initiated CL " LOng DEC 10/ Short NOV 10" spread 82.60 - 81.90 = 70 cents = $700 /contract expecting this spread to increase to 1.70 ( $1700 ) by the close of NOV contract in 18 days .
SIM Today: BE Total trades : 8 Mostly trades were near BE ( 10 tick positive, moved to BE ). Tomorrow I am planning on doing some trades based on my automated alert engine.
Well, made a mistake of averaging into a losing short. Was down over $ 700, then made most of it back, by shorting for a .30 profit and then going long for a .20 profit. So while I am still down for the day, did pretty good job of holding onto winners to make it back. To prevent over trading, I am done for today. Lesson was same as before, moved stop and averaged into a losing trade, need to try to not do that anymore. The real bad trade I did today would not have been so bad if I left stop alone.
I put on a counter-trend short this morning off the weak 3rd push from the NYMEX open. It was basically a failed b/o, I shorted at 82.21 (the low of a bar in progress that hadn't yet closed) and then instead of placing my standard 15-tick stop I placed no stop. Because the HOD was a wee bit higher than my 15-tick stop, I placed no stop. Is that crazy thinking or what? I was overcome with crazy thinking, "It was a failed b/o," I thought, "If it runs back up and breaks higher I'll add to the position." I actually thought that thought. I am not making that up. It turned out to be great trade, but I still can't believe I did that. It's one of those situations where even though the trade turned out good, it was so against my grain that it still bothers me right now. I had NO PLAN. In other words I had no level at which I'd add to the loser and no level at which I planned to take a max loss. CL has been know to break out 100 ticks or more and I would've been a deer in the headlights.
Yeah, I didn't feel good about that. I want Ammo's direct phone line so if I ever do that again and it starts running against me I can call him and say, "What do I do now????"
It's much less scary with the QM. Only thing I did all day was cover one of the shorts at 81.10 at like 4:30 this morning. Had to go to a funeral in NJ but will be shorting balls to the wall tomorrow as long as we stay below 81.90 otherwise will be focusing on other endeavors.