April 28th, 2010

It’s been an interesting week with Spain being downgraded as Europe debt crisis widens. This has investors looking at the US dollar in a new light thinking that maybe it’s not that bad of an investment after all. This sent the US Dollar higher along with the price of gold so far this week.

The past 7 days we have seen both the US Dollar and Gold rise together which is not something that happens often. With financial crisis’s popping up around the world I think the US dollar and gold will continue to strengthen (with corrections along the way). I think it will take another 12-24 months before another wave if issues arise in the financial markets and until then we just continue to focus mainly on buying the dips and corrections with the occasional short play in the larger corrections.

USD, Gold And SP500 – Daily Performance Chart
Gold Dollar SPX ETF Trading

SP500 – Daily Chart

On April 14th we saw an extreme level of selling which sent the broad market sharply lower. This sell off was followed by value buyers pushing the prices back up to new 2010 highs.

Well this week we have seen the same extreme selling volume and the question we all want to know is will there be buyers this time around?
ES Mini & SPY ETF Trading

ETF & Futures Trading Conclusion:

Gold is in a bull market but it was setup for another round of selling but this Spain issue has been a pain. If we had another downward word move on gold to the $1115 – 1120 area it would have washed out the majority of gold bulls resetting it’s self up for a big rally.

The Europe debt crisis has thrown a twist into the picture helping boost the price of gold. Gold could still head lower washing out the weak positions but the picture is fuzzy. Silver did not react much to this news as it’s not really seen as the safe haven gold or the US Dollar are.

As for stock picks and the broad market, it looks and feels like we are about to start a correction. But this week we saw fear in the market again with the VIX and selling volume surging higher to levels which have triggered temporary bottoms in the past. The problem I see here is that some key price levels have been taken out, so the odds are pointing to lower prices in the near future. But Tuesdays panic selling has pushed the market into an oversold condition so we should see a drift upwards for 1-4 days before sellers get active again as they want to sell and short the market at premium prices.

In short, precious metals are not giving any clear price action to take advantage of yet, and the SP500 looks like it’s on its last legs before heading lower for a meaningful correction which should provide a short setup and then a nice long setup once it bottoms out.

If you would like to receive my ETF & Futures Trading Signals check out my website: www.TheTechnicalTraders.com

Chris Vermeulen

In my last report I showed some cycles for the price of gold and how they were starting to roll over which would in turn put some selling pressure on both gold and silver this week.

Last Monday we saw gold and silver open higher but both were met with selling for the entire trading session. Since then gold and silver have been drifting higher on light volume with some occasional waves of selling on higher volume. It looks as though gold and silver have started a 5-14 day pause or pullback.

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GLD – Gold Exchange Traded Fund

You can see from the chart below that the price of GLD looks to have bottomed after completing several typical price patterns from the breakdown we saw in December. The recent 4 months have provided a solid looking chart which should help gold take another run at the $1500 mark in the coming months.

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USO Oil Fund

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Crude Oil Futures – 120 minute chart of April 14, 2010

As the saying goes, buy on rumor (expectations) sell on the news. Well the price of oil moved up in the early morning anticipating the news (inventory numbers) at 10:30am ET would be in line with estimates. Then we saw profit taking started 2 hours before the number came out which is normal to see. But traders forecasted 1.4 million barrels as the number but the number came out at -2.2 million which was a big surprise for everyone. This sent oil sharply higher providing traders who caught the breaking news with an easy money trade. This type of action does not happen often so it’s a great little bonus for day traders.

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Mid-Week Trading Conclusion:

In short, metals have had a nice run recently and the charts are pointing to a short breather before the next upward thrust.

Oil is holding up strong on the daily chart and with today’s extra boost in price, its looking like it may want to start a new leg higher if the momentum carries over for a few more days.

We saw the major indexes surge higher on rising volume indicating buyers are in a panic to buy in fear of missing more gains. There really is no reason to be buying at these prices other than trading off emotions in fear of missing more upside. The problem for these traders is that money is made by those who buy dips in the bull markets. Buying over extended rallies is a dangerous game, especially with the market as overbought as this one. The trend is our friend and if we do get a 1-2 day pullback in stocks we could take small position to buy on a dip.

If you would like to receive my ETF Trading Signals please visit my website: www.TheGoldAndOilGuy.com

Chris Vermeulen

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Also, I have been following Neil at http://www.traderreview.net . He’s an ex-broker, gone rogue and running his own newsletter advisory for several years now. And now, his free commentary even gives away currency analysis.

With his free DAILY newsletter, he gives away commentary and insight that most people pay for.

I’d highly recommend you sign up for his free newsletter right now, and you’ll automatically get the report, “What Your Broker Doesn’t Want You to Know”  part of his old broker training. S super fun entertaining read. His daily newsletter has a wealth of information.

Trading can be a lot of fun and profitable or a nightmare and very costly. It really just comes down to understanding the key areas, which will make or break your trading.

I have received a few emails asking me to explain more about how I stay disciplined, making sure my emotions don’t get the better of me. Some questions asked are:
How do I pick a trading strategy, which will work for me?
What reading material and habits do I recommend for keeping focused?
What are some of my experiences?

I will cover all this for you below because trading discipline and managing emotions is by far the most important and difficult aspect of trading.

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How do I pick a trading strategy, which will work for me?

Your strategy should be inline with your abilities to read the market also focuses on a time frame, which suits the time you have available to trade each day, week or month. In other words, you should not be trading ETF options if you cannot profit from trading ETF’s without leverage. Also if you don’t understand how options work in depth, then you need to spend some time learning about this type of trading vehicle before you ever place a trade using options. Simply put, if you don’t understand everything about what you are trading, then you will eventually give all your money to the market, leaving you with an empty account, decreased trading confidence and a frustration.

The point I am trying to make here is that you should focus on trading the types of vehicles where you understand the daily price action, how to trade that investment, what makes it move, is there leverage, and what time frame you should focus on, so that it works with your schedule. If you can only look at the charts at night, after the markets close, then you should not be focusing on day trading. So pick something you like, understand or want to trade and learn everything about it. Then find a trading system or create one yourself, which is profitable using the time frame and risk tolerance that fit your personality.

Over the years my trading strategy changed, as will yours. The more time you spend trading, the better you will become the more you will find yourself trading more of one type of investment that consistently makes you money. When I started trading back in the late 90’s I focused on stocks, but as time went on, my strategy evolved and now my main focus is on trading indexes and gold with a hybrid intra-day and swing trading strategy that I created. My focus is on ETF’s, because you can select different levels of risk/reward with the 1,2 or 3x leveraged funds. While ETF’s are fantastic to trade, they do have some limitations. Because the indexes and gold trade 24/7, you are limited to only regular market hours, 9:30am – 4pm ET. That leads me to the topic of Futures and CFD trading.

Depending on the type of trade and time of day a setup occurs, I will jump from ETF’s to futures or CFD’s. Let me explain, if there is a setup early in the morning before the regular market opens, or after the close late in the evening, then I trade futures or CFD’s because it allows me to trade 24/7 catching moves which would not even be seen by most North American traders. There are not a lot of these trades per year but enough to make it worth trading.

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What are some of my experiences?

In short, virtually every trader will eventually reach the tipping point. What I mean here is you will either lose enough money and/or become so frustrated that you will debate whether or not you should continue trading.

I reached this level many years ago and I still remember it crystal clear. I lost most of the money in my account, almost every trade was going against me and I had never been so frustrated and upset in my life. I’m sure many of you know what I am talking about… Unfortunately trading does break a lot of people down financial and emotionally, causing them to give up. But others reach this point and realize that if they can be wrong all the time, then someone who knows what they are doing should be making good money and that they just need to learn what they are doing.

This is the point at which you decide whether to give up a life long dream of trading full time to go back to your day job or you step back to re-evaluate your situation and seek profession help. All successful traders have or had a mentor at one point in their life and it does not matter which career you are in, learning from someone who knows how to do what you want is the fastest and most effective way to learn.

Those who decide to continue and take things serious shift their mind set from Trying To Trade to Learning To Trade. It is at this point, where trading becomes fun and profitable again. My point here is that trading is not something you can learn quickly on your own. You should get help from someone who is successfully doing exactly what you want to be doing, then shadow their every move and seek mentoring from them. This usually costs more than say just buying a book or mini e-course. There is no comparison between what you get out of them or obtaining practical experience. This is what I provide at FuturesTradingSignals.com

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What reading, and habits do I recommend for staying disciplined?

There is no easy answer, as everyone absorbs information differently. Some prefer reading and studying charts, listening to audio, watching videos and some prefer or need live mentoring and real-time examples.

I learned charting from the well known annalist, John Murphy, through his book “Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets”. This is a massive book with over 500 pages explaining technical analysis. This book is a lot to digest, but there is a lot of great free information online, which will allow you to read about the basics of trading including: chart patterns, volume, candle sticks, support & resistance levels and trend lines. Once you understand these key concepts and are able to read the charts, then you are literally ready to start paper trading and applying or creating a trading strategy, which manages entry, exits, scale out prices, and manages your money.

As most of you know, I am a very patient trader waiting for risk setups in the investments, which I understand best and have consistently traded for many years. Because of my strict trading setups and rules, which I have set for myself, it does cut down on the amount of trades the market provides. My focus is on low risk, high probability setups, which I completely understand, and that’s all I trade. This trading strategy works on any time frame allowing me to use it for day trading and swing trading.

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The question everyone wants to know is how to stay so disciplined and keep emotions from taking over?

This takes me back to the Tipping Point mentioned earlier. I always ask myself if the trade meets my setup criterion, which is a simple yes or no answer because my setup criteria is clear in my head. Either it has the characteristics I am looking for or it does not. Sometimes the setups are very close and I will admit it is very tempting to take the trade, but I always step back (walk away from the computer) to clear the emotions flying around in my head and ask myself, do I want to break a rule, which almost broke me financially and emotionally once before? The answer is always No. So I pass on the trade and wait for another one to unfold.

When I was first learning to day trade, I quickly learned that I did not have to take every setup that looked like it had potential. I realized that no matter what condition the market was in, there would always be another trade just around the corner, so its not a big deal. I admit, I hate to see an investment make a large move without me like this 7 day rally in gold happening right now, because my setup criteria was not met. But I know there will be many more trades through the year in gold and other investments, which will provide me with great returns. People who think they need and must catch ever big move in the market in order to make big money on yearly basis, are looking that things completely backwards. It only takes 5-10 good trades per year to out perform the market so I don’t understand people when they panic about every zig and zag the market makes.

Ok, lets take a look at the gold chart, which I have overlaid with two cycles, which I use to help time gold.

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9 Day Gold Cycle

The daily chart of gold below has my 9-day cycle overlaid. You can see how this cycle relates to the price movements of gold. After the recent low cycle, we saw gold continue to move higher and this is because the trend of gold turned up in March and the long term cycle is also moving up at the same time. These two bullish forces can over power the short term 9-day cycle at times.

That being said, the 9-day cycle will be topping in 2 days (Tuesday) and that should put some selling pressure on gold. I expect to see a pullback or consolidation (sideways movement) in the coming week.

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29 Day Gold Cycle

This cycle allows us to see the big picture and underlying trend for gold. This larger more powerful cycle of gold will top in one day (Monday) and that should put a damper on this rally. You can see how I think gold will play out from the lines on the chart.

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Combined Cycles on Gold

This chart clearly shows how both cycles will top this week which should put some selling pressure on gold and silver and one of the reasons I have not chased the price of gold higher buying in a panic.

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Gold Trading Discipline Conclusion:

In short, trading discipline is something you can become educated about from books, but the only way to actually take control of your trading, is to be honest with your self. Think of it this way, every time you break a trading rule, you are setting yourself up for failure. Do you really want to sabotage the most important person in your life, which you will have to live with every day (You)? If you cannot trust yourself from sabotaging and lying to your self, what type of person would you be? Do you want to lose money by taking positions, which are proven not to work and cost you money in the long run? Of course you don’t!

So the next time you see a trade, which is close to your setup but no exactly what you are looking for, just walk away and wait for the next one.

As for the current price of gold, I think we are about to see lower prices, or at least a pause, which will last for 5-15 days.

If you would like to Receive My ETF Trading Signals please check out my service: www.TheGoldAndOilGuy.com

Chris Vermeulen

Friday April 9th

It’s been a relatively slow day in the market as Fridays usually are. I am most likely sounding like a broken record about gold and the indexes but I will show you again just to make sure that everyone’s on the same page for the upcoming correction.

In short, major indexes and metals are way overbought and ready for a pullback which will most likely be sharp. I feel a 3-5% correction is just around the corner. Both the broad market and precious metals are about to have their cycles turn align and top out. Meaning a wave of selling is likely to hit the market.

Adding more fuel to the selling is the fact that earning season is about to start and I do not think it matters what the news for the market will sell into it. Everyone thinks stocks are doing well which is why we have seen the strong rally the past 2 months. This is the typical buy on rumor sell on news which we saw last January on the good earning numbers. But if the news is bad, then I figure people will sell that news also.

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Daily Gold Cycles Trading Chart


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Day Trading ES Mini Futures Video

Here is a short video showing members of my new service FuturesTradingSignals.com what I feel the market will be doing for the day and over the next few days as I show live ES Mini Futures Charts.

Click to View Video: http://www.thegoldandoilguy.com/articles/day-trading-es-mini-futures-video/

Unfortunately we did not catch the recent rally. The market was giving off a very mixed signal at the time of the reversal and I wanted to wait for a pullback after the breakout which has yet to happen. I do think its just around the corner though.

It is important to realize that trading is not about catching every move the market flashing in front of us which will make us consistently profitable in the long term. Instead it’s the trader who knows what they are looking for (trade setups & risk levels) and have the discipline to follow a technically proven strategy and system which will build wealth over time. There will always be another opportunity just around the corner.

If you are interested in Receiving My Day Trading & Swing Signals while becoming a part of a close community of like minded traders please check out my service: www.FuturesTradingSignals.com

Chris Vermeulen

April 7th 2010
This week has been playing out as expected with prices grinding their way higher and lots of sharp intraday sell offs and rallies which is indicative of a market getting toppy.

Seems like the masses feel as though they are getting left behind which is why we are starting to see the panic buying in the market (new money buying at these lofty overbought prices).

Each time there is a new intraday or daily high on the major indexes there is a renewed bullishness created as breakout traders and novice traders buy into the market hoping for the next surge in price. It is these volume surges of new money entering the market which the big guys (smart money) are selling into. You can see it clear as day light on the intraday charts as new money gets sucked into the market new high and then 2 minutes later larger waves of selling hit the bids. I did explain and show a chart of how this looks to members of the FuturesTradingSignals.com today.

We have some very exciting times ahead and it’s just a matter of letting the market unfold over time as we take advantage of these carefully measured low risk setups.

On to the charts….

GLD ETF Trading – Gold Exchange Trading Fund

You can see how this chart has evolved from pattern to pattern as it bottomed over time.

Today we had a breakout and I expect to see a pullback which is normal when prices gap up and breakout of a pattern. An entry point would be considered on a pullback if the proper criteria are met.

ETF Trading Newsletter

SLV ETF Trading – Exchange Traded Fund

Silver has always been much more volatile than gold which is why the pullback early this year was so strong and why the recent rally has also covered so much ground. As you can see silver has broke out above resistance but is now looking overbought. A pullback in precious metals is expected, or a pause at least.

SLV ETF Trader Newsletter

USO Crude Oil Fund

Oil has made a nice move higher the past week but I feel it will pullback also in the coming days for a breather. There are a couple sizable gaps to fill all the way back down to $40.50.

USO Fund Trading Newsletter

UNG Natural Gas Fund

This natural gas chart looks very interesting. In the chart I am comparing the 2009 low to today’s price action.

From looking at the chart, natural gas is way oversold and in dire need of a relief rally. As you can see the sharp rallies which occurred just before both the 2009 and the current possible bottom look identical. This type of price action is very common to see.

Let me explain: When an investment is this over sold, meaning it has sold lower for weeks if not months, then there is a large growing number of traders looking to pick a bottom. Once these traders see prices start to move higher they all jump in thinking its “The Bottom”. Some times it is but more times than not it’s just a suckers rally.

General rule is, if everyone can see it, then its most likely not going to happen.. this is also part of the reason the major indexes keep going up. It looks like a great short and a tone of traders are in cash waiting to take advantage of the drop. But the market will keep pushing higher until fear its not going to pullback. That’s when the new money buys back in fueling the GRIND higher.

Anyways, so after all the bottom pickers jump on the train and there are not any more buyers and the price tends to drift lower scaring these traders back out of the position. Eventually a new low is made and everyone is shaken out of the investment. The crazy part is that just as they get out, the price usually turns around and does exactly what they new was going to happen –Go Up.

Most traders have the direction correct, it’s just their timing is off. My general rule is when I see something I wait another bar, sometimes I keep saying that to my self after each new bar until I am confident in the predicted move or price I can get into the position at.

UNG Fund Trader Newsletter

Mid-Week Trading Conclusion:

In short, the bull market continues to grind its way higher. Unfortunately we cannot do much until there is some type of correction because buying way up here after a 2 month rally is outside of my comfort zone.

I foresee a 3-5% correction starting any day now so I am keeping my gunpowder dry.

Check out my ETF Trading Signals at www.TheGoldAndOilGuy.com

Chris Vermeulen

I hope everyone had a great weekend and Easter Holiday!

This is quick update as its Easter Sunday and it’s a time to relax with the family 🙂

Below are two charts and my thoughts on what I am looking for in the coming days and weeks.

Gold Exchange Traded Fund – Daily Chart
As you can see the price action of gold has been trading within a few patterns the past couple months. First we saw a nice ABC Retrace correction and now it looks like a possible reverse Head & Shoulders or Wedge pattern is forming.

All three of these patterns are bullish but resistance must be overcome before I will start putting my money to work.

NYSE & NASDAQ Indexes – Daily Charts
We saw the broad market trade sideways for the majority of the week. As usual we had a pre-holiday pop in prices with the week closing slightly positive for stocks. These gains are generally given back the following week as volume picks back up.

The one thing that has me scratching my head is that the major indexes like SP500, Dow, NASDAQ and Russell 2000, all stayed below their previous weeks high. But the NYSE as shown below as the top chart clearly broke out to a new high.

I look at the NYSE as leading indicator and this makes me think we could see stocks grind higher right into earning season. All we can do at this point is wait for more data points on the chart and continue analyzing the market one day at a time.

Weekend Trading Conclusion:
As I mentioned last week, the market is over extended as we enter earning season. The market is in the same situation as we saw going into the January earning season.

I do not think we will have a huge pullback but I think a 3-5% correction is likely in the coming days or week. Once we get a pullback we should see support around the 30 or 50 day moving averages and then see the market head toward new highs once again.

The precious metals sector is getting a lot of attention because of the whistle blower on JP Morgan stating that metals are seriously manipulated with a huge amount of short positions still in place. I think this could be helping this sector and I hope we get a low risk setup in the coming week or two.

If you would like to Receive My ETF Trading Signals please visit my website at http://www.thegoldandoilguy.com/specialoffer/signup.html

Chris Vermeulen