Monday, January 18, 2010

How to Trade Crude Oil and other Commodity ETF’s

Whether you are trading stocks, ETFs or futures, technical analysis is the preferred choice for short term traders. Technical analysis in short is the study of price and volume movements on charts. It can be used for studying charts in any time frame whether you are a 1 minute chartist or a long term investor using monthly charts.

Using technical analysis in my opinion really opens the door for a trader to lower his/her overall risk when investing money. I always like to know if the investments I am watching are trading near a critical price level (support or resistance). During these times you can take positions that have very clear entry and exit points for trading. Also it puts the odds in your favor when a position is entered in the same direction of the underlying trend.

Price action is how we make money in the market, so I strictly follow price and volume when trading as they are the least lagging indicator on what the market it doing.

I have put together a few charts using commodity ETFs to show you what I am seeing in the market and what we should expect to see in the coming days.

USO Crude Oil Fund – Daily Trend Chart
Oil has slid lower the past 5 sessions and is now nearing a support level. This has me looking for an oversold bounce with the potential to rally much higher. I am keeping an eye on this for any possible low risk setup.



UNG Natural Gas Fund – Daily Trading Chart
While UNG is not a great intermediate and long term fund to invest in, I do find it trades very nicely for intraday and short swing trades. I am neutral on natural gas for the time being. It could go either way from here and I’m not willing to take on a 50/50 probability trade. Let’s wait for something exciting to form.



Commodity Trading Conclusion
In short, gold and silver have been underperforming the market recently which is not what we want to see. They have led the market higher all year but are now taking a breather.

The way I see gold, silver, oil and natural gas is that they are trading below their recent highs and still have more room to fall before landing on a solid support level.

The stock market is now over extended and looks ready for a sharp correction. If this happens we will see commodities drop and test lower prices also.

There is not much we can do right now other than protect our current long positions by tightening our stops. Depending on the strength of the breakdown, there could be a great opportunity for short term traders (60 minute chart traders) to make some quick money. I expect a sell off which will last 3-5 days at the least.

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Chris Vermeulen "The Gold and Oil Guy"







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