as an engineer all your work is based on gravity,think of the targets as earths magnetic pull,when support breaks things fall to the next floor or the ground ,when support is built as in sections of a crane,they willl hold the load as long as it's within tolerance
It would have worked this time but this is not really a generally good strategy. 10 ticks in oil is noise, and moving to BE after it's +10 is almost guaranteed to get good trades stopped out most of the time, before it has room to work higher. Something that's missing in this discussion on this particular trade and also in general is the character of the price action at the time. I took the long at .84 when it retested near the .80 level, at the 7:39 point on the chart posted. Why? Because the move up from 7:00 to 7:15 or so was not really convincing enough given the period of time it took to get that far--the .80 level was key for the prior two days--after that move up, more shorts were needed to fuel anything much higher given that the buyers were not that enthusiastic. I can't remember if the 20ema on the 5m or 1m chart was nearby either, but I think that my have played a role in my decision to wait. mac, just seeing a chart annotated in hindsight with buy here, sell here, will do no good, zero good at all. How long have you been watching CL? How long have you been using the chart you're using without changing anything on it? IMO it's too fast of a chart for general use, maybe just for entries to identify small patterns (like on my 25 tick, I can see great bull flags, etc., after I've confirmed a good entry using a 5m or 1m). I have only been looking at CL for 5 months now, and have gotten better at reading the action because in the last 2-3 months I settled on a chart view I liked, and have not changed it. I still get faked (today in fact once), but I expect that in a few months I will feel even more comfortable with it. If you've been looking at CL for over a year and are asking about why these buys aren't working, then perhaps you should change the chart to a slower one and give it a try.
I personally, let market show me sup/ res. In my experience the best trades are the ones where these so called supp and res Break. I try to keep an on just the price action. There is too many things out there to be worried about. Keeping it simple helps my decision making faster and easier.
My stop on the 2nd buy was below the swing low in price at about 97.92. Target 98.80. Entry was about 98.15. I wish there was a way to make my trading more objective. I use the words, "it looks like", and "this could be", and "this will probably" all the time. Problem is I'm wrong too many times with those subjective statements. I don't normally use Heikin Ashi; that was a 1-day experiment, but I would've taken the same trades with the normal candlesticks I usually use. Once the trading day is over & I look at the chart it's all so easy. Real-time is a different story. I've been following CL for about 6 months now. Have traded for way too many years, never made a dime of profit, so now I've been on sim almost a year & still can't make a profit, not even with fake money. I'll absolutely never trade real money again until I've proven myself on the sim & have extreme confidence. I'm far, far from it right now.
support and resistance are your load tolerances,if we are rising and your diesel on the crane is losing steam and the crane is buckling under the weight,the resistance will hold,if you are dropping like a rock,picking up steam ,measured by the uvol dvol on the nyse or the eur/usd when trading oil,then the first ,shorter tl,30 min or 1 week is not going to hold,usually signaled by a dead cat bounce,longer term tl's when broken ,6 months or so,usually retouch and give you time to decipher or reengineer the plan,always good to see 3 or 4 scenarios and when one starts to look best trade it,the daytrading is toughest and if you can master it like nodoji,you wont have any trouble seeing the bigger picture longer timeframe trade,its the same scenario,just spread out
What time frame do you normally trade? Pick something, something simple, and stick to it. Just watch the charts. Forget P/L, forget money, just watch. Forget entering and exiting trades--just watch how price moves.
your persistence sparks my curiosity.... and especially your statement that you traded several years but have had zippo to show.... may i ask you a few questions pls: 1--what trading plans do you have for trading? 2--what is your profit target and what is your stop loss? 3--which market did you attempt at? 4--how often did you sit glued to the trading console during trading hours? 5--how many hours a day do you allocate to just trading? 6--what strategies do you use to live trade? just mighty curious and like to see you becoming profitable in the very near future.... but i have no easy suggestions.... either in order to be successful in trading, one must be willing to set interfering activities aside..... and concentrate on tasks at hands..... practise correctly and more practice.... on screen time.... have time to reply in specific past attempts and what not...? cheers
I've tried making a plan multiple times, but it just seems silly after I do it. The plan is simply to make a fortune from trading. I prefer daytrading. Right now it's CL, used to be NQ (which I can't even stand to watch anymore; it chops endlessly & slowly too often). I also wrote down a profit target a few different times, but it seems silly too. My goal is to be an expert at trading & make as many good trades as I can each day. Profit will vary. I trade from work. I can stare at the screen quite often as my job is easy. I rarely make bad trades due to being at work; I make bad trades because I'm simply entering & exiting at the wrong places. I've done just as bad sitting at home. I use what so many other people use, which makes me wonder how 1 guy can make a fortune & another can end up bankrupt. What is the difference? Anyway, I use support, resistance, highs & lows in price action, 20 SMA, patterns such as double tops/bottoms, triangles, rectangles; also draw horizontal lines & trendlines on the chart. For CL I use 300 volume for entry, 3000 volume for big picture, also glance at daily, 60 min, 5 min from time-to-time just for a different view. It doesn't seem that much different than a really complicated, complex video game. I want to sit down each day & try for a new high score.