Energy Trading Notes, Monday July 31
Jul 31, 2017 Trading Blog
Just my trading notes for the day, I have nowhere else to put them, so I just keep them here. Helps me organize by writing them down. Maybe they will help someone else.
Tuesday’s XOP Grid:
+1 ATR 33.37
+.5 ATR 32.95
Monday High 32.85
Monday Close 32.52
Tuesday Pivot Point 32.49
Closing VWAP 32.46
Monday Low 32.10
-.5 ATR 32.09
-1 ATR 31.67
XOP -.32 (-.97%) – Weak from the opening bell with a strong drop until 11am. Volume disappeared and price drifted until after lunch and oil price spiked on some EIA news. XOP caught a quick bid and ran to 32.85 on fairly light volume. There weren’t any real sizable sellers there, just lack of demand. Price ran into a wall after turning green for just a few minutes. Drifted down on no volume for the last 1.5 hours. 32.58 was the anchor of the day and should be Tuesday as well.
Tuesday outlook: Oil price kept running up after XOP peaked around 2:20. There still seems to be a real disconnect between oil and the XOP. XOP down -.95% and USO +1.1% just doesn’t work. Still thinking this runs down again Tuesday, and probably would have kept falling today into that gap from last Tuesday had oil not spiked late in the day.
Strong Groups: Refiners – VLO +3.5%, HFC +2.1%, PBF +5.5%, TSO +1.7%, MPC +1.8%
Weak Groups: Natural Gas – EQT -3.6%, COG -2.5%, AR -2.4%, RRC -3.5%. The UNG was down -4.4%.
PSX earnings pre-market Tuesday.
RRC, PXD, DVN, EOG, NFX earnings after market close Tuesday.
Large cap energy was being bought today. XLE was green at +.3% while the XOP and XES were both red. XOM, CVX, RDSA, BP, TOT, STO, COP, PXD, all the bigs were green. It seems to mirror the overall market where the SPY is showing relative strength compared to the smaller cap IWM.
There really weren’t any other obvious trends today or stocks with outsized gains or losses. GPOR was a big loser -8%. OIS disappointed with earnings down -6.5%. Some of the sand stocks had good days with SND +4.5% and CRR +8%.
Venezuela seems to be a big news topic, but I think this is mostly a waste of time. Do we really need to take any action to encourage their self destruction? They are doing just fine on their own, why bother. OPEC meeting Aug 7-8. $50 oil seems to be catching all the headlines, psychological level I guess, but this is just normal range these days. It is still concerning that oil continues to run, but XOP is just stuck down here in the low 30’s.
On the Scaramucci firing, how in the world does someone with such lack of self awareness make it that far up the ladder?
One trading mistake today, took a long at 32.55 in the first 30 minutes on the plan that price was going to get back above Friday’s 32.58 low. Should have either taken the long way lower or simply waited for confirmation and taken the long around 32.65. Shouldn’t have take that trade in no man’s land. Killed it for a 10 cent loss. Too impatient. Only other trade was a long on a pullback to VWAP around 1pm, that one worked well.