So far, the transition has worked out better than I expected. I am trading cfd’s on WTI rather than Brent. I chose WTI over Brent only because there is only a 1-hour break each evening whereas with Brent there is a 3-hour daily break. But I have been wondering whether Brent would afterall be better since it is a more widely used global standard than WTI and therefore levels like $50 are more relevant from a PA point of view.
To be honest, I don’t really have a “system” as such. I treat my charts as the “tools of my trade” and use them as guides rather than rules. They keep me disciplined but not incarcerated. Therefore they tend to fit anywhere, it is my interpretation that needs adapting to different circumstances.
I think I am in a minority of one on BP since I just use a few MA’s and their crossovers and don’t really get on with PA at all in terms of S & R levels and patterns, etc. I tend to mess around a bit with my MA’s but my core trading method has been the same for years, ever since I started drawing my own daily charts by hand in my banking days! My main interest is in using multiple timeframes, though, and I jump from daily/4H to 1H/15m/5m etc depending on how I see the current overall movement potential - as you saw last Friday, that was definitely a 15m/5m day!
But I do feel that Crude Oil does tend to “honour” technicals. I have seen some S & R lines respected and the widely watched 200SMA does seem to carry some influence. But I think there are some very different fundamentals and practices in Oil that I have not seen before in forex. A lot of this is due to the size of interest from the industry itself. For example, after OPEC started its production cuts last December the price rose sharply but then fizzled out. It was not that the market changed from bullish to bearish but simply that the US producers, who have a B/E of $20-$40 per barrel started to lock in their profits for 2017 and 2018 and even apparently partly for 2019, too! This apparently is why the US producers can carry on massively increasing their production towards record levels regardless of where the prices go. Naturally, there is also the huge money management and hedge funds that are more speculative!
I just like the fact that there is a concrete product and an entire, specific industry underlying my trading. It adds an entirely different dimension to trading and price movement. And the oil industry just happens to fascinate me. Its production, shipping, refining, companies, countries, environmental issues and general impact on global economics - it is never-ending!
But it is scary, too! Oil sometimes seems strangely slow to react to fresh input compared with forex, but when it does move it is fast and far! Having spent the bigger part of my entire working career in risk analysis and control in banking and industry, I am more at home identifying and limiting risk rather than seeking it out - which is not maybe the best quality for a trader! So, although I would like to extend my trading horizons to days and even weeks, I am not ready for that yet! But on the other hand, the short term trading is quite ridiculous with 5-pip spreads on cfd’s! I should, and probably will, swap to futures once I feel ready to continue long term with Oil, but that will mean changing brokers and I don’t want to do that until I am convinced about this change.
That’s why this thread is just kind of me thinking out loud and not necessarily very reliable for anyone else! But it is great to chat with others like yourself sometimes too! So thanks again for your time and interest and you input is welcome any time!