day trading commodities- profitably !

Hi everyone,

Though I have been a member of the forum for sometime, am not too frequent a visitor. But I should say that for everything I learnt about trading, the stepping stones were here. Saint's " fishing " tutorial is what actually started me off on a more methodical trading route. though there were pitfalls I have been reasonably successful in earning from the markets.

Though I mainly trade the Nifty index, I also indulged in commodities with appalling returns till I altered my strategy slightly. Since I found it to be reasonably good I thought it would be good to share the method with the members of the forum.

In case you are open to looking at the trading strategy, I will give you the broad outlines of the system I follow. I do not claim it to be the holy grail- honestly nothing is. But with some discipline and control, it will be profitable as I have seen over the past year.

I also should say I do not access the forum regularly so my posts may not occur everyday, though I will try to be as frequent as possible.

To start with the commodities prices are governed by various factors beyond the layman understanding , but broadly they are effected by the international prices and in india , inspite of this , there is a further effect of the exchange value of the the indian rupee. For eg., even when the gold prices are down almost 40% from peak the impact in india is minimal since the rupee depreciated significantly since then.

Also the overnight prices and the early morning international prices have their effect on the commodity market pricing in india, I NEVER carry overnight positions.

With all these I started trading commodities using the international prices., i.e., I am using some forex brokers MT4 platform to read the international prices, since we get a seamless price movement over all markets, and take positions in rupee here with my broker at whatever is the price at that point. This has helped me in not having to worry about what the rupee value is at that point in conjunction with the international price etc.,

I basically trade base metals and crude only, which I found to be more comfortable than trading bullion.

The are two indicators which I use for getting my signals . I use a method given by Imran Sait on the Forexfactory website . I am giving the link below, it is quite detailed and with the necessary indicators . please go through the same as it will be much clearer to understand than me explaining it.
Along with this method for confirmation I use the classic pivot point ( 3 day pivot point indicators are available on the net abundantly since it is MT4) .
For trading I use the Pivot points as the signal and use the indicator given by Imran Sait only for confirmation of direction. The Laquerre indicator is quite good.

I only use the 30 min candle chart

For long Trades

Once a Green candle closes above the given pivot point , wait for the closure of the next candle, if this also closes above the pivot point and is a green candle , take a long position. If it a Red candle, or a Green candle which closes below the pivot point, I avoid taking a position, in such a condition also it may still go up , but I avoid taking a trade here and will wait for the next signal to form, since it is commodities there is plenty of time for signals to be generated. If the wick of the green candles are longer at the bottom than the top , it is a clearer indication for a long.

Exit – I have noticed that most of the time once a pivot point is broken the prices tend to touch the next pivot point. You can use this as an exit or modify your SL to buying price, depending on your comfort level. I normally cover half my positions here .

For Stop Loss. – I usually take the low of the 2nd candle prior to the one used to take the long position, but again this can be as per your comfort since there is no fixed rule on Stop losses. It always advisable to have stop losses since commodities can be very volatile. I personally place a physical stop loss @ .618% ( I like fibonacci system and use it for index trading) below the buying price and modify it as the day goes.

For Short trades

The exact opposite of the Long trades with similar exit and stop losses.


I have had reasonable good success with the above method . It may not be perfect , but it has been profitable.

Imran's method : forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=48926 ( add www)

Hi,
i also recently started trading commodities. I am using only indian data. can you tell whats the platform you use for global feed and what are the charges for it. I am using a 3 - 13 strategy

Most of the forex brokers give feeds for commodities. their demo accounts are free. since i mostly trade nickel , crude and copper its there with almost all the brokers. it doesn't matter which one you use.

today's i got a little over 6 rs on copper. since i am trading commodities on a light scale i am quite happy with the returns. after all the pain i had, now i wait for the trades and am making good profit on it.

Not getting . Please attach pdf

Hi kharikumaar,

Thanks for sharing the strategy. can you please post some charts if time permits you...

If you have learnt to wait for trades, friend, you will hardly experience any pain in trading.

Though your waiting may give a little pain to your broker.

The pain what i had was before i started this method.

the broker need not worry, we get signals everyday. today after the 1.30 pm candle copper gave a beautiful entry where i took 3.5 rs. and after 5 pm candle crude gave me 60 pips.

I don't save charts. I am not sure how to save and upload them. i'll try to post the trades of today. the image is of the crude chart

this is the copper signal which i got today