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Educational: How I use the CoT-Data to verify EW countsHi guys today I want to do a short educational on how I use the CoT-data to validate longer term EW counts. Normaly I update my CoT-Spreadheets on Sunday. But since we have been waiting for the data to be released for three weeks now, I have time to show you, how useful it can be. Unfortunately my english writing skills have detoriorated over time but I guess that my charts will make the point. I guess most of you have already heard about the CoT-Report and know what kind of data is report. So I go right in medias res. When looking at the CoT-Data I first calculate the net positions of the three trader categories. Here in Tradingview you find community indicators, that can do that for you. The idea is that large speculators are skilled traders that trade the trend. So when the market trend is up the net position of the large speculators should be long and in the best case increase from week to week. Usually the large speculators carry the largest net long position, when the trend is old and nearing the top. Commercials normaly do the opposite. They try to hedge their business (consumer) or lock in high prices (producer). In normal circumstances they mirror the position of the large speculators. So normaly you can follow the large speculator and profit form the market trend. The CoT-data gets interesting, when we near a turning point and the positions of the large speculators and commercials reach extreme levels. The idea here is, that large specs even though they have a large portfolio their monetary resources are limited whilst the hedging commercials have bigger pockets. When the position of the large specs reaches new highs one expect the trend to end because they have no more ammunition to ignite a further up or down move. On the other hand the commercials how know the fundamentals of the market can now ignite a move in the opposite direction. That is the basic idea. So what I do is to compare the net positon with historical position. Therefore I calculate an index over the last 3 years. The formula is Index = 100 * (current net position - minimum net) / (maximum net - minimum net). The index ranges from 0 = lowest net (short) position in free years and 100 highest (long) position in three years. When the index is above 80 or below 20 the market is ripe for a change in the larger trend. Unfortunately the CoT is only seldom a great instrument to time the market. Commercials can ride against the trend over extended periods. I know for sure, cause more than one time I had to close a position. But it is great as a filter or in combinination with EW or seasonality. When in a final wave 5 in either direction you want to see those extreme Index levels. For those interested I will continue below. But now I want to drive home one of the most important points. SPEED MATTERS! Commercials know the fundamentals of their market. And if they hastyly sell out and turn their position something big is going to happen. You can see this in the above chart of ES. More recent I have a chart of Bitcoin, were you can see, that commercials act swiftly if they see an opportunity. I produce a spreadsheet every week, were I calculate the current index value and the change from the week before and over 4 weeks. I hope that I that data will be released next friday so I can update. You can download the spreadsheet at docs.google.com In the spreadsheet you can also see the market bias. Market Bias is the net position of the large speculator minus the net position of the commercials. So if for example the large speculators are net long and the commercials are net short the net net position of the commercials will be added to the net position of the large speculator. The total balance then shows the amount of contracts in favor of the current trend. As with the index the change and speed of change is more important than the value itself. I hope you enjoyed this and gathered some helpful information and I will come up with some new EW analysis next week. Have a great weekend.
CME_MINI:ES1!Education
by Sideshow83
Do you suffer from (Retail Sentiment)What is retail sentiment? Have you ever noticed on your broker site that it has a statement along the lines of "70%+ of retail traders lose money"??? This is directly related to retail sentiment - in short, institutional money make their money on others losing money in the online marketplace. Every forex trader will always have an opinion about the market. “It’s a bear market, everything is going to hell!” “Things are looking bright. I’m pretty bullish on the markets right now.” Regardless of the technical analysis or the news that comes out, traders often get it wrong. There's some simple logic to this, If you look into COT reports (Commitment of Traders) 🍪 see the last COT post if you're not familiar with COT. Well in addition to COT there is also a tool called sentiment - this info shows what traders are doing on global broker platforms such as IG index. In this current condition and at this precise time it has a mixed bag of; SPX 47% of retail are long - now you would assume with a long stock market it would correlate to a weaker DXY situation, yet retail are also 57% to the short side on EURUSD. Which makes very little sense. Now assume this is only a small minority on one platform like IG index. Well - with another look, you will see retail are currently; Long - USDJPY 67% (Long DXY) Short AUDUSD 63% (also long DXY) However, 76% long USDCAD - and then long Gold 83%. Do all the numbers match up? Knowing 70% or more of retail traders lose money - what would you say? Unfortunately, since the forex market is traded over-the-counter, it doesn’t have a centralized market. This means that the volume of each currency traded cannot be easily measured, but again this is where COT can be used in parallel to the sentiment. This might be 👽 to you right now. But it's a very powerful tool. On the COT side, you can see into the volume traded and will notice if brokers are net-long, institutional investors are often net-short. Buyers need sellers. It's as simple as that. IG sentiment can be found here - www.dailyfx.com Hope this helps someone. Disclaimer This idea does not constitute as financial advice. It is for educational purposes only, our principle trader has over 20 years’ experience in stocks, ETF’s, and Forex. Hence each trade setup might have different hold times, entry or exit conditions, and will vary from the post/idea shared here. You can use the information from this post to make your own trading plan for the instrument discussed. Trading carries a risk; a high percentage of retail traders lose money. Please keep this in mind when entering any trade. Stay safe.
Education
by Mayfair_Ventures
4
The (COT) - COMMITMENT OF TRADERS Mystery RevealedThis is NOT an in-depth explanation or a way to trade, this is just highlighting some basics from a question I get a lot, you might see some traders talking about COT data. You may even see it in some posts. There's no magic to it, all you need to know is what exactly it is. Of course, if you can use it within your edge to understand some bias by the bigger operators. What is COT Data? The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Commission or CFTC) publishes the Commitments of Traders (COT) reports to help the public understand market dynamics. Specifically, the COT reports provide a breakdown of each Tuesday’s open interest for futures and options on futures markets in which 20 or more traders hold positions equal to or above the reporting levels established by the CFTC. The COT reports are based on position data supplied by reporting firms (FCMs, clearing members, foreign brokers and exchanges). While the position data is supplied by reporting firms, the actual trader category or classification is based on the predominant business purpose self-reported by traders on the CFTC Form 401 and is subject to review by CFTC staff for reasonableness.2 CFTC staff does not know specific reasons for traders’ positions and hence this information does not factor in determining trader classifications. In practice, this means, for example, that the position data for a trader classified in the “producer/merchant/processor/user” category for a particular commodity will include all of its positions in that commodity, regardless of whether the position is for hedging or speculation. Note that traders are able to report business purpose by commodity and, therefore, can have different classifications in the COT reports for different commodities. For one of the reports, Traders in Financial Futures, traders are classified in the same category for all commodities. You can read more info and get the actual data from the CFTC site itself. www.cftc.gov Methodology The weekly report details trader positions in most of the futures contract markets in the United States. Data for the report is required by the CFTC from traders in markets that have 20 or more traders holding positions large enough to meet the reporting level established by the CFTC for each of those markets.1 These data are gathered from schedules electronically submitted each week to the CFTC by market participants listing their position in any market for which they meet the reporting criteria. The report provides a breakdown of aggregate positions held by three different types of traders: “commercial traders,” “non-commercial traders” and “nonreportable.” “Commercial traders” are sometimes called “hedgers”, “non-commercial traders” are sometimes known as “large speculators,” and the “nonreportable” group is sometimes called “small speculators.” As one would expect, the largest positions are held by commercial traders that actually provide a commodity or instrument to the market or have bought a contract to take delivery of it. Thus, as a general rule, more than half the open interest in most of these markets is held by commercial traders. There is also participation in these markets by speculators that are not able to deliver on the contract or that have no need for the underlying commodity or instrument. They are buying or selling only to speculate that they will exit their position at a profit, and plan to close their long or short position before the contract becomes due. In most of these markets the majority of the open interest in these "speculator" positions are held by traders whose positions are large enough to meet reporting requirements. *** Reference from Wikipedia*** When combining with other analysis - you can use it to obtain bias or simple confluence with your existing ideas. For example, here's the chart plotted on a weekly timeframe using Elliott wave theory - Plotted usign another piece of software called "Advanced Get" If you combine this with the data from the CFTC website - you will see that the professional operators have been reducing long positions and gaining albeit staggered short positions on the move down. This showing the overall trend move - If you drill down further and look at the difference in short positions between the 19th of Jan and the following week (26th) on a daily chart you will see a rally. (go check it for yourself) A useful tool As I said at the start of the post, it's not the master strategy. It's simply another tool - I just wanted to share some info with the community on what it is and how it can be used. If used correctly - it can prove useful. Have a great week, feel free to pop questions below. Disclaimer This idea does not constitute as financial advice. It is for educational purposes only, our principle trader has over 20 years’ experience in stocks, ETF’s, and Forex. Hence each trade setup might have different hold times, entry or exit conditions, and will vary from the post/idea shared here. You can use the information from this post to make your own trading plan for the instrument discussed. Trading carries a risk; a high percentage of retail traders lose money. Please keep this in mind when entering any trade. Stay safe.
Education
by Mayfair_Ventures
9
Commitment of traders reportWHAT IS IT The Commitment Of Traders (CoT) is a report issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) , one of the most important trading insitutionsof the American government. The report has the purpose of transparently showing market dynamics to the all the people involved or interested in the matter. The COT report show all currently open positions (open interest) of the future and options market, where 20 or more traders hold positions for an amount greater or equal to the minimum amount amount established by the CFTC . The report is issued every Friday at 3:30 P.M. (Eastern Standard Time, hence UTC-5). Each report normally contains data until previous Tuesday. CFTC usually receives data on Wednesday morning from the reporting firms (i.e.: Future Commission Merchants, Financial Insititutions, Brokers or International Stock Exchanges). After some verifications, CFTC publish data the following Friday. For each market, data are provided in terms of existing (still open) LONG and SHORT positions. TYPES OF REPORTS There are 4 types of report: 1) Legacy It contains data split by stock exchange. This report has two different variants: "futures only", that contains data related to the futures market only, and "combined", that contains aggregated data for futures and options market. All the reported positions in this report are split in two main market actors categories: Commercials (or Large Speculators) and Non-Commercials 2) Supplemental It includes contracts related to 13 selected agricultural market commodities. This kind of report split positions in 3 market actors categories: Commercials (or Large Speculators), Non-Commercials and Index Traders. Differently from Legacy report, the Supplemental is provided in the "combined" format only, hence contains data for both futures and options market 3) Disaggregated This report contains the same data issued in the Legacy report, but with a more detailed drill down in terms of representation. First of all, it presents data split in 5 macro-categories: Agriculture, Petroleum and Products, Natural Gas and Products, Electricity, Metals and Other. Moreover, the report shows open positions/interests of 4 market actors categories: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User, Swap Dealers, Managed Money e Other Reportables. Aggregating data of this report, it is possible to obtain same data of Legacy report, hence this is a detailed view of data contained in the Legacy report. The Disaggregated, as well as the Legacy one, is available as "futures only" and "combined" variants 4) Traders in Financial Futures (TFF) This report includes contracts related to currencies, US Treasury Bonds, Eurodollar deposits, VIX shares and Bloomberg Index only. The reports shows open interests of 4 market actors categories: Dealer/Intermediary, Asset Manager/Institutional, Leveraged Funds e Other Reportables. Last, also this report is available as "futures only" and "combined" variants REPORT FORMATS Legacy and Disaggregated reports are provided in two formats: short (synthetic) and long (extended). Both these formats contain same data, but long format contains also the concentration of open positions in the hands of the major 4 and 8 market investors at the moment of data collection, while short format does not contains any data about concentration. TFF report is available in long format only, while the Supplemental is available in the short format only. Report type Scope Format Futures Combined Long Short Legacy ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Disaggregated ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ TTFF ✓ ✓ ✓ X Supplemental X ✓ X ✓ Legacy report As said above, market actors in Legacy report are divided in 2 categories: Non-Commercials , or Large Speculators : they are market speculators as well as hedge funds. This category normally uses financial leverage to amplify variation of derivative asset and has an aggressive behavior in the market. They use rigid stop loss policies and, when the market falls below certain levels, they reverse positions on the other side. The main purpose of Large Speculators is not the asset they buy or sell, but to obtain a net profit from the buy/sell cycle. They normally have a trend following behavior. Commercials buy futures just because they are interested in the underlying asset and try to hedge their financial exposition related to the commercial activity with the assets they are interested in. These market actors hold more than 50% of open positions in the US futures market and normally they go against the price trend: they sell when the market goes higher and they buy when the market goes lower. Their positions on underlying assets normally anticipate market trend, hence they should be carefully monitored Non-Reportable : are the open position of small investors/traders that normally are on the wrong side of the market. This investors category is usually confused and not disciplined. They do not follow precise rules and are usually dragged by the trend, but they are slow to reverse positions when the market trend reverses. The following example contains data about "futures only" market for BUTTER, coming from Chicago Mercantile Exchange. BUTTER (CASH SETTLED) - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE Code-050642 FUTURES ONLY POSITIONS AS OF 03/17/20 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| NON-REPORTABLE NON-COMMERCIAL | COMMERCIAL | TOTAL | POSITIONS --------------------------------|---------------------|--------------------------|----------------- LONG | SHORT |SPREADS | LONG | SHORT | LONG | SHORT | LONG | SHORT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (CONTRACTS OF 20,000 POUNDS) OPEN INTEREST: 11,597 COMMITMENTS 0 2,473 453 10,401 8,149 10,854 11,075 743 522 CHANGES FROM 03/10/20 (CHANGE IN OPEN INTEREST: 753) 0 -127 101 675 796 776 770 -23 -17 PERCENT OF OPEN INTEREST FOR EACH CATEGORY OF TRADERS 0.0 21.3 3.9 89.7 70.3 93.6 95.5 6.4 4.5 NUMBER OF TRADERS IN EACH CATEGORY (TOTAL TRADERS: 47) 0 12 10 28 22 38 34 It is possible to see as in the report is provided the total amount of LONG and SHORT positions for Non-Commercial, Commercial and Non-Reportable actors. Variations from previous week are moreover reported. In addiction to LONG and SHORT positions, Legacy report contains also the SPREAD amount, that is available for Non-Commercial only, and refers to contracts that are opened LONG and SHORT at the same time. Normally a growing SPREAD value means a high level of uncertainty. If we calculate NET POSITIONS (NP) for the 3 actors categories, as it's easy to check, the report show a zero-sum scenario: NP Non-Comm = 0 – 2,473 = - 2,473 NP Comm = 10,401 – 8,149 = 2,252 NP Non-Rept = 743 – 522 = 221 NP Non-Comm + NP Comm + NP Non-Rept = -2,473 + 2,252 + 221 = 0 OPEN INTEREST value is the grand total resulting as the sum of LONG, SHORT and SPREAD positions: Open Interest = 0 + 453 + 10,401 + 743 = 11,597 Supplemental report Even the Supplemental report (called also Commodity Index Traders - CIT) shows data in the same manner of Legacy report, but the market actors are 3: Non-Commercial, Commercial and Index Traders. Non-Commercial and Commercial actors are the same, while Index Traders category has appeared for the first time in January 2007. Before that date, investors that are now reported in this category were scattered in the two existing categories (Non-Commercial and mostly in the Commercial). The creation of Index Traders category has had the purpose to separate that category from Commercials, because Index Traders are not involved in the buy/sell cycle of underlying assets, and are usually managed funds, institutional investors or swap dealers. Index traders are normally interested in passive and longstanding LONG positions, while are not interested in the short-term price fluctuations. It's not unusual that this category start buying when price is falling and technical analysis says that the price falling will be even more deep. Index Traders are hence a counter-part of speculators, who have usually a contrarian habit. Supplemental report is provided for 13 commodities: • WHEAT-SRW - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • WHEAT-HRW - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • CORN - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • SOYBEANS - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • SOYBEAN OIL - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • SOYBEAN MEAL - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • COTTON NO. 2 - ICE FUTURES U.S. • LEAN HOGS - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE • LIVE CATTLE - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE • FEEDER CATTLE - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE • COCOA - ICE FUTURES U.S. • SUGAR NO. 11 - ICE FUTURES U.S. • COFFEE C - ICE FUTURES U.S. Disaggregated report Market actors of Disaggregated report are: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User : they are involved in production, handling, packaging or transport of physical assets that is underlying to the future instrument or option. These actors use futures to cover/hedge risks associated to the activities they are involved in that are strictly related to the production of the assets Swap Dealers : they are subjects that are involved in trading swap contracts related to the commodity and uses futures market to cover/hedge risks associated with swap transactions. The counterpart of a Swap dealer could be a speculative traders, as well as an hedge fund, or a more traditional Commercial subject that is interested in managing risks associated with the commerce activities of the asset Money manager : to this category belong Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA), Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) or an unregistered fund identified by the CFTC. These subjects are delegated from their clients to do financial operations in their behalf Other Reportable : all speculative traders that are not belonging in the three previous category are included in this category Even in this case, the report shows LONG, SHORT and SPREAD positions. Comparing this kind of report with Legacy, we can see that: COMMERCIAL = PRODUCER/MERCHANT/PROCESSOR/USER + SWAP DEALERS NON-COMMERCIAL = MONEY MANAGER + OTHER REPORTABLE This explains why the report is called "disaggregated". It shows the same data but with a more level of detail especially regarding the actors that hold open positions. If we take the Disaggregated report about BUTTER for the "futures only" market coming from Chicago Mercantile Exchange (equivalent to the previous example that is showed under the Legacy report section, we see: :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ : : Producer/Merchant : : : : : Processor/User : Swap Dealers : Managed Money : Other Reportables : : Long : Short : Long : Short : Spreading : Long : Short : Spreading : Long : Short : Spreading : -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BUTTER (CASH SETTLED) - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE (CONTRACTS OF 20,000 POUNDS) : CFTC Code #050642 Open Interest is 11,597 : : Positions : : 8,893 6,326 1,048 1,363 460 0 301 180 0 2,172 273 : : : : Changes from: March 10, 2020 : : 244 648 324 41 107 0 -12 -8 0 -115 109 : : : : Percent of Open Interest Represented by Each Category of Trader : : 76.7 54.5 9.0 11.8 4.0 0.0 2.6 1.6 0.0 18.7 2.4 : : : : Number of Traders in Each Category Total Traders: 47 : : 24 18 . . 4 0 . . 0 10 9 : --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If we take the categories Producer/Merchant/Processor/User and Swap Dealers and we sum all LONG positions and then subtract all SHORT positions, we obtain an overall NET positions like this: NP = (8,893 +1,048 + 0 + 0) - (6,326 + 1,363) = 2,252 Now, if we do the same calculation for Commercial category of the correspondent Legacy report (see above) we obtain: NP = 10,401 - 8,149 = 2,252 This is the confirmation that Disaggregated report contains the split of data reported in the Legacy report, where Commercial category is divided in Producer/Merchant/Processor/User and Swap Dealers. Same calculation would demonstrate that Non-Commercial category in the Legacy report is spitted here in Managed Money and Other Reportable categories. If we now consider the Disaggregated report and we sum all LONG positions and then we subtract all SHORT positions for each actors category, we obtain: (8,893 + 1,048 + 0 + 0) – (6,326 + 1,363 + 301 + 2,172) = 9941 - 10162 = -221 Given that the grand total should represent a zero-sum scenario, e can deduce from Disaggregated report that net position of Non-Reportable subjects should be +221, hence a net LONG of 221 contracts, and that is correct, in fact it is possible to obtain the same result from correspondent Legacy report (see above) by subtracting net SHORT position for Non-Reportable actors to the amount of net LONG positions for the same actors. Hence Disaggregated report allow us to calculato also net position of Non-Reportable, even if the data do not explicitly report the value. Traders in financial futures report This report is a further view on the market and split market actors in two sides (SELL and BUY) and 4 categories: SELL SIDE Dealer/Intermediary : are financial intermediaries who earn by the commissions related to the sell of financial products. Big banks and other financial entities are involved in this activities BUY SIDE Asset Manager/Institutional : they are insitutional investors, including pension funds, insurance companies and investment portfolio managers whose clients are mainly institutional entities Leveraged funds : these are typically speculative funds (hedge funds) and various types of money managers, including the Commodity Trading Advisors (CTA) and the Commodity Pool Operators (CPO) not necessarily registered by CFTC. These subjects can be involved in hedging strategies and arbitrages on their own capital, or even third parties capital Other reportable : these are all the traders that are not included in previous categories Differently from Disaggregated report, the TFF report the positions of the mentioned actors categories are not an exact disaggregation of Commercial and Non-Commercial positions reported in the Legacy report. Here each actor belonging to one of the categories mentioned above could belong to the Commercial or the Non-Commercial category in the Legacy report, basing on the decision that CFTC takes during the report creation, that can be different time after time (i.e.: a subject that has already been considered a Commercial one in the beginning, can be shifted to Non-Commercial after a while, depending on the specific activities he is involved during the time, that can change as well). The TFF report is moreover available only in the LONG format REPORT ANALYSIS If we properly analyze data in the Commitment of Traders legacy report, we can determine the expectations of each market actor category regarding the market future. The possibility to know the net positions of Commercial subjects (institutional investors) is the basis to understand the market sentiment. Their influence is, in fact, between 50% and 75% of the entire futures market of S&P500 and from 40% and 60% of Nasdaq100. It is useful to point out that Commercial subjects, as well as the Non-Commercial, can take arbitrage or hedging positions, or, alternatively, put in place an active management of their portfolios by buying or selling futures on foreign (not US) markets, or, again, have open position on the futures' underlying assets and protect themselves from risks of price variations by taking opposite positions on the futures market. Hence the Commitment of Traders Report is an important thermometer to measure US stock exchange sentiment, but it isn't a tool that, alone, can allow us to predict how financial markets will move. It should be used (as usual) together with other indicators, tools, analysis and perspectives to have a better understanding of what is happening and a good approximation of what is going to happen (most likely). Commercial subjects are active actors in the futures' underlying asset market and generally sell when the market (price) grows and buy when the price is more convenient (low), hence their activities are contrarian to the logic of speculators. For this reason the Commercial actors are often responsible of market moves and trends. They drag prices and the market with their activities, hence they anticipate and determine the market trends. Non-Commercial subjects, viceversa, have opposite interests. They want to make money by price variations, hence they buy when the market shows growing prices and sell in the opposite conditions. This behavior is what we call "trend following" approach. Here are some typical scenarios that we can find by analyzing the Commitment of Traders report: 1) If Non-Reportable actors (small/retail traders) are LONG and Commercial are SHORT, the Non-Reportable actors are most likely going to loose money because the price will go to to the side where Commercial are pushing it (down) 2) On the maximum levels of an asset price (i.e. near significant RESITANCE levels), Non-Reportable are likely pushed to SELL their positions. Then stop loss levels are likely hit and only after the price starts his falling stage 3) If Non-Commercial are LONG and Non-Reportable are SHORT, we are likely in the middle of an UPTREND and there is more space for the price to gro further 4) If Non-Commercial are LONG and also Non-Reportable are LONG, we are likely in the "euphoric" phase of the trend, hence the trend is going to finish soon 5) If Non-Commercial are SHORT, Non-Reportable are upgrading their SHORT positions and Comemrcial slow down their LONG positions, e re likely in the terminal phase of a downtrend If we accept the hypothesis that Commercial traders hold better information on the market than the others just because they are active actors of the futures' underlying assets (it's their own business!), it is very important to monitor their behaviour in order to understand how they are evaluating the situation related to the specific commodity that is at the center of our interest. Commitment of Traders Index An interesting approach to have effective insights from the Commitment of Traders report can be obtained by calculating an index using the report data. Normally Comemrcial net positions are used to calculate the index as follows: NP (Net Position) = Long Positions – Short Positions Usually, an interval of 26 periods (weeks) is selected and the calculation to determine the index value is: COT Index = * 100 The index, expressed as a pecentage value from 0 to 100, reflects net position of Commercials on the basis of last 26 periods. It can be used as an indicator of overbought and oversold zones and can be a good tool to understand where investors are moving. The index can be also calculated for Non-Commercial or Non-Reportable positions. Last, but not least, remember that Commitment Of Traders report is released every Friday evening, but contains data up until previous Tuesday, hence a "lagging" effect should be seriously considered in all the analysis that involves it. The content of this article has solely education purposes and should be not considered trading or investement advise.
Education
by Marco_it972
How to filter noise out of Technicals and Fundamentals part 2 Part 2 Fundamental noise filtering I place far more weight on fundamental analysis then technical. At first I thought it was useless as half the news or analysts would say one thing and the other half would say the opposite. the trick is to only look at sources that can reliably and logically be shown to have a impact on the market. Who has an impact on the market: 1: Speculators (yep just speculators not the news or the actual state of an economy) while that statement is not exactly true it seems to be a reliable self fulfilling prophecy lets take a look at large speculators positions from 2002 until 2018 compared to a bar chart. i65.tinypic.com this picture shows the weekly CFTC commitment of traders reports from 2002 to 2018 correlated into a line chart under a corresponding bar chart. The arrow in the picture points to a turning point where the speculators (green line) went from net short to net long. what happened? The market shot up like a rocket. outside of consolidation periods the market just about always drops or gains right after this happens just looking at the EUR it ALWAYS marks the end of a trend without fail. Its almost eerie how accurate the CFTC comittment of traders reports are at predicting trend changes. where do we get the COT report and how do we use it? Step 1: go to www.cftc.gov step 2: click on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and scroll past the butter, cows and logs to the EURO FX i67.tinypic.com step 3: look at the important parts of the EURO FX data. i67.tinypic.com 1: the date of reported positions 2:Non-Commercials (people investing to make money. These are the people who have so much money in positions they have to report it to the CFTC weekly. people and company's with that kind of money have far more resources to base their decisions off of then me and if most of them think in one direction then odds are most of them are right. As we can see on the chart in the picture most of them went net short not during but before the euro crashed in 2014.) 3: On the left long positions on the right short positions. (far more long then short this is a definite uptrend.) 4: changes from last week. very very important for positioning in immediate furtue. For example on the 9th we got this report i66.tinypic.com what happened directly after was an uptrend. look for changes in net long and short positions. An increase in net long from last week or a decrease in net short from last week will likely predict an uptrend in a day or 2. sometimes the trend already happened by the time you get the report. The COT report is the only fundamental analysis I use. Why: 1. conflict of interest. most of the large news company's are owned by banks ergo any information I gather based on news is biased. 2. Education I grew up on fishing boats in Alaska and currently drive a forklift all day. forming a accurate opinion based on economic data on my own is beyond my level of education. Lets recognize our weak points and not pretend we can be on par with someone who has spent years in college for economics. 3. Retail traders are 90% wrong and I am a retail trader lets take a quick look at how Retail traders net positions look. www.oanda.com as we can see with the EUR/USD 63% of retail traders are trying to short a market that has been going up for months non-stop and they have been for months its usually worse then 63% too lul.
Education
by malikiie
EURUSD – Is it doing an about turn for the worse? - Update In my previous chart of EURUSD, you will find lots of details explaining why I am anticipating a new bearish cycle in which the wave 4 (in circle) was about completed and wave 5 (in circle) was about to commence. There are lots of additional charts in comment section to help validate longer term view. This chart is linked below for your reference. We did not have the follow through to initial decline. Instead a new high was pasted last week. At present, I do not think that this has really changed much for the longer term. In the short term wave 4 was still in progress. So this is a second attempt to identify possible completion of wave 4, which could now be in place or will be shortly. If correct then wave 5 will follow as anticipated. In addition to details describe in the earlier chart referred to above, here is the summary of updated technical: 1. We have a trendline from July 2008 high, connection April 2011 high (but ignoring May 2014 as over throw) which comes in to proximity of current price that might mark wave 4 high. 2. We have an uptrend line on RSI from 2013 and August 2017 peak appear to suggest a hidden bearish divergence along with normal divergence with price making new high above August peak and RSI making lower high. 3. In addition to that, we have possible time symmetry shown on the chart – namely April 2011 High to March 2014 closing high measures 150 bars on weekly charts, which equates to approx 149 bars measured from March 2015 low to current high. 4. Fibonacci time relationship between Waves 1 – 3 and wave 4 is approx Fib ration of 1.3618 as shown in the chart. 5. Open Interest and Net Long by Large Speculators is even more extreme now than the one we noted at previous peak in August/September 2017, see chart below. Short Entry: You can drop down to daily or 4 hour time frame to time short entry on confirmation using your normal method. Just keep in mind that it might can chop about before it gets going in anticipated decline. Warning: This is my interpretation of price action using TA approach that I consider helps the me most, but could be completely wrong. Therefore, as always, do your own analysis for your trade requirement and ignore my views. For those who appreciate my analysis, select to follow me and the chart for notification of future updates. Indicate you like my analysis by thumbs up, comments and sharing it with others. If you have an alternative idea then, please be constructive and share for all to learn from. Thank you for taking the time to read my analysis. DanV
Education
by DanV
14
EUR & YEN Futures - Use of Commitment of Traders data Commodity & Futures Trading Commission gather data from various Exchanges and compile which are then released and are available on their Websites - www.cftc.gov Commitment of Traders Data = COT (abberiviation) These data are released on Friday of Each Week after Market Closes. They are based on Positions as close of Tuesday of that week. These are compiled to show 3 main groups which are: Commercials = Banks, Broker/Dealers (Hedging the Risk), Producers, Wholesalers, Or Commodity Users – Either looking to Hedge Risk or Receive or Send Delivery Speculators – which are: Non-Commercials = Money Managers, Hedge/Leveraged Fund Mangers, who are Speculators and are not looking to for delivery or receiving one on settlement day Non-Reportable = Still large traders, but a whose positions falls below the threshed to be classes as Non-Commercial Non-Commercials have Research Departments manned by Fundamental and Technical Analysts. These are then use by their trader. Therefore their positions reflect both the Fundamental and Technical analysis and can be viewed as Hybrid. Their sudden change from week to week of significant amount or percentage and their overall net long or short compared with historical behaviour can be used as what might be deemed as relative extreme together with Open Interest and Technical Analysis can provide interesting and useful insight in the strength of the trend or possible reversal. See the linked EURUSD chart and a video publication of Oil for further details on how I have used them. Below is a link of examples of the weekly data released for Futures for respective Instrument: drive.google.com I hope it will helps you in your own application of this to your Technical Analysis. Thank you for viewing my video and welcome comments or questions. DanV
Education
by DanV
8
Trapped traders - how to use the commitments of traders report Before reading this I want people to understand that this kind of trade doesn't always work (NO TRADING SYSTEM DOES) so if this single trade doesn't work, don't lose confidence in the technique - it has served me extremely well and I have used it many times before. Both for USDJPY (2 ideas) and USDCAD (1 idea) - you can find these ideas on my page. Links to those ideas (UCAD was positioning hugely long) You can find the commitments of traders report on this page (www.cmegroup.com) every Friday. It reflects the current positions of forex futures traders in Chicago's Mercantile Exchange on the Tuesday of that week. You want to see the "leveraged" positions - these are CTAs and hedge funds - the people like you and me that are speculating on these prices with the objective of making returns; usually with leverage. This is last Friday's report for AUDUSD. prnt.sc Note how Long (blue) positions have been rising. On 18/7 the net position was 45k LONG, on 8/8 the net position is 75k LONG. So between these two dates, we know that 30,000 long positions were opened. The price on 18/7 was 0.7916 and on 8/8 it was 0.7911. Those positions were therefore opened above 0.7900. The current price is 0.7820 and that means that all of those positions are experiencing a draw down of AT LEAST 80 pips (>1%). They are trapped traders. If price continues to move down, at some point those people are going to get out of those longs because the draw down will be too much for them to take. Getting out of a long = going short => price moving down = move people have to exit their longs = going short => price moving down etc. So just go short and you can benefit from this.
Education
by TraderVoe
1