11

----------Dec 20th-----------

CRUDE OIL (SELL)
Entry: 97.15
Exit: 97.40
Profit/Loss: -25

SILVER (SELL)
Entry: 29.30
Exit: 29.27
Profit/Loss: +3

---------Dec 19th-------------

CRUDE OIL (SELL)
Entry: 93.88
Exit: 94.17
Profit/Loss: -29

 Tried my hand in the Dow Jones market on a 5min chart (not my most ideal TF), and made a quick 5 points. Just a little something to say that I made some profit today. Still mad about the internet problem this morning... flimsy internet.

DOW JONES (BUY)
Entry: 11884
Exit: 11889
Profit/Loss: +5

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Looks like I missed the big moves today... internet was out until 7:30AM when everything was done and over with. AARRRGH!!!!

Hopefully this is still one or two more moves left.

Busy with blog today, because the market doesn't seem to be changing direction (which as I have say before is how my trading system works). Commodities are doing terrible today, with Gold, Oil and Copper dropping like rocks, with currency markets not doing much better.

Was hoping to get in on the EIA Petro Report today, but it sadly slipped my mind, and I lost out on some good profit :(. Oh well, maybe next Wednesday I'll be a little more attentive.

Not sure if I'm going to trade anything today. Might do a little more research instead.

Made my final trade today with AUD/CAD:

AUD/CAD: (SELL)

Entry: 1.0365

Exit: 1.0354

Profit/Loss: +11

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Found out why there was such a big jump in Crude Oil prices, and it looks like a oil drill in Iran is at a stop. Could that have an effect on the price jumps from the currency markets as well? I'll have to Google what happened at 7AM.

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Looks like I had another entry point in all three markets, as well as a couple others at 8AM. I didn't re-enter, mostly because I got the points I wanted, but also I've never seen such a fast re-entry point like that in the 1H timeframe. As it looks, it would have been a great re-entry point, especially the gold market (if I entered at 8AM I would have a 400 pointer, assuming I exited at the low point).  

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Made three trades this morning:

AUD/USD: (SELL)

Entry: 1.01323

Exit: 1.01144

Profit/Loss: +179

EUR/HUF: (BUY)

Entry: 304.84

Exit: 303.93

Profit/Loss: -91

GOLD: (SELL)

Entry: 1665.40

Exit: 1663.45

Profit/Loss: +170

I must be a little tired this morning, because I have no idea why I made a sell order with EUR/HUF. The market was obviously going downward on the 1H timeframe, so that was the first mistake of the week (hopefully the last).

The other two trades worked out really well though! I owe that to making a quick exit before the market price changed direction. This was one of the things I was testing the other day. The NonLag ZigZag did not turnout the way I would have liked it to be (kinda guess that aready, so I'm not too surprised). 

I tried another indicator that moves like ZigZag, but would move a little faster if set to the right settings. This indicator is called SEMAFOR_Modief (I believe it stems from the 3_Level_ZZ_Semafor indicator). The great thing about the setup of this SEMA indicator is that it presents itself at anytime during the movement of the current price bar. Unlike the ZigZag, which moves only on the close/open of price bar, making you miss out on the highs or lows of that price bar. Also, the SEMA indicator has an alarm that goes off when it thinks it is the high or low, which is very handy.

I put the SEMA indicator at a lower timeframe (I'm working on 1H timeframes, so I set the SEMA in a 30 minute timeframe), that way I can catch the low or high a little quicker. It also means that I could potentially miss out on bigger profits, but I rather get a small profit then get a potential loss.

Started a new posting area to make my life a little easier :)

December 12, 2011:
Today I'm looking at Nonlag ZigZag as a possible exit strategy. So far I'm marked down the starting point of my trade, and I'm waiting bar by bar until Nonlag ZigZag makes a move. The first move it makes is when I exit.
I have a feeling that strategy my not work to my liking. If the Nonlag ZigZag moves at a per-fractal basis, then this may not work. But, if this Moving Average ZigZag proves different, then I would be a very happy trader.

So far not trades made today.




December 9, 2011:
Didn't make any trades today, apart from a experimental trade (which, by the way, did not work to my liking). The 4 major markets were a bit one directional (apart from the price action when I was asleep... ARRRG!), which is not what my trading system works on (reversals). So today was pretty quite.

I'm thinking of adding more markets to my everyday-trading, just so I'm not sitting around waiting for the 4 majors to make a move. It will require more testing with this reversal system to make sure I can get some, if any, points from those markets.

Pretty good start with this system:

• up 60 points, and
• learned a thing or two about my system

Seems like a step in the right direction :)



December 8, 2011:

So far I've made one trade today. There has been a lot of big movements today with ECB news and MF Globals scandal, so I'm a little reluctant to make a bigger trades today.

USD/JPY: (BUY)

Entry: 77.449

Exit: 77.479

Profit/Loss: +50

The price of USD/JPY is continuing to go up: currently 77.676 and climbing. So it looks like I could have made over 200 points more... might need a better stoploss/take profit setup.

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Light Sweet Crude Future: (BUY)

Entry: 99.01

Exit: 98.69

Profit/Loss: -32

EUR/USD: (BUY)

Entry: 1.33259

Exit: 1.33352

Profit/Loss: +93

The Crude Future had a bounce off the SHI Channel, and the other indicators were saying up, but I failed to notice the direction of the SHI Channel. If the Channel is downward and the price is looking up... ignore. I did not see this when I opened, so I decided to close before if could get worse. It is quite possible that the price will go up, but if i ignore my indicators, then what the hell am I doing :).

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GBP/USD: (BUY)

Entry: 1.56330

Exit: 1.56430

Profit/Loss: +100

Looks like I'm back in the green from yesterday :).

December 7, 2011:

Made two trades today using a channeling system mentioned in the Forex-TSD website, along with my combination of TTM scalper and TMA Price Zone indicator as a added improvement (or so we shall see...).

EUR/USD: (BUY)

Entry: 7:05am at 1.33797

Exit:   7:54am at 1.33842

Profit/Loss: +45

GBP/USD: (SELL)

Entry: 8:05am at 1.56760

Exit:   11:23am at 1.57006

Profit/Loss: -246

Observations:

• The EUR/USD continued to go up after my exit (close to 400 more points from my close)
• So far the GBP/USD is still in the area where I exited, but it did manage to go down a little further past my exit point (about 50 points more). If the price goes down I'll have to put more confidence in what my indicators are saying

Improvements:

• Need to check the upper timeframes to get the larger picture. This was the case with GBP/USD trade; I made the sell order when the upper timeframes were suggesting a continuation upwards.
• Considering using the 3 Line Break indicator as another confirmation of a change in direction, but for now I think I'm going to stick with the my current setup.