Thanks John, My son & daugher in law really surprised us. We drove up to Tallahassee to take them out for their 2nd wedding anniversary. Brought a small gift. They said, "We have a gift for you too"; and gave us a picture of a sonagram - We were floored - Damn sneaky kids Best to You as Well FMR
Because I trade for a living I need to lock in a minimum profit of $300/day just to cover monthly expenses. I want capture the "meat" of intraday swings in CL, building up profit throughout the session. If I'm looking at an unrealized gain of 30-, 40-, or 50- ticks and hold through the retrace for the full point or better that it "might" make, and then it stops me out b/e, psychologically I'm now under too much pressure to trade effectively, because I've missed two great swings from which I could've extracted 60 or 80 ticks, and I have that much less opportunity from which to derive my paycheck that day. I now have between 8-12 trades a day working the swings and that allows me to have several max losses and still come out profitable when all is said and done. ND, So you take out $6,000 out of your trading account each month to live on? If your account is around 50k now, and you have made over 50k trading cl over the last 5 months.....what size was your cl account in April? Have you thought about adding some scalps into your trading (little 5,6,7, pointers to get your daily trades number to around 25 trades per day, or do you think with your stop strategy that this would backfire? So you take 8-12 trades per day and your breakdown is something like this each day: 1 or 2 stopouts -$150 to 300 2-4 20 point winners for $400.00 to $800.00 2-6 breakeven trades each day for (assumming by breakeven you mean moving up stops to cover commissions) so = 0.00 I am guessing you have a couple of : 2 trades for 8-14 points so split the difference and add $220.00 to your trading profit. What time do you trade is it just m-f during the pit hours, or do you trade sunday nights, and overnight during the european session? Your right if your taking 30 k out of your trading account that cuts down on your margin for error, good job milking this cl cow
Hey, congrats! That's wonderful news! Just a reminder--time to start the college fund, if you haven't already. All the best! __________________ grizzled old veteran
Just a side question: What do you guys do in your off-time, after the market, on the weekends, relating to Crude Oil trading to either continue your education or to give yourself more chart time? It has been mentioned to do a bar-by-bar analysis (and go back in time), which I do, but I often find that I often remember what happened next so I have an idea of how the trade worked out. There are some times where that isn't the case, but a lot of the time I do. I don't always get that sense of uncertainty, of the unknown. I might see a setup and then remember "oh yeah, I wanted to trade that," or "yeah I traded that and it didn't work." I have books to read, but they don't all relate to trading, although they are financially related. I'm not looking for adding market analysis with indicators, but rather something that I can work with with my current trading strategy to gain more confidence.
Congrats to you proud parents/soon-to-be grandparents! I keep the account at $50K by transferring out the profits. I've not only thought about adding scalps, I've been sim trading a bit during the doldrums to see if I can come up with a comfortable and profitable scalping method to use during those chop/range low volume times. The problem is I'm afraid I'll get into the wrong state of mind to catch the runners. I don't want to regress back to where I take a small profit only to watch the thing run 40 or more ticks without me. I've been working too hard to get away from that. Your breakdown of my trades is pretty spot on. Lots of b/e's as I try to stay positioned for a real move, looking to catch the momentum out of the gate. I haven't yet traded Sundays or the overnight session, but I try to take my first valid trade signal when I turn on my platform around 8am eastern time, just to get in the groove.
I always do bar-by-bar with the chart scrolled to the hard right edge of where I'm starting. If you need more challenge because you remember everything that happened, run back to the overnight session and it will be all new. I also sit with my eyes closed and visualize myself seeing my best setups setting up, and immediately putting on the trade. You can also sim trade in after hours, or very early pre-market, which is a good way to get used to sitting through the back and forth action that tends to shake us out of good trades before our profit target is reached. Those static bars make it so easy to choose how we'd trade, but inside a big green or red bar can be a nearly full retrace of the bar before it starts back in the same direction again. Get used to watching a 14-tick profit run all the back to a 2-tick profit, then continue all the way back in your favor to break further your way. After a while you realize this is how most trades go and you get used to it and become more patient. Except breakouts, which provide instant gratification.
Don't underestimate bar-by-bar analysis of the last session; remembering what happened next makes it easy to cheat, even if unknowingly, so you cannot take your results as a benchmark for live trading, but said analysis will help you mightily with your trade management, particularly with the placement/width of stops and targets. Also, even if you remember that the trade didn't work, take it, part of the training you need is to understand that no matter how good you are some trades will be losers and to mentally condition yourself to take/cut your losses - that part I can say I've mastered You use Ninja, right? Then you can download replay data for random days of the last X months - days you probably didn't trade and even if you did, you'd be hard pressed to remember what CL did last May 5th. Try also replaying markets whose levels you are not familiar with but that have similar price action (for instance, 6E). Replaying them at higher speeds will get your screen time up and running, but remember to always end the day replaying for a bit at normal speed to get used to sitting on your hands as it moves a bit in your favor, then against, then some more, etc., as Nodoji mentioned. --- Nice looking girl, Gov. Come on, a couple of years - and 100,000 USD - more and she and her sister are set for life. FMR: Oh, my goodness, it's a boy! - Congrats
Technicals on CL right now couldn't be more gray: We're just slightly below the 50% level of the 52-week range. Price clinging to a flat 20-day EMA. Upside breakouts failed in October. Downside break out on 10/19 of the early October range failed to have follow through, but hasn't yet visited the upper level of the range. Bearish case: Lower trend line not even close to being tested yet. Price attempted to recover from the 10/19 range breakout but so far has failed to close above the 10/21 high, leaving an untested lower high on 10/25. Bullish case: The near term trend off August lows is still a confirmed up. CL does the craziest things. So imagine the craziest thing it could do in the face of bearish fundamentals