no need to be ashamed, we are all learning and everyone is very supportive. Those that are critical of others here and elsewhere in ET, you will quickly realize are clueless amatures. Most of these idiots (schizo) couldnot trade their way out of a paper bag. good luck to you sir.
It was 165 ticks, but keep in mind that today was a technically perfect day. How often do you get a day when price stages a failed breakout through previous resistance right off the NYMEX open after a four-push uptrend from overnight lows, and then produces a picture-perfect downtrend the rest of the day, with lower highs and lower lows and nothing in between to even gives the shorts a reason to be concerned until around 1:45pm ET? Our automated system (still in testing and trading a sim account) netted 174 ticks today. Again because the day had very clean price action. Most days just aren't this easy. Also, I spent many tens of thousands of dollars in losses (tuition) and thousands of hours learning to trade. I made every mistake in the book, over and over and over again. I still make mistakes, but now they're more along the lines of "I shorted the FOMC bounce yesterday, took 20 ticks profit and watched it go another 80 ticks from my exit price". Very frustrating, yes, but not dangerous like the crap I did my first year.
Great article on Frac - It's getting a lot of air play these days. Stock levels explain NG pricing in '08 but not really the '09 to '10 wash out. CL fundamental doesn't say a lot about CL's pricing. This is my last post on fundamentals (I promise) Uploaded with ImageShack.us NoD - Way to go! - No wonder they call you the Queen of Price Action NoEmotions - SIM is the smart and best way to learn - Your leap of faith (quitting day job) takes great courage - Rejoice and Learn - Markets teach humility. No Emotion = No Shame
one of these weekend days, if you find time, can you go down memory lane and jot a few of your expensive mistakes and the lessons you learned from them....It would really help rest of us who are struggling. I been trading futures for 5 years and still not consistently profitable, not anywhere close to where you are now.
( 5 min and 1 min Charts ) Price action , Time Sales and Market Depth, 5 min chart Pivot ( length 3 ) , Volume , 20 EMA and keltner channel 20 EMA and Keltner I learned from NoDoji. Currently I am trading all my signals, thats why breaking even, now starts the hard job of filtering the bad ones and only taking the good ones. I think after couple of days of practice and screen time will help the filter process. FreeMarketRider: No Emotion = No Shame thnx , I will post everyday.
That is the hard part, finding out what works depending on the type of day that it is. I have always been fascinated with market depth I just don't understand what I'm supposed to do with it because the s/d picture is always changing. I think that is why I'm interested in this market profile stuff because the volume actually happened and I know other traders have a vested interest in those areas. Where the hell has Mrbochin been? I would love to try and unwind my puts but again during the time I want to get out the spreads suck. Hopefully we can test 73.80 again during normal hours.
Definitely filter the "bad" ones, then trade ALL the good ones. Make sure you can describe your good setups in a way that you could code the rules into a program and automate it. If you can't tell me in about 5 minutes or less what your strategies are and what your rules are, chances are you'll have tough time. What is the best profit you've taken on a trade and what is the average profit you take on a trade? What's the biggest loss and what's the average loss? Figure out a min profit you'll accept and a max loss and make sure your win/loss % and reward:risk ratio give you a positive edge. Unless price violates the reason you're in the trade, stay with it until your min profit target is achieved. My biggest mistakes the first year: Not sim trading for at least 6 months before trading live. Trading without a stop. Trading too large size. Counter-trend trading. Forming a strong opinion based on fundamentals, news, or price being "too high", "too low". Not defining a set of trading strategies with an edge, then coming up with a net profitable R:R based on extensive testing of the strategies in varying market conditions. Taking small profits and letting losers run. ********* And where are MrBochin and SK???
Forming a strong opinion based on fundamentals, news, or price being "too high", "too low". Great advice - For me getting back to trading will be about being better organized. And about refining an approach that works. More than anything else, my pollution of this thread (fundamentals) shows their limited value. PA shows liquidity / money flow. It's the tell all. Technicals work to make sense out of PA.