February employment report unnoticed by market
5 Minutes Candlestick Chart
Unemployement report figures are released at 8:30 am today. Payrolls were up a strong 243,000 in February. January was revised to a 170,000 gain from an originally reported 193,000 increase. The net change overall is slightly ahead of expectations of a 200,000 to 210,000 increase in payrolls. Hourly earnings were up 0.3%.
Generally, the data is positive and usually we can expect an immediate market reaction during the release of the data. However, the data went unnoticed and market remained flat. I remained extremely cautious and stayed out of the market. There was a major spike up at 10:00 a.m but I decided not to go in for 2 reasons.
Although we can MACD boucing back from negative region, stochastics is not in the oversold region ( instead it is in the overbought region --> see red box). This is conflicting evidence and suggests the market can behave in unpredictable ways. Secondly, moving averages are almost flat and the 15 minutes chart (below) shows that the previous day had been a downtrending. It would be wiser to go short than long. I decided to wait for price to hit the moving averages and go short when it rebounds.
It turned out that the upward spike lasted for 20 points and I missed the opportunity to go long. Such situations occur frequently, but as a trader you should not regret or blame yourself for not taking the plunge. Trust your own judgement. At the point in time, I believed staying out of the market is the appropiate course of action and I sticked to it. NO REGRETS.
Price action 11:00 was range bound and did not provided a signal for me to short. I decided to take a break and call it a day. Market is moving in unpredictable ways and price is still range bound.
15 Minutes Candlestick Chart
