Friday, January 30, 2015

[USO] update - is the bottom really in?

I have been on bottoming watch for USO since about $20.  After having correctly called the 2014 top very closely, my first serious attempt to call the exact bottom was at $19.50.  Of course, that model failed quickly which is exactly the intent of every EW model: to either be correct in which case you let your profits run or to be wrong and to get stopped out quickly.  I made 2 or maybe even 3 other attempted bottoming calls on USO, each of those were also debunked quickly.  This is not failure, it is normal and it is expected when you are trying to get the lowest possible buy in price.  Failure is calling a bottom and then just blindly buying based on gut feel and then when the trade goes against you then you just lose your ass because you had no scientific reason to buy which left you no scientifically defined stop out point.  The ability to play only those poker hands that have a high odds of winning and to rapidly fold those that you chose to play but which began to go against you while keeping most of your bet is how my EW trading system is far and away better than any other I have used over a couple decades of trading.  This system puts the odds of winning squarely in your favor if only you will have the discipline to follow the basic rules of:
  1. Never enter a position unless you have an EW count that says a reversal of the prior trend is going to happen immediately.
  2. As soon as you enter the trade, enter the stop which must be executed if you get a lower lower than the last low which your model believed to be a bottom (or the top if you are shorting).
  3. Expect to lose a few for small money while winning big when you do win.
  4. Avoid buying or selling on gut feel, advice you heard from some stock salesman on CNBC, or based on the unknown and unknowable fantasy called "fundamentals" by those seeing to unload their essentially worthless shares on you.
  5. Understand that the Elliott wave principle is in fact science, not gut feel or magic (although it might sometimes seem like magic if you look at some of my calls in 2014...).  This is the science of herd tracking with the herd in question being the human race.
OK, now for the update. Please refer to the model in the backlink and you will see that the chart has performed almost exactly as modeled.  And so the question posed by the prior model is now in our faces: was the recent bottom really 5th of 5 of 5 or just 1 of 5 of 5

The answer is that I don't know for sure but the evidence so far points to it being the bottom (5 of 5 of 5).  First off, I can count it as such in the zoomed out chart as shown below.  Importantly, wave 5 is now the same size as wave 1 in this model (shown by the blue verticals).  Also, we have triangles and wedges in the expected locations (4ths and 3rds respectively).

 
So far the bounce is ambiguous in terms of USO itself.  The oil patch players like CJES are a bit more clear in their counts.  But in both cases, we only see a-b-c to the level of the prior 4th so far.  I strongly suspect that the red path will be followed below.  This could perform as shown below but it could also pull back into a deep vee wave 2 to form an inclining double bottom so DON'T CHASE.  Wait for the a-b-c pullback and then you will be able to confidently buy in with low risk to your capital by setting tight stops just below your entry point.


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