Over the weekend (in the Econ Forecast I send out) I mentioned that next week I would share with you how I trade the Crude Oil number due out tomorrow at 10:30 eastern time.

I got a handful of emails from people wanting to know if I could speed up that timeline and tell them now, in time for this weel’s number release.

It isn’t all that complicated, so I decided to send this out tonight in advance of tomorrow’s release.

Here are the steps.

At 10:30 a.m eastern time on Wednesdays, the Energy Information Administration releases the number of barrels of oil held in reserve this week by commercial oil firms, compared to the number of barrels they held last week.

The number is measured in millions of barrels, so a .9 number means 900,000 barrels, while a 4.9 number means 4.9 million barrels, and a “-” sign before the number means that number is less than what was held last week.

I tell you that for information sake, because I really do not care what the number is.

I should also mention that in weeks where the previous Monday was a national holiday, the number comes out later, usually on Thursday and usually at 11:00 a.m.  Always check the calendar to confirm the day and time of the number release.

So at 10:30 a.m. I open an Oil chart (WTI if that’s one of your options, USOil if you only get the one option) and put up a 5M candlestick chart.

Yes, candlestick. Not Renko.

Then I wait for that 10:30 a.m. 5 minute candle to close.

I mark the high and low (including wicks) of that candle and wait.

If price breaks above the high, I buy.

If price breaks below the low, I sell.

If price gets 5 cents past the high or low I move my stop loss to the entry price.

The reason for that is these trades come in 2 sizes.  One fiddle faddles around moving up and down through the entry price line multiple times before traders make a final decision on direction.

The other takes off like a cat that sat in a puddle of turpentine (if you know, you know) and never looks back.  We like these trades.

The idea here is to bank winners and not post any sort of significant losers.  Thus the quick move of the S/L to B/E.

Occasionally with Oil it takes off right at 10:30 and never looks back. When that happens, just Buy or Sell right at 10:35 and hold on as long as you can.

If you open an Oil chart and isolate the Wednesday 10:30 candle on the 5M chart, you’ll be able to clearly see what I’m talking about when I say there are 2 types of trades.

And if you get the type that dilly dallies around for 20 or 30 minutes, take heart.  These nearly always end up as long winning moves as the day goes on.  So be patient and enter the next time price breaks the previous high or low of those price moves that failed to work out.

When price is in the range between the High and Low of the 10:30 5M candle, you do nothing.  You sit and wait for the hidden breakout to take place.

Here is a screenshot of last week’s Oil number release and the aftermath.

The green/red lines represent the high/low prices for the 5M candle that formed after the release of the Oil number last week.  You can see Oil broke through the bottom (red) line twice and moved 5 pips into profit before stalling and moving back.  The first entry would trigger our trade and at +5 the SL would move to b/e, so that trade ultimately amounted to nothing.  The second entry failed to move any further than the first trade did (maxed out at +5) so no entry until we see +6, thus no trade.

Price then moved through the upper (green) line and we entered exactly at 81.05 (pending orders work great for this) and price moved to 81. 33 before reversing and moving back into the range, for a total possible profit of 28 pips.  I have a target of 20 I shoot for on a regular basis, so I would exit at +20 once the reversal began.

There was a second excursion above the high line about an hour later and this one peaked during the session at 44 before moving back well past +20 towards the b/e line.  Again, I would exit at +20 because that’s what I do with oil barring any solid rason to stay in.

This type of setup happens almost every week.  Once in a blue moon price is just flat, and the pip space between high and low is so large, price just stays inside the range for most or all of the session. Oil tends to stop trading around 1:30 or 2 p.m. most afternoons…the market is open but the trades and the volume simply aren’t there most days…so trading later afternoon breaks isn’t a good idea.

And that is how I trade the Oil number. I don’t care about the number itself and whether it beats expectations or not.  I just follow price action and the breaks of the high or low of that 5 minute candle.

Now here is something you likely did not know:

This trade is called a Hidden Breakout trade, and there are a handful of these trades that set up in plain sight every single day, but they are invisible to almost all traders.

There are trades that set up during the Asian session, the London session, and of course the New York session (we just looked at one of them).  They all involve certain specific time frame charts, and follow the same rules as were mentioned above: don’t trade while price is in the range between high and low, only trade the breaks above the high or below the low, and move your S/L to B/E as soon as possible to make it a free trade with no danger of losing any money.

To make these trades a bit easier to spot, I created a tool called RangeFinder.

To use RangeFinder you place it on the candle you want to track, and RangeFinder draws the high and low prices from the close of that candle until the end of the tradng day. All you do is set up Buy and Sell trades on the high and low prices and wait for price action to move in your favor.

There are a total of 7 charts currently where we have identified consistent profitable breakout setups, and you will get that list of charts, along with the time frame to use and which candle to use with RangeFinder.  And as we identify more profitable charts, we will send those along as well.

RangeFinder was originally used as a bonus for traders who purchased the Pending Trade version of AutoScaler, as these trades are tailor-made for people who trade pending orders.

But that means it was not available to anyone who was not interested in AutoScaler-Pending.

But enough people have asked about it I’ve decided to release it on its own, at what I think is an affordable $27 price tag.  One-off, no subscriptions, use it on as many charts and platforms as you need, as long as the platforms belong to you.

It also is only in MT4 and MT5 versions at the moment.  I will have the NT8 and TradingView versions available early next week.

So you have about 12 hours before the Wednesday Oil number drops. If you want to start getting the feel of using RangeFinder (and take advantage of the other trades we point you towards, which are daily trades instead of once a week trades) click the Buy Now button and get started using RangeFinder today.

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