Trade ideas, analysis and low risk set ups for commodities, Bitcoin, gold, silver, coffee, the indexes, options and your retirement. We'll help you keep your emotions out of your trading.
The past couple months investors have been focusing on the equities market. And rightly so with stocks running higher and higher. Unfortunately most money managers and hedge funds are under performing or negative for the first quarter simply because of the way prices have advanced. New money has not been able to get involved unless some serious trading rules have been bent/broken (buying into an overbought market and chasing prices higher). This type of market is when aggressive/novice traders make a killing cause they cannot do anything wrong, but 9 times out of 10 that money is given back once the market starts trading sideways or reverses.
While everyone is currently focusing on stocks, its important to research areas of the market which are out of favor. The sector I like at the moment is precious metals. Gold and silver have been under pressure for several months falling out of the spot light which they once held for so long. After reviewing the charts it looks as though gold, silver and gold miner stocks are set to move higher for a few weeks or longer.
Below are the charts of gold and silver charts. Each candle stick is 4 hours allowing us to look back 1-2 months while still being able to see all the intraday price action (pivot highs, pivot lows, volume spikes and price patterns).
The 4 hour chart is one time frame most traders overlook but from my experience I find it to be the best one for spotting day trades, momentum trades and swing trades which pack a powerful and quick punch.
As you can see below with the annotated charts gold, silver and gold miner stocks are setting up for higher prices over the next 2-3 weeks. That being said we may see a couple days of weakness first before they start moving up again.
4 Hour Momentum Chart of Gold:
4 Hour Momentum Chart of Silver:
Daily Chart of Gold Miner Stocks:
Gold miner stocks have been under performing precious metals for over a year already. Looking at the daily chart we are starting to see signs that gold miner stocks could move up sharply at the trade down at support, oversold and with price/volume action signaling a possible bottom.
Daily Chart of US Dollar Index:
The US Dollar index has formed a possible large Head & Shoulders pattern meaning the dollar could fall sharply any day. The size of this chart pattern indicates that if the dollar breaks down below its support neckline the we should expect the dollar to fall for 2-3 weeks before finding support.
Keep in mind that a falling dollar typically means higher stock and commodity prices. If this senario plays out then we should see the market top late April which falls inline with the saying “Sell In May and Go Away”.
Precious Metals Conclusion:
Looking forward 2-3 weeks precious metals seem to be setting up for higher prices as we go into earning season and May. Overall the market is close to a top so it could be a bumpy ride as the market works on forming a top in April.
Chris Vermeulen has been telling us since mid-October of last year that gold was starting to give hints of distribution selling. Then in November silver started warning us that some big players were taking some profits off the table also. In todays post Chris reminds us that distribution selling is easy to spot on the charts. Saying that in short you will see heavy volume selling accompanied with strong moves to the downside.
Now if we look at the US Dollar chart we see the exact opposite price action. We see sharp rallies during October and November of last year. It’s normal to say that gold and silver move inverse to the Dollar so this price action makes perfect sense.
The interesting thing with the US Dollar is that in Nov-December it rallied breaking through a key resistance level and has been consolidating above support ever since. If this bullish pattern (bull flag) plays out, then it’s just a matter of time before the dollar makes another strong rally upwards, which will put downward pressure on stocks and commodities.
Take a look at the charts below....
US Dollar Daily Chart
The 50 period moving average has provided key support/resistance levels for the previous trends and if it holds true going forward then we are not far from another rally in the dollar.
Gold Futures Daily Chart
Gold moves inverse to the dollar so if we get a higher dollar then look for gold to have a stair step pattern lower.
Silver Futures Daily Chart
Silver looks about ready to do the same thing as gold.
Precious Metals and Dollar Trading Conclusion:
In short, we could see a major shift in momentum from up to down in both precious metals and the equities market. Keep in mind the market has a way of dragging out patterns/moves so while the chart looks bearish and I think a reversal is near, things could just chop around for another month or so before a definitive breakout is made. Choppy market conditions are great for trading options but no short term trend traders like myself. This is why you don’t want to anticipate moves (pick a top). Currently I am neutral on metals and the dollar waiting for a setup which must have clear risk/reward characteristics.
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Investors around the globe are concerned with the economic outlook, not only with the United States but with virtually every country. This has caused not only investors but banks and countries to start buying gold & silver in order to be protected incase of a currency melt down in the coming years.
While the majority is concerned about the eroding economy, we have seen the opposite in the financial market. Gold and equities have risen… That being said the volume in the market remains light simply because the average investor is no longer putting money into the market for long term growth. Instead individuals are now focusing on saving and paying down debt.
That being said we all know light volume market conditions allow Wall Street powerhouses to bid the market up. Not to mention with quantitative easing taking place I’m sure that has also helped the market of late. While we don’t know for sure that QE is taking place as we speak, the sharp drop in the dollar and strong move up in gold are pricing this into the market.
Let’s take a look at some charts....
HUI – Gold Stock Index
This long term monthly chart of the HUI index provides valuable trading signals for both gold stocks and gold bullion. As you can see below this index is trading at a key resistance level after forming a bullish 3 year Cup & Handle pattern. The next 1-2 months for the precious metals sector will be interesting as it tries to break above key resistance. I would really like to see the HUI:GLD ratio break to the upside to confirm if the breakout occurs.
SPY – Daily Long Term Trend
The broad market looks to be forming a short term topping wedge. If this is to occurI expect it to take several weeks to play out. Looking at the chart if we use Fibonacci retracements along with trend line support we can get a feel for where this pullback should correct to.
That being said the broad market breadth and internals seem to be holding up indicating higher prices over the long run. While the short term price action is overbought and I expect a pullback to form, my analysis is pointing to higher prices as we go into year end.
UUP – US Dollar Daily Price Action
Although the majority of investors have a bearish outlook on the economy, we have seen a large price appreciation in equities and precious metals. This is largely due to the fact that the US dollar is quickly getting devalued. Simply put, as the dollar drops, it helps boost commodities and stock prices.
While a rising stock market is great to see, at some point the dollar will become so cheap that it will start to have a very negative affect on the US economy, commodities and stocks. Being from Canada it has always been more expensive to take holidays in the United States, and I remember paying $1.50-$1.70 for every $1 green back. But now the dollar is almost at par making holidays very affordable. The big question/concern is when will they ease off on the printing? At the rate which they are printing the greenback will be at par with peso… well not that extreme but you get the point Eh!
Weekend Market Conclusion:
As we all know the market has a way of making sure the majority of traders miss major turning points. The saying is, “If the market doesn’t shake you out, it will wear you out” and it seems we are getting the later…
The never ending grind higher in precious metals has not had any big shakeouts, rather its wearing out any short positions before rolling over to take a breather. As for the stock market, we are getting much of the same thing as the market grinds higher day after wearing out the shorts before rolling over.
That being said, there is more at work here than just regular market movements. With the light volume in the market we know there is price manipulation and QE (quantitative Easing) which is helping to boost prices and exaggerate market movements.
Trading can be a lot of fun and profitable or a nightmare and very costly. It really just comes down to understanding the key areas, which will make or break your trading. I have received a few emails asking me to explain more about how I stay disciplined, making sure my emotions don’t get the better of me.
Some questions asked are: How do I pick a trading strategy, which will work for me? What reading material and habits do I recommend for keeping focused? What are some of my experiences?
I will cover all this for you below because trading discipline and managing emotions is by far the most important and difficult aspect of trading.
How do I pick a trading strategy, which will work for me?
Your strategy should be inline with your abilities to read the market also focuses on a time frame, which suits the time you have available to trade each day, week or month. In other words, you should not be trading ETF options if you cannot profit from trading ETF’s without leverage. Also if you don’t understand how options work in depth, then you need to spend some time learning about this type of trading vehicle before you ever place a trade using options. Simply put, if you don’t understand everything about what you are trading, then you will eventually give all your money to the market, leaving you with an empty account, decreased trading confidence and a frustration.
The point I am trying to make here is that you should focus on trading the types of vehicles where you understand the daily price action, how to trade that investment, what makes it move, is there leverage, and what time frame you should focus on, so that it works with your schedule. If you can only look at the charts at night, after the markets close, then you should not be focusing on day trading. So pick something you like, understand or want to trade and learn everything about it. Then find a trading system or create one yourself, which is profitable using the time frame and risk tolerance that fit your personality.
Over the years my trading strategy changed, as will yours. The more time you spend trading, the better you will become the more you will find yourself trading more of one type of investment that consistently makes you money. When I started trading back in the late 90’s I focused on stocks, but as time went on, my strategy evolved and now my main focus is on trading indexes and gold with a hybrid intra-day and swing trading strategy that I created. My focus is on ETF’s, because you can select different levels of risk/reward with the 1,2 or 3x leveraged funds. While ETF’s are fantastic to trade, they do have some limitations. Because the indexes and gold trade 24/7, you are limited to only regular market hours, 9:30am – 4pm ET. That leads me to the topic of Futures and CFD trading.
Depending on the type of trade and time of day a setup occurs, I will jump from ETF’s to futures or CFD’s. Let me explain, if there is a setup early in the morning before the regular market opens, or after the close late in the evening, then I trade futures or CFD’s because it allows me to trade 24/7 catching moves which would not even be seen by most North American traders. There are not a lot of these trades per year but enough to make it worth trading.
What are some of my experiences?
In short, virtually every trader will eventually reach the tipping point. What I mean here is you will either lose enough money and/or become so frustrated that you will debate whether or not you should continue trading.
I reached this level many years ago and I still remember it crystal clear. I lost most of the money in my account, almost every trade was going against me and I had never been so frustrated and upset in my life. I’m sure many of you know what I am talking about… Unfortunately trading does break a lot of people down financial and emotionally, causing them to give up. But others reach this point and realize that if they can be wrong all the time, then someone who knows what they are doing should be making good money and that they just need to learn what they are doing.
This is the point at which you decide whether to give up a life long dream of trading full time to go back to your day job or you step back to re-evaluate your situation and seek profession help. All successful traders have or had a mentor at one point in their life and it does not matter which career you are in, learning from someone who knows how to do what you want is the fastest and most effective way to learn.
Those who decide to continue and take things serious shift their mind set from Trying To Trade to Learning To Trade. It is at this point, where trading becomes fun and profitable again. My point here is that trading is not something you can learn quickly on your own. You should get help from someone who is successfully doing exactly what you want to be doing, then shadow their every move and seek mentoring from them. This usually costs more than say just buying a book or mini e-course. There is no comparison between what you get out of them or obtaining practical experience.
What reading, and habits do I recommend for staying disciplined?
There is no easy answer, as everyone absorbs information differently. Some prefer reading and studying charts, listening to audio, watching videos and some prefer or need live mentoring and real-time examples.
I learned charting from the well known annalist, John Murphy, through his book “Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets”. This is a massive book with over 500 pages explaining technical analysis. This book is a lot to digest, but there is a lot of great free information online, which will allow you to read about the basics of trading including: chart patterns, volume, candle sticks, support & resistance levels and trend lines. Once you understand these key concepts and are able to read the charts, then you are literally ready to start paper trading and applying or creating a trading strategy, which manages entry, exits, scale out prices, and manages your money.
As most of you know, I am a very patient trader waiting for risk setups in the investments, which I understand best and have consistently traded for many years. Because of my strict trading setups and rules, which I have set for myself, it does cut down on the amount of trades the market provides. My focus is on low risk, high probability setups, which I completely understand, and that’s all I trade. This trading strategy works on any time frame allowing me to use it for day trading and swing trading.
The question everyone wants to know is how to stay so disciplined and keep emotions from taking over?
This takes me back to the Tipping Point mentioned earlier. I always ask myself if the trade meets my setup criterion, which is a simple yes or no answer because my setup criteria is clear in my head. Either it has the characteristics I am looking for or it does not. Sometimes the setups are very close and I will admit it is very tempting to take the trade, but I always step back (walk away from the computer) to clear the emotions flying around in my head and ask myself, do I want to break a rule, which almost broke me financially and emotionally once before? The answer is always No. So I pass on the trade and wait for another one to unfold.
When I was first learning to day trade, I quickly learned that I did not have to take every setup that looked like it had potential. I realized that no matter what condition the market was in, there would always be another trade just around the corner, so its not a big deal. I admit, I hate to see an investment make a large move without me like this 7 day rally in gold happening right now, because my setup criteria was not met. But I know there will be many more trades through the year in gold and other investments, which will provide me with great returns. People who think they need and must catch ever big move in the market in order to make big money on yearly basis, are looking that things completely backwards. It only takes 5-10 good trades per year to out perform the market so I don’t understand people when they panic about every zig and zag the market makes.
Ok, lets take a look at the gold chart, which I have overlaid with two cycles, which I use to help time gold.
9 Day Gold Cycle
The daily chart of gold below has my 9-day cycle overlaid. You can see how this cycle relates to the price movements of gold. After the recent low cycle, we saw gold continue to move higher and this is because the trend of gold turned up in March and the long term cycle is also moving up at the same time. These two bullish forces can over power the short term 9-day cycle at times.
That being said, the 9 day cycle will be topping in 2 days (Tuesday) and that should put some selling pressure on gold. I expect to see a pullback or consolidation (sideways movement) in the coming week.
29 Day Gold Cycle
This cycle allows us to see the big picture and underlying trend for gold. This larger more powerful cycle of gold will top in one day (Monday) and that should put a damper on this rally. You can see how I think gold will play out from the lines on the chart.
Combined Cycles on Gold
This chart clearly shows how both cycles will top this week which should put some selling pressure on gold and silver and one of the reasons I have not chased the price of gold higher buying in a panic.
Gold Trading Discipline Conclusion:
In short, trading discipline is something you can become educated about from books, but the only way to actually take control of your trading, is to be honest with your self. Think of it this way, every time you break a trading rule, you are setting yourself up for failure. Do you really want to sabotage the most important person in your life, which you will have to live with every day (You)? If you cannot trust yourself from sabotaging and lying to your self, what type of person would you be? Do you want to lose money by taking positions, which are proven not to work and cost you money in the long run? Of course you don’t!
So the next time you see a trade, which is close to your setup but no exactly what you are looking for, just walk away and wait for the next one.
As for the current price of gold, I think we are about to see lower prices, or at least a pause, which will last for 5-15 days.
Last week the general market continued to grind its way higher for yet another week. Overall I feel the market is very much over bought. We all know the market can stay in extreme overbought levels for extended periods of time making it very difficult to pick tops.
This is the reason I do not try to pick tops, but rather wait for a top to form before putting my money to work. While a bottom can be made in 1 day, tops tend to take days and some times months to complete.
A few things really stood out to me when looking back on last week’s price action.
1. Gold (GLD Fund) was only up 0.29% for the week while the gold mining stocks (GDX Fund) was down over 3.5%. This strong divergence really has me concerned about the price of gold in the near term. Gold stocks generally lead gold and if they are down 10x more than gold last week, we better watch out....
2. The US Dollar broke out and started to rally posting a gain of 1% for the week. It is definitely weird to see gold move higher when the US dollar is rising…
Gold GLD Daily Chart
Gold has been trading sideways/down since December. I see this large 5 month pullback as a bull flag and expect to see much higher prices for gold long term. But I don’t count my eggs before they hatch, so I continue to focus on the daily and intraday chart patterns for low risk trading opportunities.
Friday we saw gold close very strong for the day. It looks very much like a reversal candle but with the price trading under the mini head & shoulders neck line and with the US Dollar in rally mode again, I don’t think the stars are aligned enough for me to put money to work just yet.
Gold is currently trading in a major congestion zone. Until there is a breakout of this zone, I think setups will not be very accurate.
Dow Jones Industrial Average vs. NYSE New Highs Divergence – JANUARY
This chart shows the January 2010 peak in the stock market. As you can see prices became choppy with strong up and down movements before we saw the sharp drop.
Also note the NYSE new highs line. As the market became choppy new highs began to drop quickly. This indicated the market internals were weakening and led to an 8% drop over the next couple weeks.
Dow Jones Industrial Average vs. NYSE New Highs Divergence – MARCH
This chart in my opinion looks much the same as January. You can see the Reversal candle from the February lows and the strong rally to the current price, as of Friday.
Notice how the market is getting choppy. Also last Thursday the Dow gave us a reversal candle. But this time the reversal candle is to the down side.
Also note the NYSE New Highs line. It has dropped sharply indicating the market internals are weakening once again.
This is what trading is all about… finding things that are out of whack and waiting for a low risk setup in order to make a profit.
Weekend Trading Conclusion:
In short, the stock market is over bought and about to roll over. I do understand that this grind higher could last another week or so, which is why I am focusing on short/quick intraday movements like Friday’s SP500 Intraday Low Risk Setup, and not buying etf funds to hold for a few weeks. Most of you know I do not chase prices higher simply because down side risk increased when buying into an over extended rally.
I feel gold, silver and oil will move together and at this time, I don’t like their charts for trading. With any luck we could get some setups this week, but not counting anything just yet.
It’s been a great week so far. Stocks and commodities are moving as expected from my weekend trading report. I like to see the market unfold in a calm collected manner.
The US dollar has made a nice move in the past couple weeks. Although it has broken out of its down channel I think there is a lot of short covering going on making this bounce more powerful than others. Also it is important to note that it is near resistance which could dampen things around the $77-77.5 level. If the dollar heads back down I expect gold to start making a move back up which it started to do Wednesday.
Below are my thoughts and charts about what I think is unfolding for both stocks and commodities.
DIA – Dow Jones Index Fund The DIA fund has performed just the way I thought it would. Push to a new high then sell down. Generally I would expect this move down to test my support level or trade near that level, but because we are heading into the holiday season and volume is light the market has a natural tendency to drift higher. I’m sure this is why it’s still trading near the high.
This new yearly high was enough to suck in breakout traders and only time will tell if they get follow through or get shaken out of this trade also. Oh, the joys of buying a breakout in an over bought market condition.
GLD – Gold Exchange Traded Fund Gold broke down sharply from its trend channel and has settled into a support zone. Wednesday we saw a nice bounce but the question is, is this a rally or a sucker’s bounce? I’ve found the best setups and moves occur after an ABC retrace. The black lines on the chart show exactly that type of price action. These retraces shake out most short term traders before starting a new rally. There is a thin dotted blue line showing a possible resistance trend line which would need to be broken after the ABC retrace pattern has formed if we want a low risk setup with a sizable win/loss ratio.
SLV – Silver ETF Trading Fund Silver is in the same boat as its big sister (Yellow Gold). We just need to wait for a high probability setup to present its self before putting any of our hard earned money to work.
USO – Crude Oil Fund USO has provided some great short term gains for anyone who used my analysis from my Sunday night report. The quote and chart below covers my thoughts for USO.
Sunday night report: “Oil broke down out of its bull flag last week and is currently testing both trend line support and horizontal support levels. We could see a short term bounce here to the $37, 38 or 40 levels. Taking money off the table at each resistance level and raising your stop is an important money management strategy I use for this type of play.”
UNG – Natural Gas Trading Fund Natural gas is still very much a speculative play as everyone thinks they will make huge money from this commodity.
This means two things in my opinion: 1. It’s still headed lower 2. After rallies the sellers jump back in.
UNG is trading near resistance and it could provide a great shorting opportunity in the coming days.
ETF Trading Conclusion: Although it’s been a quite week in the market, I have really enjoyed it. Not sure if it is related to everything unfolding in a controlled manner or the holiday season nearing, or maybe both?
November and December have been quiet for our ETFs but I know we are on the verge of either a large move up or down in the coming weeks. Let’s watch the market and funds unfold and see if we can get another trade or two in before year end.
