were you still using 8-10 tick stops? that seems really tough isn't it worth spending $200 to make $500? I guess I could see using a sub 10 tick stop if it's a 50:50 trade with a quick expected success time. There were 4 super sweet setups today for trading, you probably even made money off them. Its the 4 or 5 marginal trades that eat away at winnings. I say it all the time .... ahhh whats 100 bucks, 5 "guesses" just made me have a break even day. If you crave action trade more stuff. 4 good setups here 3 there 2 on the KC you'll be making 2k a day and then get bored and start drinking bloody mary's straight out da pitcher before 1pm. Have a great weekend all! I gotta go get my bear costume for Halloween before they all sell out!
I typically use 10 ticks stop, that was an exceptional setup as I thought market willl BO soon in one direction ( mostly down ) I was trying an early entry. Now I have stopped doing that , let CL show me who is winning Bull or bears before I take a position with 10 tick stops. I have been making profitable trades on good setups lately and lose money cuz of the mistakes I do ( most of which I can be avioded ). I have good ( historical ) reading on Dow, ES, TF and NQ charts, did not see them real time, I do watch them but primary focus is on CL. Right now I know some valid setups in CL but my battle is control over mind, patience, avoid haste, avoid acting smart , not following checklist of aviodable mistakes, avoid greed and avoid fear which will be true for any markets I trade. I am trying to overcome this as this will open doors to my new future. I am trying to get rid of action thriller packed trading and do some polite cool down trading. Till now I have had 1 month of real screen time and I would say I have learnt alot, but this is ruthless business, hardwork / knowledge learnt has no meaning if eventually I do not convert this knowlege into positiive ticks.
I've never had a profitable trade present more than 13 ticks heat, so my stop is now 15 ticks except in very rare instances where I get in late, but still feel the setup is great. It's more difficult to wait for proof of control before putting on the trade because you're getting in at a "worse" price, but it's well worth it, because CL can take you apart if you make assumptions about what price will do without proof of it.
So it's better to wait a make a few less ticks then it is to guess an maybe make a few more ticks but increase prob of losing all you risk. Do you always trade the same number of contacts or if something looks really juicy do you step it up? Like on friday near the eod 81.20 was just being absorbed when you saw it creeping up to .27 then .30 you buy with a stop just below .20 which is now support and you make 30 ticks in 20 mins Hmm simple yet effective no wonder you've been taking all my money, much easier to do on ES. My question is when ya day trade like this at least in a trending market like this when there is less and less resistance how do you know when to exit? Just watch the order flow? Why can I do this with relative ease on the ES and not CL I was just bored and was doing some big picture thinking and trying to find out if airlines are hedged better than last time for this next big run up in oil, if explorers are taking hedges off because they are so confident that oil prices will remain high. And I thought about what the USO does and who uses it? I'm assuming mostly regular joe schmoes I never even bothered to look at their web site but they post their daily activity. Its pretty neat http://www.unitedstatesoilfund.com/uso-holdings.php If joe schmoe is selling his USO oil must be going higher which is bad news for me.
I think it's safer to accept a few less ticks than make an assumption and get trapped. That said, I've been known for catching a signal on the 1-min chart and getting into a trade really early, but it's because when I do that I can place a 5-10 tick stop which always feels like a bargain to me. I know, I know, that's wrong thinking! I think CL is so much easier to trade than ES, but my friend who trades ES exclusively thinks it's like taking candy from a baby and tells me CL is for lunatics With very few exceptions, I've been trading 1 lot since late May when I began a new quest for the holy grail using pure price action setups. I think it's a good idea to step it up on certain setups, but it's usually counter-intuitive setups that invite putting the pedal to the metal, rather than obvious setups. The setup you mentioned from Friday is one of those and I didn't even trade it at all. I'd just closed out a nice short position from the failed b/o of the high which also turned out to be a trend breakdown. So at that point I was watching for a lower high to short again. The 1:50pm ET bar doji bar set up the potential for a textbook lower high short, and would quickly attract short sellers who can't bear to give up a few ticks for a confirmed entry. If price doesn't break the doji bar low, these are the trapped traders who will fuel a run up to test the day's high. Sure enough the confirmed long entry came into play via the break of 81.20 and that was where the smart traders turned it on. It seemed counter-intuitive to think long there because the trend break had traders looking for a LH to short. But that's what made it such a high probability long trade. So there I was set up to play a confirmed short entry because of my bias at that point and price broke upside without me. I suddenly noticed something on the chart that gave me an "aha" moment. I drew a trend line from the LOD to the first higher low and there it was, TO THE TICK of the trend line, support @ 80.99, which had I drawn that TL earlier would've erased any short bias I had, and had me taking the early long signal. Instead I was whining (of course) about not seeing that earlier. There was one more good opportunity to go long @ 81.43 and target 20 ticks, assuming one more weak b/o through the high and I decided instead to call it a day because the price action leading into the NYMEX close can be bipolar to say the least. Since I'm trading 1 lot, I exit with a profit target based on previous S/R levels and will let it run if there's good momentum on at that point. My minimum profit on a trade is 20 ticks unless a stop and reverse signal appears.
Hello Guys/Gals, If you need to say buy on close of 5 min bar, how do you handle the order entry. e.g. buy with limit last price / ask / bid price or market order, 3/2/1 secs before the bars closes. sometimes I have seen that as soon as the bar closes the price moves away and does not hit it again. NoDoji: I love your PA analysis, I think you should write a book. I will happily buy your book and also gift to wanna be traders
Normally if you're trading price action you would buy/sell at one tick above the high/low of the previous bar so that it carries you into the trade. If you miss out and don't get an entry then you just let it go and wait for the next signal. Just watch for those one tick failed moves, they suck in trades on one end and go the other to try and get a bigger move. I've noticed if that happens (and you took that trade) then it was the wrong trade to take, and wasn't a pure signal. I missed a trade one time (probably a lot more) where price looked like it was making a reversal up, on the current bar it came down, went one tick below the previous bar, turned around and went back up around 50+ ticks and then like an additional 100 ticks before stalling out. Check this out: http://www.mytradingedge.net/p/videos.html Watch the first video on Al Brooks. I think this video was done before his book was published. It'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about.