I started trading CL live in April and by mid-May I settled into a particular set of strategies, spent a huge amount of time studying and honing them, and traded CL almost exclusively with few exceptions. I trade for a living and am also very much a work-in-progress. My monthly net (rounded down) since focusing on CL are as follows: June: 700 ticks July: 600 ticks August: 1000 ticks September: 1200 ticks October-to-date: 1600 ticks The improvement over time was the result of learning to let winners run by implementing a 20-tick minimum profit target that I've adhered to with very few exceptions. The vast majority of my trades have been 1 lot. I believe that 2000 ticks per month/contract is very attainable and once I achieve that level it will indicate that I'm trading fully with a trader's mindset at which point I will do exactly what got me there, except with larger size.
ND, Interesting, what are your largest number of scratch trades 15 point stop hits in a row in a month, in other words what is your biggest monthly tick drawdown during your worst stretch. So once you get 2000 ticks, then your going to double that by adding 1 lot, and move to 4000 tcks per month. (assumming you don`t scale out) why i ask about the drawdowns is that with leverage, i.e., 10 lots would equal a 20,000 tick potential bad month for a $200,000 drawdown during a bad stretch. Will you have 3 months at 2000 ticks before adding your next lot? There is always the nasty surprise of building up capital only to have 4 months of profit wiped out on a bad stretch with increased leverage and a changing trading market environment. I wonder if you experience the bot programs and algos targeting your 15 point and move up stops strategies to break even to lower your 20 point potential successful trades so that your winning percentage is dropping---as there are so many algos and bots in cl these days. I admire your approach to trading, trying to make more of the art into a science as possible.
Do you mean ticks = cents? Pretty sure that's the case... just clarifiying. fwiw I agree with the +2,000 cents per month potential is very doable, although a fraction of that on 10-lots to 20-lots is more than enough.
I'll answer some of this generically, not to put words in Donna's mouth First of all, one-lot traders will always max out points / pips / cents performance above all others. Once we add contract size, max performance wanes. That is in part due to fills but mostly due to human nature. No one will let 10-lots positions run the max like 1-lots will. No one will take every counter-trend stab "just in case" when putting on blocks. So the natural progression will always be more contracts / somewhat lesser cents. But not enough to matter... the added size means absolutely everything. No one will ever book 2,000 cents CL monthly on a consistent basis trading blocks like they might one CL or one QM. There is a really big difference involved. But 200 cents or 500 cents per month at $10 = 1 cent CL while trading 10s or 20s is a lot of money fwiw I watched blocks of 15, 30, 40 and 60 CL contracts flow across time & sales all day without shivering the bid/ask. CL is three times more daily volume than TF currently, as a relative comparison. yes the bots and algos are there, but they cannot control the tape as they do over in emini-land at this time. Volume quells the effect of algos, CL is plenty liquid and cannot be pinned for fundamental reasons, too
yes the bots and algos are there, but they cannot control the tape as they do over in emini-land at this time. Volume quells the effect of algos, CL is plenty liquid and cannot be pinned for fundamental reasons, too it all depends upon time forex, and equities no major bot enfluence in the am., however, cl from after europe open say 3am to 7am cst bots were running the show.
good news is, bots don't dominate CL all day every day. the natural supply/demand laws won't allow that, commodity markets are not controllable for long. witness grains, metals, sugar, cotton, etc big difference from stock index markets which are nothing more than arbitrary digits on paper underlying.
Austin, by "ticks" I mean "cents", and you are absolutely correct about sizing up. No matter how consistent I become with 1 lot, I know myself well enough to know that I would very likely manage my trades differently with size on. BlueStreek, I derived 15 ticks as my max stop when I found after a couple months of analysis that, based on my setups, almost no profitable trade would ever run more than 14 ticks against me. Now, if I miss the proper entry and get in late, I have to place the stop at the same level as if I'd gotten in at the proper price and placed a 15-tick stop. This alone has prevented me from randomly chasing entries without some kind of 1-min confirmation that allows for a better stop placement. I do know that trade entry levels are very often tested and will take out anyone who moves stops to b/e too quickly. Sometimes I get taken out b/e when that happens, but will try to get right back in as long as the setup isn't invalidated. It seems that on any given day I have more b/e trades than profitable trades. I don't think I've had more than 2 or 3 back-to-back losing trades. My losing trades are almost always the result of jumping the gun and putting on a trade before it's technically signaled by the actual price action. This happens when I firmly believe price is going to act a certain way and I will get that better price by entering early. There's an old saying, "You get what you pay for", and I found that in trading it's as true as ever. Seems whatever I save by trying to get that 2 or 3 tick jump on a trade, I lose 5 times over by taking the damn stop loss. You can pretty much tell where the bots/algos work levels. Put a 20-bar EMA on a 1-min chart and watch how price reacts to it in a trend. Also note how the high and low of each previous 5-min bar gets tested, and how pivot points (previous pivot high/low) get tested. I believe these bots are what helps make the breakout trades in CL so instantly gratifying. Austin, I agree with you that the real moves in CL come from the supply/demand; the bots play their games at key levels, but CL can slice through S/R levels or a 20 EMA like butter when the real players want to position themselves. Did anyone see the 450 lots parked at the 82.00 offer late today? 81.99 was a key R level from earlier, putting in a double top that led to the massive breakout at 10:00am ET. Not far from the NYMEX close, I saw that size sitting there @ 82.00 and it kept me from playing the breakout. Good thing, because that 450 lots got chewed right up and didn't move price 1 tick further. I never saw anything like that before.
well with artificial orders which are pulled after 20 cars get hit, and icebergs.....i watch it but there are so many games these days that i take all that dom stuff with a grain of salt.... The real interesting stuff has been the 1 to 1:30 and 1:15-1:30 cl moves to close out the trading in the pit friday, monday, tuesday, and wed.......somebody wants cl at certain levels...i mean we have had 70 to 100 point move ups instead of movedowns or partial hi-low longs getting out, shorts getting out closes. It appear jpm, m-lynch, goldman all have 100 dollar crude predictions out there over the next 4-6 months. versus crude inventories at highest 2010 levels right here, and china tightening, and raising gas prices----this is interesting tug-of-war.
seems to be true. with 1 lot in most time, i could get almost same result while maintaining a win rate at 100% since trading CL. no single losing trade so far from trading CL. today's result is just not too bad.
to be honest, I have my dome set to show size on the bid/ask only... one level of orders visible. I don't even pay any attention to that as it is. I do watch flow thru time & sales just to see how size clears the tape with regard to slippage other than that, everything I need to know is visible in the price bars themselves. all that other stuff is merely the market being the market itself. the less I think, the more I measure price, the better my results always become