COT Report Analysis - a thread on market sentiment

Trading Discussion News and Economy
61

You’re welcome.
I trade with FXCM US.
It’s good that you don’t let others’ opinions influence your trading decisions.
The only thing you should ever rely on is the price and corresponding volume of an instrument. Every single split-second decision and piece of information you’ll ever need is factored in, in real-time.

I was thinking about starting my own thread here, but I did once a few months ago and it got zero attention so I abandoned it. I’m stretched out pretty thin as it is, so I’m not sure if it’s even feasible in the near-term. Thanks for the compliment though.

I run a free blog, PM me if you’d like and I’ll send you the details.
Also have a twitter account where I’m constantly posting charts, ideas, and re-tweeting things which I find interesting and relevant.

62

Hi Jake,

hmmm this thread idea is not easy. You can only get attention if you do it regularly and for a while. In the beginning this thread got also not much attention. I do not say that everyone looks it now, but what is a lot more important for me:

  1. Many people who reads it and say something, do find market sentiment important and they share their ideas, analysis and findings. This gives us all the power to learn new methods and anvance our skills. I rather have less people with dedication than many people who look into it, but does not participate.

  2. The other thing what is great that I find many here is that many highly respected Babypips.com members are looking into the thread sometimes and make comments. From these short comments I can tell they know what they are talking about and try to always think a lot about what they say. Of course I really like all Newbies as well who start Forex now and find market sentiment important. I think in the world of Forex anyone can “get there” with hard work so Newbies can learn also everything what is said and written.

Besides writing quality for a thread and not giving up after a short time, you also need to do “garbage quantity content”. I do not follow this strategy as I think it is not fear and it only works in the short term. However there are some/many authors who only pay attention to post some garbage every hour so they will be on the top of the forums and the many post what they make shows people how large is the interest for their thread. As I said, I think this kind of strategy only works in the short-term as you click on these threads once and you will not go back there when you see the content…

I am positive that high quality content is the best way to make a thread live and you have to do it continuously. Sooner or later the “right people” will find your thread and a valuable community will build around it.

My favorite thread was what TMoneyBags made some years ago about the Butterfly and Gartley patterns. He showed how to use a strategy in a powerful way and the thread has now 10 000 posts. Unfortunately TMoneyBags is away and did not write what he does these days but I think many readers would be interested after his success. Maybe he writes it in his thread, I am on page 46 :slight_smile: Quite in the beginning.

Please send your blog details and also other link. I will check them as I am always interested on many things. I only would like to ask you to post here only related issues about market sentiment. I do not want the thread to go in a different direction. For other topics I have email and we can use many other thread of mine which are dead (in the beginning I made threads for individual fundamental news and of course those threads are completely dead so we can use them for discussing things. It is maybe better than emails because if you write me an email on this site I might forget to check it for a while but I get an email always if someone wrote in one of the threads. I should always answer within a day. If I do not answer then most likely the option is opted out for 1-2 thread for not recieving emails but this should be rarely).

Best wishes

63

COT Report 04.07.2014.

So, let’s see what the COT Report tells us this week. Very important that the percentile factors will always show the non-commercial speculators:

AUD: this currency basically did not change anything since last week. 67.00% of non-commercials are long I think still because of carry trade. At least I do not have any better explanation of being long on AUD as the fundamentals are not so bright at all. On cotbase.com we can see that there is a bullish extreme which also more suggests a bearish than a bullish tendency.

CAD: for the CAD there is an overall sentiment change as more and more people are getting long on the currency as it shows continuous gains. This week 51.55% are long on it which is the first time since a long time when more than 50% of non-commercials are long (last week only 46.92% were long).

CHF: as the Swiss Franc is quite correlated to the EUR, it was weakening last week or gave mixed signals against some currencies. 36.41% are long which is just a little less than a week earlier. Just as with the EUR, here I do not so either any main reason why CHF should strengthen.

GBP: 69.66% are long compared to last weeks’ 66.98%. A very strong currency on the short-term however the question is how long this strength will hold. Fundamentals are definitely on GBP’s side at the moment.

NZD: it is not as bullish as some weeks ago but still 60.17% of non-commercials are long. It is a typical carry trade currency, like the AUD, however NZD has better fundamentals. It still shows a mixed signal and can only gain lately against weak currencies.

EUR: the pessimistic sentiment for the EUR did not change last since last week. Only 31.70% of non-commercials are long on EUR. Even in this low volatility market it had a very weak last week and I do not see any reason why this would change.

JPY: There was some change in the COT report and 19.48% are long which is a lot more than last time (11.23%). As we have seen though, more large speculators are bullish on JPY but the currency was still bearish and neutral.

USD: looking at the cotbase.com US index, we can say that large speculators are a lot more bullish than in 2014 altogether. It is a very interesting question if the NFP report is just a short-term game changer or has some longer term effects. We have to observe the currency a bit to find out the right answer.

My current analysis shows the following results:
Bullish: CAD, GBP (short-term)
Neutral: NZD, JPY, CHF, USD
Bearish: AUD, EUR, GBP (long-term)

As you see in this low volatility summer season most currencies give mixed signals and mostly very few pips are moving in the trading sessions. Range trading is definitely the game now and majors trend changes should come. The question is if they still come in summer or only in autumn when volatility picks up. The only problem with low volatility and little movements is that the less pips make it more expensive to trade because the role of the spreads are more important than in faster moving markets. Consider this factor when you enter your trades!

Let’s see what the next week brings to us!

64

Hi everyone,

I am asking now the well experienced traders to help me out with their opinion.

There were two event which could have a large effect on market sentiment but I do not know how long-term effects are these (they might only effect the market short-term):

  1. Fitch gave New Zealand a positive outlook instead of Stable Fitch Affirms New Zealand at ‘AA’; Outlook Revised to Positive | Reuters

  2. Moody cuts Bank outlook negative from stable for Canada Moody’s cuts bank outlook to ‘negative’ on Ottawa’s bail-in rule - Business - CBC News

Now this was a hit right away for my CAD long positions and especially against the NZD which is closed now. I moved all trailing stops higher.

So if you have experience with such ratings reactions for the overall market sentiment then please share it!

65

Hey forexchange…thanks for that. Good article. Well, I’m referring to the one about Canada.
But, did you read the comments on that one? I have to believe there are some educated people commenting on that. They bring up some real good points. Mostly for me is the integrity of Moody’s. Also governments in general.
Tell me what you think on those comments. Very interesting.

Also… I’m with you…any smart people out there (and I know your there), what’s your fundamental opinion?

Mike

66

Hi Mike,

good that you said, the comments I did not read earlier. Basically I do agree with the comment which says that rating agencies do a junk job and are not reliable. I think the same about them very often. I also have a positive fundamental view on the CAD, Piponomics also just posted an article about it: Economic Data Review: Canada | Forex Blog: Piponomics

However we should not forget something: it does not matter what you and I think about rating agencies as far as the market and people believe them! Do not forget to respect the market and act accordingly. For this reason I do take seriously such news even though I do would not care about them for my own good.

Another important point there is not to forget: many of the commenters just write down their first thought. You do not know if they have 15 years of experience or they still have headaches after the football game yesterday. Pay attention when you want to make your decisions such opinions. For this reason I like Babypips. As time goes on I learn to whom should I listen to.

As I said, at the moment tight stop losses and continuous obserservation of the CAD movement is what I do to decide how it goes on from this moment.

Best of luck!

67

[B]2014.07.11., weekly evaluation[/B]

Hi Traders,

as usually, today I analyse how this week was going based on the price movement and on my analysis. On the weekend this analysis will be followed by the COT Report analysis and what I find in it for the future :50:

This past week volatility was very weak and pairs were trading in a very narrow range. This makes trading difficult, maybe even more profitable to sit on the sides and rest. Spreads have a very important effects in trading when we can only win a couple of pips and spread is in some pairs are up to 5 to 7 pips!

It is enough from talking and lets see the different currencies!

[B]EUR:[/B] it is hard to say something good about the EUR if we look the past months and the forecasts for the following months. However the currency at least managed to hold break-even against most of its counterparts this week.

[B]AUD:[/B] it is mostly a rollercoaster and shows different picture on every single currency. I see lately bullish forecasts on AUD but I do not really understand besides carry trade why do analysts think like that. China does not produce very good results (affects AUD a lot), the economic outlook is not so great and the RBA is also not really bullish.
[B]
CAD:[/B] it was a discussion in this thread what the CAD is facing in the future. Against Asian currencies it is negative this week but against other currencies it still managed some gains. I take the results as a draw.:wink:

[B]JPY:[/B] as you might know I am waiting since a longer time for a stronger JPY. This week it had nice gains against the majors, however what we do not know how much is this gain comes from the Japanese economy and how much is risk aversion and geopolitical risk (as you might know the JPY is considered as a safe haven and in risk-off sentiment or geopolitical risk traders invest in the JPY). Fundamentals were actually negative on JPY so it is very questionable if it can hold to the recent gains.

[B]CHF:[/B] not much to say. Very tight price action, pretty boring to trade. The currency is not good for scalping at all currently, use it only for long-term trades.

[B]GBP:[/B] these days if you want to have action in short-term trades then you can find it by the Pound. The UK had negative Fundamentals this week, compared to that GBP hold quite good its levels. It still had losses on all five days against the CAD. It will be interesting to see for the future if stronger GBP fundamentals come out how the market is going to react on them.

[B]NZD:[/B] the gold medal goes for NZD this week. There were not too many fundamentals this week for NZD so the rally from the past just continued.

[B]USD:[/B] it seems like the Fed does not know itself what to do or they just do not want to tell. The USD was as mixed as very often lately and it is not too easy to trade this currency lately. The only reason in my opinion in these days to trade USD pairs, because of the tight ranges USD still gives you the best spread possibilities.

That is how I look at the markets in the previous five days guys, you can tell where you agree and where you disagree with me.

Regardless of your opinion, I wish you a very nice weekend!

68

Hi there again Forexchange!

I agree with most of your analysis. Last week was uneventful and volatality was low. It was even more apparent especially since I trade only 3 pairs and place trades on dailies . Went short with AUDUSD and NZDUSD gained couple of pips besides that really nothing much. I was hoping that NZDUSD will drop further down 40-50 pips but it didn’t finding support at .8795 /dailies/.

I was looking at updated COT report showing net non commercial positions and found something interesting and wanted to see your thoughts on this.

CAD appeared very bearish according to last tuesdays COT report. In fact only 8% were bullish and rest 92% were bearish. So i pulled up my charts and looked for couple of CAD pairs to put this report to the test.

I looked at NZDCAD AUDCAD and USDCAD they all had one thing in common. There was a huge bullish candle that just broke through the next major resistance /dailies/. I thought if only I knew earlier boy I could have ended up with at least 50 pips each :D.

What’s up with that why all of a sudden CAD dropped so quickly againts these pairs ? COT report definately had accruracy though you mentioned its still a past data /a week prior/.

So that led me to think maybe I can use COT as a guideline to look for extremes and match the weak with the strong that might give me higher probability trades instead of placing a bet on neutral pairs where probability of being right is at just 50/50.

69

Hi rookie39,

You have some great points there, I answer for them one by one. First of all CAD is the big question lately, and if you read my review of last week, you see I wrote that it has gained again. However I made these analyses Friday morning as whole Friday was only one event, the CAD Employment Change. Well it changed still quite many things…

If your read the thread often enough, you have seen that [I]ForexUnlimited[/I] posted charts and his findigs that CAD is not as strong as it seems. We have to watch it. I made a wrong trade, as I have seen the very weak CAD report, I made some time later a USD/CAD short and was waiting for a retracement. Was very surprising for me that the pair did not retrace any in the following hours and almost reached my stop loss. I am excited what CAD makes the next week.

Hmmm I do not know about the 92%-8% ration! If you want, you can tell which numbers you looked at because I just do not see such numbers. It is also a good question what is the most useful to analyse. I look at non-commercials since they are the people who speculate to earn money. [I]Peterma[/I] highlighted already that I should focus more on commercials and open interest and recommended 2 books which I will order and read.

As I mentioned the sudden drop was on Friday afternoon the CAD Employement Change. +20.7K was expected and -9.4K came out. That is a huge difference.

The last part of your post is the most important. That is exactly what I do and how I use the COT report. I analyse all currencies one by one, look at then the fundamental news and then technical setups. I try to always pair a strong and a weak currency to have an edge and increase my chances to win. If you wish we can discuss here the “weekly setups” on Sundays and start out the next week looking at trades based on our findings. As always, I would like to ask to make these setups mostly based on sentiment analysis and of course we can do then trade entries/exist on technical issues but I do not really want to use in this thread Fundamental news or Technical analysis issues.

And exactly because you mentioned weak vs. strong currencies, for this reason I stay away from currencies where I have a neutral view. Only exception is the USD because in these low volatility times it is important that USD has very low spreads.

The COT report analysis comes soon after!

70

The COT report that I’m referring and where I got my 8% long and 92% short was from OANDA /my broker/ website. Here’s the link : Forex COT | Commitments of Traders Report | COT FX | OANDA fxTrade

Unlike Oanda clients retail traders position this is COT which shows non commercial positions and open interest contracts held by all parties. I might have misread this data which was simplified to read so please have a look and let me know what you think since our COT data are not correlating maybe I’m misreading the data.

As for CAD net non commercial position was at 10295 /since it wasn’t minus I take it as a net long position/ and open interest at 128555 /net open position/ that how I came up with my 8% long and 92% short data.

I wasn’t following CAD at all and this morning I pulled in my charts and was suprised to see a huge bullish candle formation on all of these three and researched what could it have been alittle and found out that crude oil price declined as Libya resumes its production and expects to double the production forecasts view that as an oversupply thus explains the decline in crude oil price which is biggest export of Canada and its currency is heavily dependent on.

I’ve looked at crude oil technicals and it seemed like it was in a range by a recent support broke through price heading further down. So I though with COT report in had might a be good reason to short any of the above CAD pairs. News definately had an impact on CAD pairs but I wonder if crude oil price had any impact on CAD pairs at all.

And I would be more than happy to have found a trading buddy :slight_smile: lets share our thoughts on market sentiment on sundays as per preparation for the week ahead. Two is definately better than one :smiley:

I’ve managed to save the jpeg image of CAD COT report take a look.

cot-canadian_dollar.jpg700×700 41.8 KB

71

Hey FE…
Just to let you know I am following this thread. I’ve been thinking all week about what forexunlimited said last weekend with the CAD, and your thoughts also.
After reading your post to rookie, I have some questions for you. What exactly to you mean then by trading by sentiment? I only ask that because you mentioned you didn’t want to use fundamental news or technical analysis much in here. I understand you say that the setups are based MOSTLY on sentiment analysis. So, I guess that really means trades based on the COT report only? In my opinion sentiments come from ALL who are involved in making price move.
Look, I know there is many many factors causing price to move, and you are picking out one particular aspect of all the variables. And surely I believe there is some merit to that.
Given all of the above, I’m with you on what’s gonna happen to the CAD this week. You were right about CAD for most of the week until fri came. I lost myself. But, I have a feeling (sentiment) about this week. I think the CAD is gonna keep on losing (against what I would hope for). I am gonna place all CAD trades as soon as the market opens for short, with some tight stop losses. I can just see the headlines now about the market still digesting the data to continue. But, I will watch very closely for later on in the week. Cause if they are really strong, I think the players will come back in with much better prices to go long for again.

So, my point…I think the sentiment NOW for the CAD is the news that came out.

I’m with you.

Mike

72

Hi rookie39,

I checked the graph and I guess I will look at this Oanda’s website more because Kevin was also writing about the importance of it. The problem is that this graph does not tell too much as it shows only open interest and net positions. I do not see any programs where the ratios are calculated. I do that every weekend on my own with calculator. But I do not mind. I still think that percentile comparison is the most important. And you cannot even calculate that because the exact values of long and short positions are not on the graph, only the net value. My excel sheet does not look like so fancy but it is ok.

I think your calculation is wrong. You have the net position and net open position. The 10 295 only shows that there 10 295 more positions long on CAD than short. From the full COT report you would see long is 58 245 and short is 47 950. However you can not divide it with open interest as that number does not tell you anything about long or short positions. You cannot calculate the value like that.

With Lybia I like your explanation and thanks for the info, I did not know that and it is an important info. It can be a very important effect on CAD. However as the Unemployment news came out at 14:30 (my time zone) and the big movement was in that minute I do tend to see a pretty strong correlation between the report and move of CAD :slight_smile: I think as an oil news as you said is at least just as important but the reaction does not happen in a minute. It can well be that the further rally vs. the CAD was supported because of oil and that can be a good reason while slowly CAD was losing everywhere.

Now I look at Mikes post, then I put on the new COT findings and then the tipps. All this should be done in 3 hours I hope because when the World Cup Final starts and I will be unreachable :slight_smile:

73

Hi Mike,

good to hear from you! Forex research and analysis is divided into 3 main fields: Fundamental, Technical and Sentimental. In many books, sites etc. they only mention 2 main fields: Fundamental and Technical and sentiment analysis is a part then of the Fundamental field. Please read more info about Sentimental analysis here: What is Market Sentiment | Market Sentiment | Freshman Year | Undergraduate

The reason why I do not want to have here technical analysis and fundamental because the forum is full with threads which has nothing to do with the original topic. I do not want that here. We can discuss fundamental and technical analysis in other threads or private mails but this thread was made for something else. If you have a finding based on market sentiment and you would make a confirmation with fundamental or technical issues, just post it here, no problem. However I do not want to discuss here issues like what is the right Fibonacci level or why is the NFP report so important :slight_smile:
I agree with you completely about what you wrote on sentiment and I do not trade based only on sentiment.

Here is my strategy:

  1. Do [B]sentiment analysis[/B] and try to find weak and strong currencies.
  2. I think about my [B]fundamental view[/B] of markets and economies and will only trade currencies where my fundamental bias is the same as the sentiment bias. If the two do not line up then I do not trade the currency.
  3. I try to find strong currencies and match them with weak currencies and enter+exit my trades based on [B]technical analysis[/B]. Basically that is what I wrote with rookie39 some hours ago and we try to work some strategy out here.

I do these three steps every weekend to see and decide the strategy for next week. I also make long-term strategies on the weekend. During the week I can of course change these strategies based on unexpected events but at least I will know Monday morning what I want to do.

I am not changing my CAD view that quickly. I made good gains until Friday afternoon, just like you. There was the bad report, a very bad report. But I do not change my view based on what report. If the gain against the CAD goes on still some days then it can mean something. But I still want to see confirmation. One session is not enough for me to change market sentiment. But tight stop losses are good always, either way who is right and who is wrong!

I will not open new CAD trades though, and let my long-term trades still run.

Have a nice evening!

74

COT Report 11.07.2014.

No clear trends, low volatility, very tight ranges. As you see life of traders are not see easy lately. We still have our COT Report though and can hopefully find some strong and weak currencies for next week. Very important that the percentile factors will always show the non-commercial speculators:

AUD: our rollercoaster currency is still very bullish with sentiment but cannot get much gain because of weak fundamentals. Cotbase.com bullish trend is stronger and 68.90% of non-commercials are long. It is hard to push the pair still higher.

CAD: 54.84% are long. Because of Fridays’ bearish movement is not in the COT report just like not in the cotbase.com report I think the data is irrelevant and not useful. My strong view on CAD got hit as with one negative report the currency lost such a huge amount of pips. I will most likely stay on the sidelines with CAD then next week and try to understand what is driving the currency.

CHF: 36.42% long, exactly the same as last time (it was 36.42% long). CHF has extreme tight ranges, very boring currency at this time. If you are a scalper, you can look for EUR/CHF and USD/CHF trades because of little spreads, besides that I suggest to forget this currency for now.

GBP: 65.82% long, not as bullish as it was in the last month! The long uptrend stopped in many pairs for the GBP. Is it end of the bullish tendency or just a consolidation? It is a very interesting and important question. I will remain with my bias from last week: short-term bullish, long-term bearish plan. I will look for small bullish trades to catch some pips with tight stop losses.

NZD: 68.44% bullish, a lot more than last week (60.17%). It is not even on a COT extreme, had no fundamentals last week and was beating up the counter currencies. People just love carry trade. If I change slowly my bias on a currency then it is the NZD. However I do not consider in tight markets to trade this currency besides the USD or AUD.

EUR: 31.75% are long, almost the same as last week. Open interest also. The currency wasn’t as weak though as earlier, but the fundamentals are not getting any better. The Portugal “crisis” happened also after the publishing of the report so EUR could be a bit more bearish as what we see in the report. What we have to pay attention though is the cotbase.com report on EUR. Large speculators are already on an extreme short level which might be an explanation why the downtrend stopped and why it is so difficult to push EUR more down. EUR has tight spreads against USD, CHF and GBP and if I look for opportunities then it will be on the short side.

JPY: 12.59% would be extreme level for other currencies but we got used to such results for the JPY. Just like it was with CAD, I think the report is not so relevant for JPY as the currency managed some nice gains in the last 3 days of the week which were not part of the report. As I already have written in my weekly evaluation, the cause of the gains would be good to know because fundamentals were actually negative. Risk aversion could be the right reason. As far as there are wars and uncertainties JPY could make gains. And if not risk-aversion, other economies produce many negative reports so I change my short-term bias to bullish.

USD: no clear monetary policy + mixed fundamentals + no carry trade + ranging markets = mixed results. I will still trade USD because of low spreads and altogether it has mixed results but it shows me quite good which are stronger and which are weaker currencies. It loses against the stronger currencies and is ranging against others.

My current analysis shows the following results:
Bullish: GBP (short-term), NZD (short-term), JPY (short-term)
Neutral: EUR, CHF, CAD, USD
Bearish: AUD, GBP (long-term)

75

So Mike and others,

[I]Here are the currency pairs for trading based on what I found on COT Report and what matches with my fundamental view. However it does not mean that I enter a trade in these pairs in the beginning of the week and exit in the end of the week. I do not even say that my direction makes more pips than the counter direction. I will look for short-term pips, important is if it is a short or long trade for the specific currency pair and then I will enter the trade when I get the signals. I also add some US pairs as it is important that USD has very low spreads and sometimes clear short term trends. I try to match USD with currencies where I see a clear short or long bias for the week. These setups are only for the next week and are just my ideas. Make your decisions based on your all analysis:[/I]

GBP/USD: long
EUR/GBP: short
USD/JPY: short (waiting first for a retracement higher)
NZD/USD: long
EUR/JPY: short
AUD/NZD: short

I am waiting for any discussion, suggestion or other ideas! Have a great week everyone!

76

I misread COT data as you said the fancy graph of simplified COT data on Oanda’s website doesn’t show long or short positions but only contains net long non commercial position.Had to go back to babypips school and re read how to read COT data from CTFC website :D.

Just this morning I went long on GBPJPY and USDJPY due to strong bearish bias against JPY COT data. It’s interesting that you 're waiting for a retracement higher before going short with USDJPY. I trade off of dailies and just in case I drew a fib retracement. It fell back on fibs previously so it makes sense that this reversal that has just started might not rally as high as I expect it to be might just be a retracement. But if you zoom out to weekly charts both of these pairs have been in an uptrend for a while. Whatever the case I’m shorting JPY and just to be safe taking profit @ around fibs 50-61.8%.

As with NZDUSD on dailies there aren’t much setups so I’m leaving NZD to the corner for the week. Let’s see what happens during the week. For now i’ll keep only two open positions and if that closes in profit I might go and look for other technical set ups to short other JPY pairs.

77

Man do I love this stuff. Thanks!
This is how I view the market. Stronger and the weaker. But, I also think it’s about who’s moving from strong to weak and visa versa. Constantly changing.

I’ll be in touch with you much more.

Mike

78

Here’s another great thread about trading COT report Weekly COT report Analysis + Trade Ideas @ Forex Factory

The thread starter apparently looks at COT index besides just looking at COT net positions. If COT index is at 0 its bearish extreme at 100 its bullish extreme. I don’t think he’s referring to non commercial long v short positions in percentage in this case. If he came up with this extremes 0 and 100 out of simply calculating long and short positions in percentage it wouldn’t have been extremes especially with majors like EUR /he was referring to couple of majors such as AUD, EUR and etc/.

I wonder where he gets this numbers ?

79

Hi,

pay attention though with your JPY short trades. Of course it can work out good but the point of the COT report is to find extremes. And as you just said the JPY is already very bearish. This suggests if everyone is bearish then who is going to sell the JPY in the future? There is just hard to find room to sell JPY. Of course it can happen but watch out. Especially with the USD I would say. USD is not strong at all lately and you want to go long with it. I do not look at weekly charts as I do not trade such long terms! I do not know how long you plan your trades but I guess for day traders weekly charts might not be huge help. On the positive side your trade can work out good because USD/JPY is ranging lately in the 101.00 and 102.00 channel and you bought on the bottom. I wish you good luck with that one!

Now I will look at your other post.

80

First of all, the thread is great! It has many similarities what I mentioned, like the procedure of using sentiment analysis first to decide the direction (I also use fundamental though) and then start with the technicals. Instead of COT Index I calculate my own short and long ratios, for this reason I wrote to you that slowly we should come to an extrem point by JPY. What I do not use is to follow trends with net positions. I actually I never really looked at net positions, only at the ratios. I will start doing that. If you calculate with percentile, it can still bring extremes. Look at please the JPY in the report.

It would be great to work on both threads at the same time to become even more updated. The problem is that I am following so many threads, I just cannot follow anymore at the same time. Can you maybe analyze it a bit in depth and share your findings? It would be great since that thread is basically and we cannot really use it for present market analysis. It would be useful to see his trades, setups and ideas on his past trades but in the present time it will not provide us much help. So with the analysis you can compare what I write and we find then the pair where we have the same view!

Other possibility would be to ask [I]Mike[/I] if he could analyse that our thread a bit and be an expert on that. It would be already a big help to look at it regularly if someone writes something at all.

I will start to look from now on the net positions.