Well with my (proposed) version using three bar fractals: your short entry point would have been at the exact place where your second blue arrow is. And you could have added to the short by placing another short order below the low of that big black bar that careened across your upper red line, That order would have been executed a few days later. Currently your stop would be above the high of the the bar two bars left of where your last upper fractal is being drawn. But I mean: there’s nothing wrong I don’t think in using these things for entries and then trailing profitable stops e.g. the highest high or lowest low of the previous x bars type of thing.
I SUPPOSE I should attach a chart huh!!! LOL!!!
(Sorry. Have to use MetaTrader for this demonstration i.e. don’t have fractals on my platform).
Coming up…
Matter of fact I just noticed that with three bar fractals you would have added another position a few days ago.
As I say: still thinking about this. Managing risk and stops is a potential issue. If you were adding to positions as I’m suggesting then you could not manage all of the trades as a whole I don’t think. May be that each has a stop equal to your 2% or 5% risk. Or one could move stops to BE on all existing trades before opening another position. Dunno. Have not finessed this enough yet.
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Indecisive day so far.
Still stuck in the 4H grey cloud and below last week’s high - but not breaking below the 1H bands either! But a Mon mini-trade, anyway - just to get the week on the go!
We’ll perhaps get a better feel towards the close today…
This, I thought, was a rather interesting quote from WIlliams’ book (2004):
For the past several years, the market behavior has been changing. No longer do we see the long and steady runs from a calmer period. The buy-and-hold strategies of the past do not produce the profits
they once did. To be successful in today’s markets requires more agility and more knowledge in reading the market’s shorter-term desires. The longterm traders suffered greatly after the market topped out in early 2000. To be successful today one must be more agile and be ready to take whatever Mother Market is kind enough to give us.
Does this still hold today., I wonder?
@anon46773462, is Connors speaking of a specific market or intrument? I looked at a few forex pairs and some stock charts on the M timefram and 2008 certainly stands out.
I would have to ask what is considered long term. Has that definition changed? Perhaps as price travels from lowest lows to highest highs the choppiness between those two points is much more erratic and extreme.
I am far from an authority on the subject but have an inquiring mind and enjoy the socratic method!!! Question, question, question!!
KC
All my positions are hovering.
I believe Williams was talking about equities not commodities. When published in 2004 it would have appeared the buy and hold crowd was wrong but they have gained it all back and then some since. Score Williams 0 - Buy and Hold Equities 1
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Not CONNORS!!! WILLIAMS!!! LOL!!!
Connors is MY dude on MY thread!!! LOL!!!
I rest my case (re: my last post on your thread).
For what it’s worth (my opinion):
The only one of them that’s stood the test of time is Wilder. Some decent concepts with Williams I think. But ironically: nothing new at the time of his writing those books. Wilder was identifying swing points and pivots and everything else LONG before these dudes were writing about them (he just didn’t refer to them as such). Even these new kids on the block e.g. John F. Carter. So much fluff. And not to mention the most annoying thing of cherry picking trades when demonstrating a strategy. You know the type of thing I"m talking about. And I suppose I should be crowing about Connors for obvious reasons. But the system is based on what again??? RSI.
Mind you: Wilder lost the plot in later years too. The Adam Theory Of Markets??? The Delta Phenomenon??? Not his finest works I’ll tell you. Then again I say that: never really gave them a fair shot to be honest. Looked good on paper at the time though. Just too “loose fitting” for me at the time (and that probably holds true today for me for better or for worse i.e. not about to change tactics now).
Whilst Williams refers to “all markets”, I believe you are right that he is primarily looking at equities.
However, I do not think that the “winner” here is quite as clear cut as you claim! 
Seems to me that it depends on what time period one cares to look at. If one was to buy and hold in 2004 then as far as US equities are concern it would certainly seem that they would be nicely in profit now. But if you look at the period on this chart from 2000 to 2010 (i.e. 10 years!) then you would be pretty disappointed with the result.
In other words, buy and hold is not a trading technique at all and the end result is purely a matter of luck how the market performed during the period concerned. Indeed, if we were to see a major crash in the coming years then one could perhaps end up with a very small reward for waiting passively for close to 20 years!!!
An additional consideration here is also what kind of trader/investor one wants to be. It is one thing to look for a growing return on a capital investment, but quite another to look for a regular monthly income from being a full-time trader.
But since this is a thread dedicated to oil I don’t want to get into specifics about stock market investments! 
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Oil markets were quiet today and drifted off with no enthusiasm to test last weeks highs. However, we have remained within the top half of last week’s range,which does not give much credence for setting up shorts yet.
The only change on my own method is that the 4H-1H compression state is turning more towards a down move in line with the prevailing daily trend. But we are not there yet.
The API/EIA merry-go-round starts again as from tomorrow and crude/gasoline/distillates inventories will be the focus points.
In the background we have not only the OPEC meeting towards the end of the month with its production cuts decision, but also quickly followed by the G20 meeting including a meet between Donald Trump and XI Jinping.
It is possible (unfortunately from a trading point of view) that prior to that we will only see a lot of noise and wobbles from a market going nowhere. 
By way of clarification, trading here is 100% TA-based. The information issues are purely out of sheer interest in the underlying product and the global issues relating to it and just putting some flesh on the TA bones.
One does not need to be an oil fundamentalist to trade this commodity any more than any other.
Busy week still, but hopefully back to 100% by Thursday latest…
By the way. Today was some weird holiday or something:
https://blog.dfmarkets.co.uk/index.php/changes-to-trading-and-spread-betting-hours-10-june-2019/
Got that last week. Only remembered now.
True, but the UK’s Whitsun bank holiday Monday and US Memorial Day have already been so i doubt those countries involved today would have had much drag on movements - if there had been anything to move to! 
Not sure the Norwegians, Germans, Australians, and Swiss would appreciate your observation!!! LOL!!!
But yeh. Never heard of THAT holiday before.
My initial Oil Chart TA has gapped down away from “prediction”. Hmmm. 
If I was selling these great signals I would reply with "Of course it’s going up! Has to pick up some more supply. Who wouldn’t know that?!
Alas… Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. 
KC
No quite sure what you mean. But assuming that you’re trying to go short: just place a limit sell order at the close of yesterday. Trust me: 99% of the time it will get hit and you’re in at a better price than you would be if just jumping in and chasing the market. And if you miss out: too bad. There will be another trade around the corner (unless you’re pressed for time and money of course i.e. that’s a different scenario altogether).
Friday I was predicting that it would be going up and this evening it gapped down.
Selling signals was a lame attempt at humor. If I can’t make $$ trading I will sell “signals” and explain them away!
Just realized I can’t even get my punch lines going in the right direction!!
I’m leaving now and will bring my brain tomorrow.
KC
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Well hopefully then it was just a prediction and not a trade!!! See how lucky you are??? LOL!!!
Yes, the same issues seem to be pincering the market. Growth slowdown kills the upside and OPEC+ is flooring the downside - and here we are right where we were yesterday in spite of a few wobbles.
My charts are still showing the same 4H-1H (neutral) compression but the downside is clearly starting to show its vulnerability.
I think there are clearly some worried people in OPEC/Russia who are desperately trying to decide what to aim for in the upcoming meeting (even the dates for that are uncertain). Russia has indicated that prices could easily crash to $30-40 if a supply glut starts to build over the coming months.
It is kind of strange that SA and Iraq are upping production to make up for the Iran outage due to sanctions, whilst simultaneously planning further production cuts to reflect falling demand in the near future, but that is how confused the scenario is right now.
There is no doubt that many countries are beginning to published weaker economic data as a result of the trade war between the two biggest economies in the world. Mr Trump is currently enjoying a strong domestic equities market and is happy if we see weak oil prices and low interest rates. But Mr Putin wants oil prices to stay at least around current levels and his oil industry executives are tired of the production cuts. Meanwhile SA (and the rest of OPEC) wants higher prices than at present.
The supply side is also somewhat confusing. Whilst there is no doubt that US shale is pumping at record levels, WTI is not just one grade. Alongside WTI (intermediate). production is increasingly including lighter (WTL) and condensates (WTC). These light grades are not so much in demand and refineries both in the US and elsewhere need heavier crudes that are not so plentiful at present.
Whilst WTI and Brent are international benchmarks, they do not tell the whole story concerning demand.
So, on balance, as long as Russia and OPEC are concerned with supporting oil prices there is little to suggest we are about to start any rallies in any time soon! We are very much in a “cutting supply to meet (falling) demand” rather than a runaway bull market trying to keep up with economic growth!
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Hi @frandlost
I thought you had been anticipating a drop in order to fill your buy orders under the market? What are you looking at now?
Seems a number of commentators are not so impressed with Mr Trump’s deal with Mexico, claiming that there is actually nothing new here. Apparently, everything that Mexico has now agreed to had, in fact, already been agreed months back!
If that is so, then what kind of pseudo-business, pyscho-politics have we all come down to!
