That has certainly been on my mind. Volatility is still elevated & the big intraday price swings, especially the very sharp & swift, near-vertical rips & dips of ~1% usual occur during bearish, not bullish trends (usually but not always). The WSJ ran an article a few months back about a concerning trend in diminishing trading volumes in the stock futures which is likely to be playing into the recent sharp swings in the stock futures, but during & outside of the regular trading session.

Not much to do about it other than to keep position sizes on the lighter-side which then allows one to use larger-than-normal stops without risking any more capital than normal. I’ve been doing that recently which has been beneficial, on balance, as I’ve experienced fewer stops raids which allowed my to stay in trades that panned out which more than made up for the losses on the trades that I did give a little more room on the stops that were hit.

Ty Randy. Perhaps the increasing rips and dips are like tremors, foreshadowing for whats to come. I’ve been told it was not uncommon to see several hundreds points swings daily in DJ back in 2008.

Yes, with those key resistance levels not only taken out but taken out very impulsively, the near-term bias is bullish. Still some additional nearby overhead resistance levels to contend with but until & unless this morning’s breakouts fail, the next-term outlook is bullish.

I looked at /CL this morning as well as the charts of USO & I just don’t have a very strong conviction on going long for another leg up. Of the two, I’d rather be long than short but since I don’t have to be either, I am flat (no position) on crude right now as I’d prefer to see how the stock indexes follow through on this morning’s breakouts.

If you took or take /CL, just make sure to keep a stop in place in case it and/or the equity markets suddenly reverse as I’ve been noticing some increasing very sudden & very sharp rips & dips in the stock futures recently as well as an increased rate of whipsaw signals lately. Best to keep position sizes on the lighter side for now in order to allow for slightly wider than usual stops which help to prevent getting shaken out on the sharp rips & dips lately with volatility elevated.