The second futures book.
Gold, silver and crude are traded here as CME futures contracts — GC, SI and CL — which keeps the whole operation on one kind of instrument. This is the book that tends to pay when index futures and the dollar are both going the wrong way. Five strategies, each with a replayable chart.
Gold as a Macro Trend
Gold pays no interest, so it competes directly with inflation-adjusted bond yields. When real yields fall and the dollar softens, gold trends — and those trends run for weeks.
- Trigger
- A macro shift in real yields or the dollar, confirmed by a break of the prior range high.
- Entry
- On the first pullback into the 21 EMA where the trend line also sits.
- Invalidation
- Below the pullback low, or a reversal in the real-yield read that started it.
- Target
- Trailed while structure holds; no fixed number.
- Management
- Gold is watched alongside DXY and TIPS yields — a change there closes the trade before the chart does.
Correlation with the other books
Long gold on a weak dollar is often the same underlying bet as long EUR/USD in the FX book. When both appear at once they are sized as one position, not two — this is exactly the kind of hidden doubling-up the risk framework exists to catch.
Gold–Silver Ratio Rotation
The number of silver ounces one gold ounce buys has oscillated around a long-run band for a very long time. At the extremes, rotate exposure from the expensive metal into the cheap one.
- Trigger
- The ratio reaching a historical extreme and losing momentum there.
- Entry
- Long silver against short gold, sized so both legs carry equal notional value.
- Invalidation
- A new extreme in the ratio. Extremes can get more extreme for a long time.
- Target
- The middle of the long-run band, not a price in either metal.
- Management
- Both legs are closed together. A leg left open on its own is a different trade entirely.
Two legs, two sets of costs
A ratio trade pays financing and spread on both sides, so a slow mean reversion can be eaten by carrying costs even when the direction is right. It is also the slowest of the fifteen — measured in weeks and months, not sessions.
Oil Inventory Report Trading
Every Wednesday the EIA publishes how much crude is in storage. A surprise against forecast moves oil hard and immediately — and the tradeable part is the retest, not the release candle.
- Trigger
- An inventory build or draw materially different from consensus.
- Entry
- On the retest of the broken pre-report range edge, in the direction of the surprise.
- Invalidation
- A close back inside the pre-report range — the market has rejected the number.
- Target
- The next liquidity shelf below or above, taken inside the same session.
- Management
- Flat before the close. Overnight, oil belongs to OPEC headlines rather than inventories.
Never the release candle
Trading the release bar itself means unpredictable fills, tripled spreads and stops that execute far past their level. Waiting for the retest gives up some of the move and replaces a gamble with a defined, measurable risk.
Seasonal Bias in Metals and Energy
Physical demand has a calendar. Jewellery buying seasons in metals and driving season in energy produce recurring tendencies — used as a filter on which side to take, never as a signal on its own.
- Trigger
- Entering a seasonal window with a documented multi-year tendency behind it.
- Entry
- Only on a technical break in the direction of the bias — the calendar never triggers a trade by itself.
- Invalidation
- Below the swing low that formed the break.
- Target
- Held to the end of the seasonal window, or a trailed stop, whichever comes first.
- Management
- Smallest position size of the five. The edge is thin and the sample is small.
Be sceptical of this one
Seasonality is the strategy most vulnerable to reading patterns into noise — with only a few decades of data there are not many independent observations, and a tendency that held for twenty years can stop working the year you start trading it. It filters trades here; it never generates them.
Volatility Breakout on Silver
Silver is thinner and more violent than gold. Let it compress, then trade the expansion — with every distance in the trade measured in average true range rather than in round numbers.
- Trigger
- Average true range contracting to the bottom of its recent distribution while price coils.
- Entry
- A fraction of an ATR beyond the compression high or low.
- Invalidation
- 1.6 ATR against the entry — a distance set by volatility, not by preference.
- Target
- A multiple of the same ATR, so reward scales with conditions.
- Management
- Position size falls as ATR rises, so the money at risk stays constant.
Why everything is measured in ATR
A fixed stop in cents is far too tight in a volatile week and far too loose in a quiet one. Pricing the stop in ATR keeps the money at risk identical across regimes, which is the single most useful habit to carry from this strategy into the other fourteen.
The other books
The same risk framework runs across all three. What changes is the session, the instrument and the shape of the edge.