COT Report Analysis - a thread on market sentiment

Hi Mike,

I can advise you to do this on youtube. There are many good videos. It is quite difficult to explain all the abbreviations. First look for the issue where you find downloaded data, then look for “copy paste in excel”. That should solve the problem. But if you cannot copy in excel I would suggest to make some youtube course or order a book. You will need this basic knowledge every time so it is better to do it the hard way and learn it from the roots.

FE

Hi BB,

nice research, analysis and tutorial. Another good indicator. I attach it to the table of content. I am though thinking to skip this from my analysis. If I have to write down the close and open price every day for ProGo it just takes too much time. Or do you do on a weekly basis? You said you do it weekly on the Williams VIX. I think the problem with too many indicator is that we will never get a signal. Also even if every indicator takes only a couple of minutes but at the end all these minutes add up for the many markets. I will look how your analysis go with the new indicator and then decide if I use it.

Please write down the Chapter name too when you refer to the Williams book. I think we have a different edition. Already last time I did not find what you told me with a page number and now also not. If you write down the name of the chapter then I can do it faster.

Once again, thanks for the nice work, I think besides the currency cross index you already discussed all indicators (or at least most of them) from the book!

FE

PS: Philip, I cannot send message to you again. Now the error message is clear: you reached the maximum mails and you have to delete some.

Hi BB again,

I wish you good luck with programing. You finished the indicator the best time because I think tomorrow the COT report will be an important one. It will show us the crazy price action from the end of last week!

I like the charts how you combined them with the new indicators. The interpretation is not that clear in the beginning though. Maybe it would be better of you drew your “usual” lines to show where to look and describe what conclusions you come from the action you see on the charts.

If you do this, I will arrange you a Junior Membership at Babypips :slight_smile:

FE

Am interesting point today, one that portrays some of what I posted yesterday in that big long boring post spanning 100 years.

The general theme was “Investor Sentiment” some refer to it as herd following or momentum etc - but when you get in tune with it a lot of sense goes out the window.

I posted early this morning that Asian traders were anticipating a miss on pmi services, the services industry in UK is extremely important, in usual times such a miss could be worth 100 pips, especially taking into account the strong USD.

In the current climate the best I aimed for was 20 pips and was relieved to get them.

Another example of sentiment - the first thing an investor looks at on a company balance sheet is current sales vs last year sales. Sales, or sometimes called turnover, are the life blood of any company, none more so than a retail sales company.

The FTSE rose by 85 points at close today, a well known constituent of the FTSE, a very large retail sales chain reported today - Marks & Spencer.

It had some good news to report including increased dividend and increase in gross profit.

The really bad news, sales of it’s key component, merchandising, were down for the 13th consecutive quarter, even online sales were down.

The biggest riser in the FTSE today was … yep, you’ve guessed it - Marks & Spencer.

Like the bounce in GBP today many journalists are coming up with all sorts of reasons, to me it just reflects investor sentiment.

ProGo

According to Williams, we have to pay special attention to the difference between the market’s opening and it’s closing price. Why is that?

Let Larry Williams answer the question.

“The sudden change in prices, the gap from one day to the next, I think, is a reflection of what the public is doing. They read something in the paper, get goosed by talking heads on television or some likely inane news from the night sessions around the world, and make a rush to judge those results in their orders coming in before the market opens—thus causing the disparity of price change from last night’s settlement to today’s open. The other side of that coin is that the change from today’s open to the close today captures what the professionals did in the market. I see it like this. A market opens, then gets attacked by floor traders along with full time traders, professionals like myself, while the public goes about their tasks and jobs for the day. We are the driving daily force and if a market closes above the opening of the same day, I think it means that we professionals rallied it to the close, even if it closed down for the day.”

Interpretation
It is simple, really. All we have to do is look for divergences between price and ProGo. In other words, we need to look for times when a rally (decline) is not accompanied by professional buying (selling).


WVF

Now, that is a really powerful indicator in my opinion. With it, we are actually able to reproduce the well-known VIX Index for any instrument. You might be aware the usefulness of the VIX, as it measures the Volatility in the S&P using some complex formula which is derived from options or something like that.

High VIX readings are usually the symptom of a bottom.
Low VIX readings are usually the symptom of a top.


Accurate enough? You bet. There’s only 1 question remains. How do we know when the indicator is high or low? I’d go with Bollinger Bands attached to the WVF.

Hey guys.

Wednesday results.

USD: +6 -0 1///+2 -0 1
CAD: +6 -0 1///+4 -0 1
GBP: +5 -2 0///+2 -1 0
EUR: +3 -3 1///+2 -1 0
CHF: +3 -3 1///+2 -1 0
JPY : +2 -5 0///+2 -1 0
NZD: +1 -6 0///+0 -5 0
AUD: +0 -7 0///+0 -5 0

Majors took it. +6

Wow. So Majors are taking it so far this week.
Monday = M +10
Tuesday =C +4
Wednes =M +6

So, do you think the Comms are gonna come back?
I do.
Watch out for them.

Here’s 0125 GMT shot. (after the AUD news)


Mike

I’m still missing WillSpread :frowning: I’m trying to program it, but I’m having a hard time creating it.

Hey FE, I’m not sure if this is after we talked. I removed some messages so now you can send me again.

Hey Mike, thanks for this. It seems that US is strong one day, weaker the next. Don’t you think?
PS: How is your trading doing this month.

Hey Philip!

Yep, isn’t that always the tale…back and forth, back and forth. That goes for any currency. (we all know that)

Well, since you brought it up, I guess I must tell. (rather not talk about it)

I crashed my account. Demo. See, no one will understand. I take this very seriously. And I had to start over. Starting in Nov. now. This only means I can’t go live in Jan. I have rules and I won’t break them. If I can’t prove to myself that I can be consistent for 3 months straight, it’s back to the drawing board. This will be my 4th demo account started, at 1,000. Since the start of 2013. It’s depressing. And only means that it is taking so long. I haven’t lost any ferver, drive, determination, hope, on this quest. It’s just the amount of time and energy that I put into this, you would think I would be making progress, (in my time line). But I’m learning that my time line is not lining up with the ACTUAL time line…where I am confident, consistent, and making serious progress in my business.
So, however long it takes, then so be it.
I’m in it till the end.

Sorry about all that.

GO AUD!!!

Mike

P.S.

This month I’m on the AUD. So, whenever they go up, I should be making some pips. And when they dive, then I’m losing.

Mike, it’s the choppiness that’s getting you, the only way I can ever find to deal with it is with limit exits at former highs or lows - can be frustrating because you’ll miss a few moves, also means more work for less return, but at least no big losses.

NFP tomorrow, if it’s USD positive then with current momentum there may not be any whipsaw, so I’m thinking about setting USD buy stop on whichever cross I feel is weakest - lol famous last words, probably massive, gigantic whipsaw that’ll be heard this side of the Atlantic.

One other thing, I hadn’t intended posting about this but FE has mentioned the hard work that BB has done recently and urged me to post, so maybe you guys can do something with it.

Some years ago I was studying the FTSE. I had noticed that the early morning BBC news report would often state “FTSE falls on Gulf war fears” or “FTSE down 50 points on global downturn worries” and so on.

Then around lunch time I would check the ftse and it would be up! - this happened so often that I decided to investigate.

I soon found a pattern, it was always very visible on a line or bar chart (lol candlesticks were only used in powercuts back then). I called the pattern the “V”, always happened in the morning. I spent the best part of a year trying to map that “V”, I wanted to tie it down to a time and day of week.

I failed on that mission. The days and time seemed random, the only level of predictability was that if the index was at recent highs the “V” was more common and pronounced.

I tried for an explanation, a reason. I had many ideas including the possibility of Asian traders’ actions and so on. Eventually I just learned to wait until it formed if I was going long and that was that.

FE was following the index more recently so I told him to look out for the “V”, he saw it’s formation in action, especially in the recent run up, I hadn’t been following the FTSE for a few years so I wasn’t sure if it was still happening.

Finally, Larry Williams describes the theory of the “V” when he describes the reasoning behind ProGo as described in BB’s post.

There’s just one little piece he left out, when an index or a currency cross is making new highs many traders look to fade the move, if they see or hear of a reason then they will use that. The BBC news item is written by journalists to a target audience of retail, they are most often reflecting the very thing that traders used to fade the previous day’s move.

A fade is only good if you get in early, - so get your orders in at the open, if it’s bank shares, for example, then you will do that as soon as the exchange opens - after those are done and dusted then the “V” forms, or ProGo in action.

Well it’s just a theory, :slight_smile:

Kinda heartbreaking to see Natural Gas rocketing off. I was long about 1,5 week ago but got stopped out before the rally =/

The rally shows the power of the commercials, it’s just getting the timing right.

An intermarket one for Nat gas is BNG on main chart and XNG on comparison - I thought you were still long on that, there will be a second chance :slight_smile:

Reasons for moves here:

Natural Gas News - Investing.com

For anyone reading, BB know the references, XNG is an index, details here:

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/cp?s=^XNG

The charts on Stockcharts.com are Primary $natgas and indicator $xng on the bottom.

The vertical line indicates when the index of energy companies started to rise on Oct 14, about a week before NatGas price, with the commercials having already indicated their intentions on cot as noted back by BB.

Thanks Peter for sharing it. I suggest to read the post for the others maybe twice as it has many information but it really works out good. If you make an entry after the V occurs and put the SL under the V then you will have a good risk/reward. Without those good wins on FTSE how would I be able to lose now with silver?

So, getting more serious, Peter forgot one part of his great explanation and I think it has a great value. BB, you should really think about this one as you put a lot of effort on ProGo. Peter is right when he says: “ProGo might be difficult to use on markets which are open 24/5 as there is no really close and open. You can just trade it the whole time.” - these were not exactly Peters words but hopefully close enough.

And it makes a lot of sense. Think about it: when is exactly the close and open price? Who cares about it? It is true. It might be said but I do not even know when is Tokyo open and close. So everyone has to decide what is the open and what is the close price for himself, but maybe ProGo does not play an important role as Williams planed it will (as you all know for ProGO we need the open and close price for the given day). For markets which are not traded the whole time, it can be successful. For example I am not allowed to trade DAX and FTSE at night at my broker (I do not know what about you guys) so in this case the pattern might be very important about close and open. But if I have a limit order and the market is open the whole day then I do not really care when is it triggered and ProGo might have a limited success on these markets.

BB you should think about this issue because it makes me sceptical. You have to see, this thread honost, no matter if it is positive or negative. We are like this. We want to get successful in this. I know it took you a lot of work for making ProGo and for some markets I am still with you about it. This is however a main question about the effectiveness of it. I do not say it does not help but we should be sceptical on the results. Be aware of that, guys. And sorry to share this idea a bit too late. But better late then never.

Peter, if I forgot something or you can describe it better, “just do it”. (Hmmm I think I already heard this slogan somewhere)

Ok guys, good night.

PS: do you see BB? I told you if you write a nice post I arrange you a Junior Membership on the site. Here you go, you have it! :slight_smile:

Fellas.

Thursday results.

USD: +7 -0 0///+3 -0 0
AUD: +4 -1 2///+4 -1 0
NZD: +4 -1 2///+4 -1 0
CAD: +4 -1 2///+4 -1 0
JPY : +3 -4 0///+0 -3 0
GBP: +1 -5 1///+0 -3 0
EUR: +0 -5 2///+0 -3 0
CHF: +0 -6 1///+0 -3 0

Comms took this one. +9
Back and forth…
Monday: M+10
Tuesday: C+4
Wednes: M+6
Thursday: C+9

Pretty interesting. USD dominated. But all the Comms were strong also. They were only down against the USD. Even against each other (in camp).
And tomorrow is NFP day. Very possible Majors can take it.

Here’s 0135 GMT.


Btw…thanks Peter for the words. That shoots through my mind very often. I understand.
Thank you.

Mike

It would be great if you shared your set up , a screenshot BB :). I had seen a chart of natural gas few weeks or a month ago and was thinking if there was any seasonal aspect to it. It usually rallied up during colder months and came back down during warmer months. I’m curious to see if that rally was a seasonal thing or if there was fundamental reason besides the obvious intermarket correlation that Peter has posted earlier.

[B]FE…[/B]

Great post! How is it that you’ve been keeping it all to yourself to this day? the V pattern. Thanks [B]Peter [/B]for the introduction on V pattern. You guys have convinced me on this. I have always been wary of patterns. Don’t know why. It would be great again if you could post a screenshot FE of your past trade , I /we/ could learn more that way. And possibly a further discussion. Or maybe its just me. I work better with visuals graphs and such.

And [B]Mike[/B] ! here’s how I play. I determine the bias first and foremost pick out the pairs and work with “wide” SLs it could stretch out to hundreds of pips. I could do without it as I usually do check my trades on a daily basis if they go against me then I’m forced to hold it through and it turns into a swing play. You may ask , why put SL if its that wide already. I do it because I feel at ease if you know what I mean just to know that there’s a SL however far it may be from my entry. As long as you’ve got your bias accurate tight SLs do more harm than any good. In the end its all about maximising your winners and minimizing your losses. So the strategy that I’m working out as far as trade management goes, I’m willing to sit through corrections however wide it maybe as long as I have my bias accurate like I said. You see Mike, its always hard to get in at the right time. And it could be very subjective - price action wise. Or maybe its just me I’m a sluggish technical trader. I see my chart highs, lows, open and close and the price action to get the feel and then put my orders. No matter how hard I try, it just doesn’t seem to go my way 100% well that is expected especially in trading. So I’m left with 60/40 roughly. 60% of my trades hit TP on the same day and 40% turn against me however careful I was in trying to determine my entries. I hope you see my point. If I closed each and every position that turned against me , with wide SLs I would have blown afew accounts already. But I haven’t. And this is I think where trade management comes in which I think is very crucial. Of course its as important to work out a way to tune in your entries so that you don’t have to sit through big moves. But the more I do this, the more I’m finding it harder we don’t have crystal ball. Its funny how just a month or two ago I wasn’t comfortable holding trades longer than a day. But now I’m holding it for a few days to a week. It doesn’t do any harm. Like I said if you got your bias right. The big picture. We don’t want to be too consumed by day to day news neither.

By the way I’m with the commdolls all the way until there comes a prominent trend, a dominant currency. I’m with EURAUD and eyeing on AUDJPY. I might look for kiwi pairs as for CAD I’m not too sure with declining oil prices :33:

Thank you for that Peter. I did not know about this index until now. Anyway, there might be a chance to hop in later, we’ll see. Also, check out Gasoline, the instrument is reluctant to make new lows for the third week now. Peter, is there an index for Gasoline like XNG?