Anticipate With Zero Risk

I was looking at XOM today and noticed something that looks pretty obvious to me, but perhaps not to you … until now!  

See the chart below and you’ll observe that XOM is forming a sideways rangebound channel with a high at 87.94 from January, and a low of $83.19 from February.  So it’s almost a $5 range.  

I’m always on the lookout for flags and rangebound patterns like this and the first thing I noticed was that XOM’s OVI has been positive for about one month now.  I concede, not wonderfully so, but still positive without being ambiguous.  

As I saw the chart I said to a colleague at the open that this stock was very likely to rise today, which it duly did by $0.74 (0.876%).  

Now, that’s not the play.  The play is when the stock takes out the high of the channel.  But now’s the time to be aware of the possibility of this happening in the next few days potentially.  You can anticipate without taking any risk whatsoever.  You can even place your conditional order or buy-stop-limit to open on at the appropriate place above the channel.  These orders will only be filled if the stock breaks out and hits your price.  If the stock doesn’t break out, you can’t make a loss because your order won’t be filled.  
 
This is what I call anticipating without any risk.  

All the best 

Guy