Timing is everything... is there a way to automate your setup, so that even if you're away from your desk, the trade will be executed? btw, what would have happened to those 8 scratch trades if you relaxed your rule for moving your stops to b/e? thanks, Walt
fwiw: trading CL from inventory release to about five minutes past the news is big-time slippage risk. I had CL trades out -20 cents and -30 cents both directions one time at 10:32am Now the paper traders won't realize that: they see the prints there on a chart, assume ideal fills and count those "plays" as big wins or scratched losses or assumed entry fills that never happened in real-time for anyone. But once you plunk down real money in the pit, reality of executions becomes glaring The CL turned more than 400,000 contracts so far today or roughly three times the volume of TF by comparison. It is plenty liquid enough for any retail trader... but not around major econ reports or inventory report. Beware those events
Walt, we're still developing the automated system which will trade all setups and manage them by a set of rules. In the meantime, there's me trading some of the valid setups and pretty much managing trades by a set of rules, with few exceptions. I analyzed my trades today and if I'd trailed a stop at the close of each bar, the net result would've been -$292. If I allowed initial stops and targets to stay in place until one or the other was hit, the net result would've been -$310. So my trade management rules about when to move stops worked very well for me on those trades (most of which took place in narrow choppy price action). The main problem for me today was that the setups I hemmed and hawed about (or missed because of not being in front of the screen), added up to well over 100 ticks of additional net profit, so I'm a bit disappointed at my laziness today. I did some unorthodox trading in sim (average down long near the lows and my weekly "enter any direction before inventories with no stop and place a limit order 20-30 ticks away" trade) and had over $1900 in a little over an hour trading small size. Maybe all this conservative trading is holding me back
I want to clarify a statement I made earlier about "paper trades" that was in no way meant to be derogatory. That reference meant to say some things aren't apparent in sim mode that we later discover in real $$ mode. Just so that is perfectly clear: sim trading is a critical step in the journey to success. If all traders spent more time in sim and waited a lot longer to risk their hard-earned money in live fire before they have a chance to win consistently, there would be a lot fewer tales of failure and woe out there. The worst mistake ALL traders make and will continue to do so forever is trading real money way too soon in their career. Biggest mistake by far, but one that will never cease to be repeated. Basic human nature at the core. No shame in sim trading at all... the only shame I can think of is burning one's money before there is any reasonable chance to earn money, on a sustained basis. Actually, we should switch the phrase "sim trading" to "research trading". That would be more apt
I like that: research trading. That's how I use sim now, to try out things I don't feel comfortable doing live (and maybe never will). I really doubt my "inventory news" sim trades would turn out the same live, because the sim trades aren't based on actual trades, only on price triggers. I was testing a 10-lot scalping strategy recently and was hoping the fills in sim were based on actual trades that took place, so I could see what the slippage would be like. When I later compared the fills in sim against actual trades from the time and sales, I found that there was no match to reality.
My trading chart for some reason is acting up today. Can someone give the Value ARea and Point of Control from yesterday for Crude Oil, to see if they match with what I have. Seems like my data is missing the last hours of trading day yesterday. Thanks.