COT Report Analysis - a thread on market sentiment

Hey guys!

Some good news my 10 usd longs have hit TP and I’m up 7.35% for the month.

I hope you guys had a good run with USD !! Let’s get as much as we can out of this dollar rally :D.

I’ll be back.

Hey guys.

We got Wednesday.

USD: +6 -0 1 ////+3 -0 0
GBP: +6 -0 1 ////+3 -0 0
CAD: +5 -2 0 ////+3 -2 0
EUR: +4 -3 0 ////+2 -1 0
CHF: +2 -4 1 ////+1 -1 1
NZD: +2 -4 1 ////+1 -3 1
AUD: +0 -6 1 ////+0 -4 1
JPY : +0 -6 1 ////+0 -2 1

Majors took this one. +5

So we have both GBP and USD the strongest. GBP really climbed up there in the middle of the day, and USD did it at the end of the day.
Comms—CAD strongest, by much. Up against EUR, CHF, JPY.
No other Comm had an up day against a Major. (NZD was up against 2 brothers)

Well guys, got to get running here. But Rookie! Nice man! Keep up the good work.

See ya soon.

PS…Rookie…I always love seeing your fundamental write ups first thing in the morning. I just never get to thank you for that. I’ll never get tired of it. Good stuff!! Thank you!!

Morning guys!

FE… Mike has given a pretty good suggestion on your exotic pairs. I think I would have done the same thing - do research into major/minor influencing factors and not only that get a feel of market participants and go from there. One thing that I’m starting to realize about trading the markets is that there’s human element to this market participants are beings well us that are independent in the way we think, function and react. Thus making it ever so complex. However I’ve found there’s a way to this look at how everyones riding up dollar against almost every other currency for instance, I was on my laptop when CPI YoY numbers came out for EUR yesterday and core CPI YoY came at 0.9% same as forecast higher than previous reading CPI YoY 0.4% better than forecast while we all know euro is nowhere near to beat the dollar, as I was watching my positions market participants just seemed to look past all these figures as they were waiting patiently on Feds monetary policy statement. /USD had slightly lower CPI numbers/

My EURUSD positions were frozen there wasn’t much movement the whole day - had been like this for few days actually. At that point it was pretty obvious that all eyes were on Feds - and like you said FE whatever comes out positive or the negative specs were in full on to get on the dollar rally. That was such a confidence booster. To know that it will go one way only up. And it was pretty obvious. I guess this all is market sentiment a part of it. This expectation human element. Once there’s a majority you just go with it. Again I’m learning the importance of market sentiment guys… such a powerful tool. And perhaps the only tool to get there. I’m happy for us guys! Look how far we’ve come in just a couple of months… and we’ve a got a long way ahead of us. That is a power of working as a team. I don’t think I would have made this much progress in a relatively short amount of time if I was doing this alone. Let’s stick together through it all guys! I have high expectations for us.

And thanks Mike! and guys for reading my fundamental posts and always letting me know that it is appreciated, I’m happy that someone reads its digests it and hopefully use it to their advantage. Thats what keeps me going and what keeps me want to get better at this to know that there’s you guys watching out.

I have been enjoying my trading the past few days and not spending much time on the thread. I’m glad to see the good posts keep coming Congratulations on the 1000 posts, and congrats on the 7% there [B]Rookie[/B].
I have been doing rather well this week and I’m up about 30% by trading the last two days alone. I closed my GBPJPY trade like [B]FE[/B] for a profit of 29 pips. I’m actually upset I did because I closed it out of fear rather than an exit signal. The exit signal is not yet there and I would have made an extra 340 pips alone on that trade.

I did buy the USD on its retracement last Tuesday and paid off well. I see [B]FE[/B] did something similar and I was thinking may be I will hold the trade until the next Fed meeting in October when they will announce the end of QE, what do you guys think?

There is also something that caught my is [B]Mike’s[/B] report which shows GBP second only to USD. It was down against only the greenback, but by only a small margin which occurred in the final hour of the US session. We can be wary of the referendum all we want but all signs lead to buying GBP (not against USD of course).

The system I have been testing is working a treat, even higher than my expectations. I will report on the results on the weekend.

EDIT: I wanted to add that there was divergence in almost all dollar pairs on longer time frames like 4H and daily. So we should expect some US selling soon. But I’m still interested in keeping the trades open and would like to hear your opinions on the matter.

Congrats Philip! 30% up on last two days alone ! I can’t wait to hear what you’ve got for us on the weekends about the system.

If your USD longs have already moved 80-100pips in your favour I don’t see any reason why you’d want to keep that going through retracements. 100pips move is good enough for me to TP and wait for a better price to go in again once the retracement is done. For me it all depends on that how well trades are doing if they aren’t doing good either with a minor loss or a bit of profit 20pips or so I wait and run them through retracements with wide SL when I’m sure that it will turn my way.

About holding your USD longs until or through next Fed meeting in Oct when they announce the end of QE , I want to know your reasoning behind this. If you think you can score big moves like we had with this past Feds monetary policy meeting I doubt that markets reaction will be as high as it did with this past meeting unless we see inflation rates and other key indicators picking up prior the meeting CPI MoM , labour data etc. On this meeting Yellen has already once again made a statement that there will be no rate hike until June 2015 a considerable amount of time after the end of QE.

I think we’ve seen a positive reaction for dollar from this past Fed monetary policy meeting mostly because expectations were running high from specs/investors side with better than expected readings coming out for USD lately and lets not forget that Fed has maintained its rate between 0-0.25 since 2008. So it has been a while since we heard a sign of rate hike from Fed.

So it all depends on the market sentiment really… specs/investors reaction. To know if the expectations are high or low. So we can places ourselves in accordance with that. I would however take profit along the way once it hits 80pips and above and will be paying close attention to key economic indicators. And things look good, market sentiment and then the datas I’ll be getting back in.

Morning guys,

rookie, you can change I guess your name now from “rookie” to something more professional like “advanced” :slight_smile:

Well, I do not agree with Mike, I also read quite early your reports but they DO make me tired :slight_smile: Still, they are great so I also like to read them.

As what rookie wrote on sentiment, I am on the same opinion. I disagree on the reports in the internet that it was a bullish report. Sorry, it wasn’t at all bullish. The fundamental analyst just have an explanation for it. It is what rookie says, people wanted to go long, they decided regardless what. And they did just like that on a completely boring Statement without a single new information to us. [I]This shows me that sentiment is the single most important factor.[/I]

Philip, about the USD trades. I have some EUR/USD shorts and USD/CAD longs opened since a longer time. I really try to get better in riding the winners. I do not see any signal besides temporary retracements (even a couple of hundred pip reversals) to get into the way. Looking at the big picture there is no reason why the trends should turn at this point. I might add a bit larger scalp USD positions but the other I let to run.

Also for you Philip, congrats on the huge winnings! Great jobs. Unfortunately because of your good trading, you just forgot your buddies. Mike for sure would never do that. I would penalize you to giving us 5%-5% per person from the 30% gain. What do you think? :slight_smile: BTW can you please give us an update on the 5 pairs you are watching based on the currency cross system?

The divergence is not bad, as it would give me a good exit from all exotic pairs. To answer your question, as I wrote above, I will definitely hold through with the USD longs, maybe even add to them.

Do not forget today is Scotland vote. As soon as I feel the vote is decided I will jump in. Probably in a No vote I would go GBP long vs. NZD, AUD and EUR, if it is Yes then I go GBP short probably with USD and CAD.

Hi rookie,

after I posted I have seen that you wrote something at the same time. It is the rare occasion when we have a different standpoint! I have some reasons to hold through retracement.

-I want to be better disciplined. I cut very often my winners way too early. Just read Philips last post about GBP/JPY. Sometimes it is hard to catch in the right time the end of a retracment or a big jump. If I am in it, I get the big moves.

  • More than that I think the current setup is really ideal for perfecting discipline.

  • I have written earlier that I want to be better at scaling in. I think I can gain experience in it. I have to figure out the lot size and how often I scale in. I mastered already how to scale into losers, now I turn the things.

  • And last but not least I want to always remind myself on the current EUR/USD run, starting just under 1.40. How many times I jumped in and out, sometimes missing serious pips when I was “in a break” not being in the market. There was a 200 pips retracement from 1.35 to 1.37 but it was a correction. In a hindsight of course it is easy to be smart, but frankly there was just no reason why suddenly the EUR macro data should have improved. Being in the whole time gives me the possibility to capture most of the move.

And besides all that I think it is good why you wrote and I might also do some short-term scalping. Maybe your strategy is better for day traders and people who can get always in and out for some extra pips getting maybe 1 200 - 1 300 pips out from a 1 000 pips move (because 1 000 pips is the move and the rest comes from the retracement to ride the wave more than once) and my strategy is better for swing traders who take it easy and do not want to stress every day on every news.

Hey FE! good to see you’re up early today. I’m probably not a noob anymore you’re right but I guess I’m nowhere near being an expert/master considering thats what I’m looking to shoot for from being a rookie to a master. So i’ll stick with this title for the time being until I master this and go for something along the line like master something :stuck_out_tongue:

I do understand your point of view on holding trades longer through retracements however big they may be. And you have a good reason to do so. You actually made me to reconsider my view on this issue. But I guess what we need is experience. Everything seems to just click together as we progress with experience of course.

I’ll be getting back in on USD longs through retracements. Thats what I’m after currently. I just want to get as much as I can out of this rally.

You brought up CAD being the strongest after USD and GBP. Well I’m not that bullish on CAD FE… its hard to go with the bulls on CAD as I see oil futures declining further as supply overtakes demand. But in the short term we may be safe to ride up CAD against the weaks like JPY or EUR they are at the bottom of the chain in terms of weakness fundamentally speaking.

And about pound, I was reading an article earlier on bloomberg that whatever the result may be for scotland referendum is going to lead UK into a political uncertainty something that investors/specs are very wary of. While I think there’s enough tangible evidence to ride up pound against the weaks its good to have that on mind just in case guys.

I’m bullish on GBP and CAD short term but I’ll be sticking with the dollar rally on the long term.

I’ll be back with something interesting. And I’m looking forward to test divergence that flow brought up on the COT index timing charts in the coming weeks!

Hey guys and Mike… /I remember you mentioning natural gas/

I can’t access my platform now so this is all I got. Below you’ll find natural gas daily chart. If you look at the peak price reaching a new high at least according to this chart it was in February and price slowly started climbing up since November that year and it was ranging mostly the rest of the time. And it got me thinking that there could be some seasonal factor behind this movement or trend. If you guys read my earlier posts where I linked to this study on the correlation between CAD/USD/oil/natural gas well FE has even sent an email to the author itd be great if he does reply back !

That natural gas is a substitute for oil and in oil sands natural gas is used in the production of oil. It is no surprise that natural gas price surged higher during this period from november through february - the coldest months where especially in this case that US needs the natural gas from Canada the most demand overtaking supply. And that uptrend actually lasted quite long for 4 months! I remember FE saying bull and bear trends in commodities market tend to run longer than the ones in spot forex. I guess this is a perfect example to that.


Hi guys,

Congrats for the 1000th post count and the winnings! Yes, I agree with Mike that GBP is getting stronger, and Rookie that once a market shows a strong sentiment, price will go to the direction of the sentiment no matter what. I think we’ve all seen how sometimes price goes up even when news releases a lower than expected number and vice versa, and I think it has something to do with market sentiment. We’re doing good here since we’ve been coming up with ways to measure sentiment and thus open the possibility for a longer time frame trading and a stress free one because we don’t need to watch every news release once we figure the market sentiment. So again, good job guys and good luck!

Good morning fellas!

Just got caught up on all your good posts!
One thing I thought was good was FE your stance on holding onto trades through retracements. It does take a stomach though. Patience. And is good for holding out longer term. That’s the whole thing about it. How long do you plan on holding on to something? If for longer time period, then, that’s the way. And THAT is dependent upon our trading styles. Set it and forget it…or milking the cow for all it’s got.
And another thing I keep thinking about is it’s mostly all about whether a trend will continue or not. Look at the AUD. Only a week or two ago they were trending high big time. But…for how long. And you FE was wondering if the retracement was just that, or a reversal. And we know after the fact (of course) that it was more of a reversal, changing trend, action than a big retracement.
Man…that gets me thinking…what caused the sentiment to change with the AUD? They did change course big time just recently. Was it the volatility increasing, and all eyes on the Majors now? (USD, GBP)
Well I don’t know but we should try to think of these reasons why things happen. (to some extend anyway)

Ok guys. I just wanted to pop in and say hi. Got some coffee to drink, and a book to read now.

I’m here.

Mike

Thank you guys on the feedback regarding the dollar longs. I like that you both brought different takes to the table. I’m undecided so far but I do know I want to hold it over the weekend. Part of the problem is also the mental readiness for holding the trades for a longer period. Because certainly that 30% profit will turn to 10% during that month. This is when you begin doubting yourself. So there are pros and cons to this method.

Yellen is giving a speech today, I’m not sure if its on monetary policy but if it is I see the market taking profits on the dollar and test my mental readiness as early as today. Because like [B]FE[/B] mentioned the FED wasn’t hawkish , but I can’t say it was dovish either. Actually, one of the reasons I want to hold the longs is that with the end of QE next month “what next?” will be a very legitimate question that the FED has to answer. Or at least hint at.

[B]System Trade Updates[/B]

As you all know I’m testing two systems: the 1 minute trader and the crosses system. For the first system we said to buy both GBP and NZD. GBP worked a treat and its up against all pairs this week, except CAD. NZD however didn’t seem to work and had mixed results (up against Yen, EUR, CHF and down against rest).

The second system did narrow down the pairs selected to 6, let’s see how they are doing:
[B]GBPCHF[/B] up 132 pips
[B]GBPJPY[/B] up 275 pips
[B]GBPNZD[/B] up 100 pips
[B]GBPUSD[/B] up 34 pips
[B]NZDUSD[/B] down 16 pips
[B]NZDCHF[/B] up 31 pips

Total Profit/loss for the week so far: [B]556 pips in profit[/B].

As I said I have been enjoying the art of trading in the past couple of days and staying away from the thread. During that time I was working on a tool that we will all need. I discussed last week exit techniques by Larry Williams. Today I wanted to show you guys what I have reached in terms of entering a trade and it is very exiting. I really can’t wait to show you some pictures.

Note: Entry techniques in themselves are useless. This entry technique I’m about to show you DOES NOT WORK without the effort we put into the COT to find a suitable trade set up.

Now we talked about using the 52 week MA as a guide to finding a top or a bottom. I started playing with it to find what we can do. After some work I realized that entering on a weekly time frame will never suit us because it requires us to hold a position for large periods in draw down before realizing stellar gains. So I started looking for ways to enter on a shorter time frame and boy does it work. The idea is a simple MA overcross but I found the most perfect values in terms of increasing accuracy and limiting drawdown for our needs.

Take a look at the picture.


We discussed together longing GBPJPY, and if you go back a few pages you’ll see I took that trade (although not based on the same technique. Using the 26 MA and 52 MA crossover we catch almost the whole trend. We even have the perfect exit signal that allows us to either take our profits off or add to our position. I will show you the pictures for other trades that the system recommended so you guys see it was no fluke. Usually though, price would dip after we enter before surging higher, that wasn’t the case in this trade however.

EDIT: The arrow shows you the bar where you’d have entered/exited After. The green lines represent the price you would have bought for, the red one represent the price you would have taken profit at. That’s 588 pips and counting.


Here we have another example in GBPNZD. If you want to imagine real time just think that we have just did our weekend analysis and agreed that we have a setup to buy GBP. you go to your GBPNZD chart and find that the 26 MA is still below the 52 week, signalling a technical opportunity to buy.

You would have made 543 pips in 9 days if you decided to exit the trade with the exit signal (the red line) and entering again.
Holding onto your position and adding to it at the second entry signal would have made you 896 pips in the same period, a 65% increase. See the power of adding to your position?

Hi Philip,

awesome posts and analysis. We should decide on the weekend for some particular setups and I will test them with the system next week!

I only have one doubt at this point but after two trades it is early to make a judgement on that one. It is about the exit. In the examples the exit worked perfect because after the rally there was a ranging market. However if the trade turned against you the question is how fast would the exit signal have come? We have to look into that one.

We are getting there slowly. Our analysis are getting better and better, we get the strong vs. weak setups and we will get the right technical system to it. Sounds quite great to me!

Keep up the good work guys

That is a very valid question. I can’t answer it however because as you might have noticed the system is yet to produce a losing trade. We can always use the Larry Williams exit method until we have a losing trade.

Hi guys, have been reading some of the posts lately, a lot of stuff to read.

I suspect that I am being shadowed, he let his guard down enough for me to get this quick photo :slight_smile:

The GBP - Scottish vote, I intend to trade this one, have done since 2 months ago. The result may be obvious long before the suggested 6.30 GMT.

My plan A was to long GBP vs JPY simply because of the continuing faltering outlook in Japanese economy, especially exports.

The outlook in UK is the opposite, but only if there is a no vote.

The short term problem is that the banks have set this one up as a chase, so if I’m anticipating a no then it has to be plan B. (after the vote then this has to be a serious consideration for a good trade along with a USD long vs Yen)

Plan B is either a breakout buy on GBP/USD or a breakout sell on EUR/GBP

So a simple question runs through my mind, which currency am I happier shorting - Euro or USD - then set the risks accordingly.

I have read that serious traders don’t trade event risks like this, it is likened to gambling they say, maybe they are right, but imo, whether right or wrong, I do my homework, reach a conclusion, and then set up a trade.

Update: decision made for me, GBP/USD it is, break of the 20 level. GBP/JPY also broke, but I absolutely hate chasing, so maybe have a look there for Friday.

Hi Peter,

great to see you back in the thread. I hope your vacation goes great and also hope a lot that it soon comes to an end :slight_smile:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, we were also getting ready for the vote results, our analysis were though not this deep.

I asked rookie some days ago why he does not want to change his name to “advanced”. Thanks for posting your photo, now I know the answer: it would cost a lot of money to rename the ship!

Enjoy your vacation further on and if you have some time share your thoughts with us.

I just read a “No” is a very likely result so I might go now for some short term trades too.

FE

I took another photo, there are rumours that someone planted a sign that personifies this thread’s attitude.

Hmmm… wonder has FE been here…