January 6 – Taylor Trading Sell Short Day in T Bond Futures

Treasury Bond futures had a big rally on Thursday as they rallied out of Wednesday’s breakout pattern. This gave them a Taylor Trading Technique Sell Short day signal for Friday

Treasuries (Bonds, the 5 and 10 Year T Notes as well) had a breakout pattern Wednesday. They all showed range contraction from Tuesday as well as a Doji Bar, which indicate a lack of participation and lack of commitment to buying higher or selling lower, which would be needed to create a daily trend.

Breakout setups are often resolved by a big directional move in the following session, as traders decide on a direction, which pulls in more trade interest, setting up a positive feedback loop. That’s what we saw in Treasuries Thursday – they opened near the low of the range and rallied over the session, ending with a close near the daily high.

In the session following a breakout move I normally anticipate a Taylor Trading move in the opposite direction, so in this case Thursday’s breakout rally meant we would anticipate a Taylor Trading Sell Short day for Thursday. We look for a Sell Short day because the breakout rally of the previous day tends to create an “excess high” (to use the Market Profile term) that ends up marking a top and a trend change down.

The Taylor Trading Sell Short day tells us to look for a failed rally above the previous day high (the “reference price”) with the move back under the reference price being our signal for a short sale. Thus, for March T Bond futures we would watch 153-00 as our reference price today.

Bonds did have a rally and a sell signal before the employment report. I don’t like to take trades into major reports so I passed on this trade. My thought is that the result of a report tends to be a 50 / 50 proposition, and I’d like to take trades where I think I have better odds than that. Additionally, a report like NFP often causes the kind of “excess moves” we look for, and looking for trades after a report allows us to exploit other traders’ mistakes.

The initial move after the NFP was a rally back above our reference price and then the session high (153-05) to make a new high of 153-09. This rally failed as well and the subsequent drop back below either today’s lower high or the Thursday high could be used as a signal for a short sale.

The initial stop loss would go above today’s high of 153-09. We would hold shorts only when the market shows downside momentum and a new high would negate the bearish trend.

Bonds sold off in the wake of the employment report, making a series of lower highs to make a session low of 151-29around 8 AM (This was just above Fibonacci retracement support at 151-28). This low held until 9:40 when stocks finally rallied above their Thursday high (S&P futures have a breakout setup for today.