USD Slips After FOMC http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dollar-slips-after-obama-calls-for-spending-freeze-2011-01-26
At what price was your protective stop? Nice thing about a sim account is you can comfortably average down for a long time. Not so comfortable in the "meager" live account :eek: ADD: I give you credit for averaging with the trend. I've seen CL retrace entire moves later in the day, though.
I thought you and I had mutually agreed not to use stops anymore. Wasn't that what we concluded? Keep averaging into a losing position. Wasn't that our new strategy? Borrow from family and friends if you run out of bullets. I was in and out while this trade was on. If I had been trading with my real money, after the 30 tick profit at 87.44, I would have taken a small 15-20 tick profit on the first 87.41 reentry trade and then due to the FOMC announcement would have been out until after that and maybe reentered where I did around 87.21 with a stop at 87, which looked like support, and exited that one contract where I did at 87.70. I just saw this as a pullback buying opportunity on a contract trending higher after the double bottom this morning and a significant selloff the last few days. And the 87.70 looked like a level of resistance just short of the 87.80 stronger resistance and then even stronger resistance around 88.25. I like to set exit orders a bit lower (or higher if I'm short), as I've missed getting filled by one tick or two too many times being greedy for that last little bit.
Well, you know, with my nearly 10,000 hours of screen time, I'm a seasoned professional now, which means I can trade without stops and average into losers until my family and friends have all thrown themselves in front of trains or off bridges. I'm under the impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that you, on the other hand, are still in the early learning phases of mastering this level of professionalism. Don't misconstrue my criticism here, but you're being very evasive. You're assuming that because oil was in a strong uptrend, the pullback was going to be all nice and "resistance becomes support at the rising 20-period exponential moving average while Mr. Bollinger dances the contango through the shadow of the valley of MACD" perfect, and run right on up to your profit target without a glitch. My question is, if you averaged down and price suddenly started falling out of nowhere, crashing through one support level after another for no apparent reason, where was your stop? For a cautionary note on being "in and out while this trade was on" and having no stop in place, I offer you a quote from this very thread back in early 2010, which I had begun following regularly while I was still sim trading CL:
The TPO on tos charts seems to suffice for what I use it for but if you want to delve into market profiling I know xtrader through velocity futures has a free histogram setting. But if you already have an account with IB you can use their data feed to run "investor/RT" by Linn Software which is pretty good. I think its like 30 bucks a month and then they have other gadgets you can add. A while back I opened an account with Advantage futures and was paying something like 700/month to use CQG's charts and data. Running that next to TOS is comical but I ain't exactly a scalper and it messed with my mind and made me over trade. I guess since commissions seemed almost free I felt obligated to trade a lot. Needless to say mind mind is now clear. People bash tos all the time on here but all brokers have problems sometimes but they have always been very good to me. I negotiated a crazy commission deal for futures so don't be scared to ask for a deal. They say they aren't for scalpers and all the stuff is free so u get what you pay for as far as performance. Plus the program is so intuitive unlike IB where you need to spend a month getting familiar with how everything works. Good luck IV!
Did not learn my lesson. I took a long CL trade but did not wait for confirmation of indicator. Then when indicator confirmed, took another long, and was back to BE. This is where I should have quit for the day. However, saw 6E (EURO) shooting up probably due to a report, and chased with market order, and then started to get chopped up so I was down over $ 400.00 After that I kind of calmed down, and did 2 trades in a row both long on ES and CL which hit targets. Then after market hours saw report that FED was not going to raise rates and therefore $ was hitting lows, so took a look at 6E. It had fallen due to probably day traders closing out winning long trades, but looked like it was close to lows and therefore going to make a HL with overall trend for day being up. My other indicator was close to the bottom and looked to turn up. Saw green candle briefly go up, and got in long on a limit order. I have not had much luck with 6E, but set stop a little below standard since it seems to like to hunt my stops, and was targeting high for day. Indicator was starting to turn up. Took at most 1 tick of heat on this trade. As Euro started to approach 10 ticks of profit, I set limit to 10 ticks,, and decided to take the profit rather than sitting and waiting to see if it would hit my further target. I was able to make back most of the loss, but I need to stop over trading, and accept the fact I will sometimes do losing trades, and not to start getting chopped up and instead have patience like I did with last trade to wait for a valid setup.