Today was a wash. There was only 1 trade I really screwed up on - I got greedy and missed it. Still learning how to read price. Funny how clear everything is after it's over. There were a couple of lower time frame entries on CL that I passed on. At this point in my short career, I'd rather pass on a profitable trade and learn from it than take a hit. CL dropped off a cliff overnight and looked like it was pulling back to the EMA when I got in. My sell stop off the 04:55 bar wasn't filled. The next bar was a green candle with a shaved top, indicating a strong bar close, so I didn't want to use that as a signal bar. The next bar was a doji that spanned the EMA and I don't like to take signals from doji's (this will haunt me later). CL Trade #1 Price pushed above the EMA and looked like it was going to challenge the 86.53 pivot high. I wanted to get long, but was worried about the overall trend being down and the LL that was formed at 04:55. Entered off the 1 min chart, but didn't trail my buy stop down. I could have (should have) gotten a better fill by 4 ticks. Went to BE+1 after 6 ticks. +1 ticks. After that push up to a HH, CL made HL. I was expecting another leg up, but I was in a 6E trade. I debated entering an order on CL, but figured I have a hard enough time managing 1 trade at a time. I passed on the long entry. I watched the 08:10 and 08:15 bars push up, but didn't see an entry, except at 08:14 bar. I wanted to see one more pullback bar, but never got it. CL Trade #2 After the retrace on the 08:20 candle, the next bar was an inside bar that made a HL. I was expecting a push back to the HOD. Went long, but was stopped out. +1 tick. On the 6E side, my first 2 trades were good, but didn't work out. 6E Trade #1 6E was in a nice wavy down trend. A with-trend candle formed at 06:06 and I entered a limit order at 50%. The two prior green bars were too large for a normal sell stop order. After the entry bar closed as a doji, I moved my stop. +1 tick. 6E Trade #2 6E poked above the EMA and made a double top, then formed a LL. The big green outside bar made me cautious. I didn't want to take a trade off of that. The next bar was a with trend bar that formed a double top. Entered a limit order with a 5 tick stop above the 06:51 bar. This was the beginning leg of the uptrend. Stopped out -5 ticks. I got greedy (read stupid) on this attempted trade. 6E made a perfect pullback to the EMA. I didn't do the arithmetic, and didn't see the signal bar was only 5 ticks tall. It formed a nice double bottom and I put in a limit order at 1.3632 and amazingly wasn't filled. I should have put a buy stop order in above that signal bar. Dumb. The next entry was another pullback to the EMA at 07:42, but it left a doji and I don't like to use those as signal bars. I was waiting for another, smaller candle to enter on, but didn't get it.
Lots of overlapping bars in CL today. I took 2 trades, one for an 8 tick stop and the other BE+1 with a 1 ticks slip, so I got nothing. Trade #1 My pre-market homework lead me to watch for a range bound market between 88.11 - 85.88. I saw the resistance at 87.75 and watched as the market pushed past that. I was hesitant to go long because we were at the upper third of the market range, but if the market was going to test the upper range, there was room for a trade. CL pushed up to resistance, then pulled back. The next candle was red, but did break the level before pulling back. I was waiting for an entry on the 1 min chart and found a perfect one - right after a retracement to within a few ticks of the EMA, and supported by a triple bottom only 6 ticks away. Went long and was stopped out by a doji before the run. -8 ticks. There was about an hour of sideways stuff. The bars weren't big enough for a trade even at the 1 minute level. Finally CL made another run for the top before failure. Trade #2 CL broke through the overnight low and made a LL before pushing back up to just under the EMA, then started to fall back. Entered short looking for a test of the low. The trade was above the EMA on the 1 min chart, so I was cautious. The next 2 bars were doji's, which I didn't like at all. The trade didn't seem to be going my way, so moved my stop to BE+1 and was stopped out with 1 tick of slip. 0 ticks. On the 6E side, I let the resistance levels I drew persuade me to not take winning trades. The first pullback entry was too close to the overnight high of 1.3667 and the second one was just under yesterday's high. Price moved right through them like they weren't there.
This is the danger of the 1-min chart. You're using it for entries, which is great, because you can see into the 5-min bars. But you have to be really careful using it for trade management. I've had this same thing happen to me because I forget to cross-check the larger time frame I'm actually trading to make sure my entry doesn't conflict with something more important and also to make sure my stop is placed correctly. The 1-min chart gave you a very nice pullback entry for this trade, but if you look at the 5-min chart you'll see that the containment bar (the large green bar before the pullback) has a low of 87.50 and there's also a previous resistance pivot of 87.47 which should hold as support if this is a valid uptrend. So your stop loss needs to be wider to accommodate the probability that price may test these levels. The other thing you can do with these 1-min pullback entry setups is wait for them to trigger, then let price come back and get in on the second opportunity as long as the original setup isn't invalidated. So in this case you have a breakout of 87.61 on the 1-min chart, price comes back and breaks the triple bottom support, but only by a few ticks and then comes right back up. You enter @ 87.62 on the return trip and the shorts trapped by the fbo fuel the run up. These second entries tend to work really well when trading in the direction of a trending move.
NOD Love your previous post, I never liked 1 minutes charts and would not recommend for new trader, but the more I watch the CL and posted trades the more I see the possible benefit. "Dont move until you see it" (movie Searching for bobby fischer)
I like waiting for the 3 equal or within 1 tic of equal highs/lows on one minute so long as 20ema is sloping strong and getting in right at the lows or highs than waiting for a breakout, but am only risking 3-4 tics, but if getting double divergence or highs breaking other highs by small amounts (which generates oscillators to makes divergences), I won't take them, these patterns often look like a rounding top. Same little occurance happened at 12:58cdt area to go short, but alas I was taking a nap. 86.83 area.
6E Trade #1 Trend was down and the first pullback I saw was the 05:09 bar. I didn't take that because it was just above the Feb 9th LOD, plus it was an inside bar (don't like to take trades from them). Price broke that support, and the next leg down broke the Feb 8 LOD. When price failed to make it back to the EMA, I placed a sell stop and was filled. Kept my stop at 8 ticks and was taken out. -8 ticks. 6E Trade #2 The bar that took me out on trade 31 failed to make a HH. I tried to get back in the trend with a sell stop under that bar. I had 9 MFE and thought about going to BE+1 but kept my stop at 8 ticks, but trailed it on the close of the entry bar. -5 ticks. Two mistakes with this trade: I didn't notice the double bottom that formed, and I should have protected my position with a move to BE+1 after I saw the doji form. CL was trading in a range until 06:15 when it made a push for the overnight low. I was reluctant to buy the first pullback because if fell back to the top of the range. CL Trade #1 After CL broke the overnight high and pulled back, I was looking to enter the trend. I missed a second entry into the trend off the 06:47 bar. When the next pullback occured, I waited for a second entry as recommended (thanks you-know-who). Went long with a hard target. +30 ticks. Happy that I kept my focus after 2 losing trades. Had a little headache, so just watched the rest of the day. Gotta leave the office at 9am tomorrow. If I do any trading, won't be able to post for a few days.
That was a sweet little setup on the 1-min, wasn't it? I, too, waited for the "second mouse" entry, which was a no-brainer long entry to me after that 3rd touch of .77 held up, and I was long @ .85. As for your hard target, I say "Hard stops, soft targets". First thing in the morning I note all the S/R levels off the 60-min chart and use those levels for profit target zones. Once price broke through 87.24 (Wed's 1:00pm ET bar high on the 60-min), then 87.47 and 87.95 were next in play. I held for at least 87.47 and once that broke, it hardly paused at all before making another run. The way I chose to exit was I moved my stop to 87.45 after the run to .77, figuring that 87.47 previous R should hold as support. It looked so strong I thought it might try for 88.11. Price made another run at the high but started selling off before getting there. It was a clear LH on the 1-min chart and I exited at that point and took a counter-trend short off a break of the 87.55 level. The reason I liked that counter-trend short was the LH on the 1-min and the fact price had pulled so far from the 20-bar EMA, there was a very strong chance of a pullback to somewhere around 87.02 (9:45am ET pivot high).
Price wouldn't come back again to lows in 6:47 PST, but got in near lows on 6:53. I took the breakout of the 7:02 bar of 87.37. That was a nice counter-trend Donna, I saw it as H&S, but it just looked strange to me, just like the top at 9:00, and I was just waiting for that one at 9:00 as there was much less volume on the five minute, but the pattern just didn't look right. Watched both patterns drop a buck