To the PO: I have read each of the posts in this thread. My views on learning to trade and just how the system of operation of the markets works have not met with much acceptance nor approval. You were correct to begin by trading stocks. The advent of the tech sectors of stocks really shortened the path to riches by using parasitic, technical front running of markets. The financial industry lobbiests did take a harsh route when they installed some of the modern restrictions you have to face now. By perfecting a stock trading experience one can become nicely prepared for handling non stock instruments. As you read the various posts here, you see that most did not perfect their stock trading experiences and, thus, their approaches are still incomplete. I agree with what you say about beginning to trade in commodities. Both the CL and ES are good choices. In any trading venture, a person must begin as small as possible. 2,000 dollars of capital gives you two portions of the capital to work with. One portion for the ES is about 1200 dollars. this amount is the suggested margin requirement by the exchnges and the IB's. Some IB override this ammount and let you trade with as little as 500 dollars margin. The extra capital is a cushion you will never use except to pay commissions on the spot during the day as you do trades. The biggest determinant of making money trading is the range invloved. You speak of trading the opening range. This is the most profitable single trade of each day. The reference for the open is the close of the prior RTH period. Non RTH does NOT affect the "continuity" of a market. When futures indexes are considered, the close of the stock market is different than the close of the futures index market. In terms of the future and using a Time Frame (TF) of five minutes, three additional bars move the futures forward. Never leave these three bars out of the carryover from one day to another. The open carries over the prior day and the open also provides the first market turn of the day. Therefore, the opening range is always the distance from the first turn to the next dominant change of sentiment. This distance is measured by time and its vertical shift is the profit on the opening range for each and every day. As stock trading taught you, signals for trades, do NOT come from bar extremes. All markets behave in the same manner. Complete systems demonstrate this clearly. Signals "lock in" during a forming bar. However, to practice safety when trading, bar ends can be used to always assure you never have to take losses (some call these times, "drawdowns"). By always drawing the horizontal reference AND the right trend line of a current trending, you can always use these values to exit any hold at any time with a profit. This replaces the arbitrariness of guessing stops ever. Never guess or set stops. With the above in mind, then all there is to do is extract the offer of the market. The full offer is best since it is more. All markets are orderly and they demonstrate this by exhibiting the Order Of Events (OOE) of all variables. So prediction is not done nor is it required. What is done is anticipating the next event in the Order Of Events. Notice almost all posters in this thread are using incomplete systems. They are telling you this fact over and over. When a system is not complete, two items are used to compensate for this incompleteness: risk and money manangement. In trading, the best thing to do is develop and design a complete system. You can calculate the daily net from my attached chart for today. Use the arrows on the turns and determine the appropriate values for each action. The arrows are drawn before the turn occurs. Notice that you make ticks of profit and the segments add up. To compare the results to the capital in the account just use all the capital and chose values that show how trivial the costs of trading are. You want to make 10 points a week with your capital. As you see, five charts like this one will give you 10 points a week. Each time you make 1200 dollars, you have earned the right to add another ES contract. After a while, take out your initial capital and only trade with profits. If you wish, repeat any questions you asked that I failed to answer specifically. I tried to cover all the bases in one post. I am not offering you an opinion. My viewpoint is based on factual life experiences. Were I you, I would not debate with those who are offering opinions. Anyone who has experienced not succeeding is just a person who is ill equiped to do the job. All he has to show for his wasted time is his personal experience. All people make choices and they get the consequences of their choices. The market makes a full offer. Anyone can take that offer. The opportunity is equal for all people. People who whne incessantly have just learned to have a whining lifestyle. Choosing a winning lifestyle is much more fun.
Thank you so much JackR and Jack Hershey, I really appreciate your informative posts! Jack Hershey, I wrote down the info in your posts, and I am going to take the info into account for the future. Thank you for sharing your hard earned wisdom with others! On tuesday I didn't have any signals so no trades where done. Wen. I wasn't around to do anything. Today I was able to pull 10.5 ticks net from Cl with 6.5 theoritcal risk. So far I made 20 ticks profit this week. Patience is key, and I am trading to make extra money not to trade.
Of course I am only one failed trade away to have my profits cut half. ;'( So......... making money in here will definetly be a struggle.
Not quite every bar. The trading is done to take dominant moves and retraces on significant trends. All reversals are taken cos a reversal is a dominant to dominant type turn. the OP does not trade every day because of his absence or because he is still using a slower trading fractal. It takes a while for a person to work at full potential on faster trading fractals. as you saw he did not calculate the net for the day he was absent and which I posted for his benefit. He is not yet redy to deal with the potential of the full offer of the market.
What all seem to ever say in most of these posts, or they will say one has an incomplete system is dealing with risk. There is truly no concrete amount to risk except total account size if trading stocks and truly unlimited if trading futures. One might have a protective stop in market at all times, but if in stocks, no one takes other side, the stock can possible go to zero, and if trading futures, there have been times where a move is called "Limit" and one can't get out. I know once Lumber had thirteen limit days in a row. So when one speaks of risking $100 and like on day of 9-11 and you were long ten ES contracts and the exchange closed without you knowing it....Standard and Poor's (S&P) index lost 11.6% on resumption of trading. ES dropped 48 points approx., so if you had a ten lot, looking at quick loss of $24,000. I laugh whenever someone talks about risk to reward, sure you can say that applies to 99% normal times, but when you least likely to be prepared, flash crashes can occur. People always ask why I use no protective stops when I day trade, I don't see the point of getting out on a "mistake" by those who want to have fun at my and others expenses, and you know the exchanges will always lean on the side of the big firms. And U.S. gov't can force exchanges to stop allowing certain sides to be completed, just ask the Hunt brothers of early 80's, am sure many retail traders got hurt too. So when the undercapitalized want to play the game with next to nothing, you can lose your home thinking that way.